This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 22nd IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2021, held in Saint-Etienne, and virtually in November 2021. The 70 papers (15 full and 55 short) presented with 5 industrial workshop papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 189 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of major challenges and recent advances in various domains related to the digital transformation and collaborative networks and their applications with a strong focus on the following areas related to the main theme of the conference: sustainable collaborative networks; sustainability via digitalization; analysis and assessment of business ecosystems; human factors in collaboration 4.0; maintenance and life-cycle management; policies and new digital services; safety and collaboration management; simulation and optimization; complex collaborative systems and ontologies; value co-creation in digitally enabled ecosystems; digitalization strategy in collaborative enterprises' networks; pathways and tools for DIHs; socio-technical perspectives on smart product-service systems; knowledge transfer and accelerated innovation in FoF; interoperability of IoT and CPS for industrial CNs; sentient immersive response network; digital tools and applications for collaborative healthcare; collaborative networks and open innovation in education 4.0; collaborative learning networks with industry and academia; and industrial workshop.

Over the past decade, diverse organizations have been turning to open source software for their technological needs, in both internal processes management and public interaction. Turning the data generated by organizations ranging from universities to large corporations into usable information has plagued users for years, making open source solutions one of the primary goals of these institutions. Open Source Solutions for Knowledge Management and Technological Ecosystems addresses the issues surrounding the search for each organization's unique data management needs, defining the tools necessary to fulfill them within their technological ecosystem, along with the selection, interoperability, and integration of these tools. This book is ideal for managers, business professionals, software engineers, information technology professionals, and students of business and IT.

"There are currently 3.5 billion mobile phones in the world and mobile information technologies permeate all aspects of life. This book explores how mobile technologies and information work shape each other. Most writings do not consider how information work increasingly relies on mobile services; this book seeks to address this imbalance"--

This proceedings volume explores the disruptive effect of COVID19 pandemic on business leaders and managers. It covers the sweeping changes experienced by all sectors of work and business along with core functional verticals. As organizations institutionalize lessons learned through trial and error, an effort is required to document these efforts. The volume is an amalgamation of papers presented papers at the International Management Conference, 2021 hosted at KIIT University, India in February 2021. The thrust of this conference was to gather a holistic picture of the lessons derived during the pandemic hardship. Selected papers provide readers with an idea of the new normal in various domains of management across industries and organizations. Research papers, from each functional areas of business management, give focus on experiences and best practices.

Attacks on information systems and applications have become more prevalent with new advances in technology. Management of security and quick threat identification have become imperative aspects of technological applications. Information Technology Risk Management and Compliance in Modern Organizations is a pivotal reference source featuring the latest scholarly research on the need for an effective chain of information management and clear principles of information technology governance. Including extensive coverage on a broad range of topics such as compliance programs, data leak prevention, and security architecture, this book is ideally designed for IT professionals, scholars, researchers, and academicians seeking current research on risk management and compliance.

Design Science Research is a powerful paradigm enabling researchers to make important contributions to society and industry. Simply stated, the goal of DSR is to generate knowledge on how to find innovative solutions to important problems in the form of models, methods, constructs and instantiations. Over the past 20 years, the design science research (DSR) paradigm has developed into an established paradigm in Information Systems Research and it is of strong uptake in many other disciplines, including Management Science and Computer Science. This book provides a collection of twelve DSR cases, presented by experienced researchers in the field. It offers readers access to real-world DSR studies, together with the authors' reflections on their research processes. These cases will support researchers who want to engage in DSR, and represent a valuable addition to existing introductions to DSR methods and processes. Readers will learn from the hands-on experiences of respected experts who have conducted extensive DSR in a range of application contexts.

Incorporating recent developments in control and systems research, "Linear Control Theory" provides the fundamental theoretical background needed to fully exploit control system design software. This logically-structured text opens with a detailed treatment of the relevant aspects of the state space analysis of linear systems. End-of-chapter problems facilitate the learning process by encouraging the student to put his or her skills into practice. Features include:

• The use of an easy to understand matrix variational technique to develop the time-invariant quadratic and LQG controllers
• A step-by-step introduction to essential mathematical ideas as they are needed, motivating the reader to venture beyond basic concepts
• The examination of linear system theory as it relates to control theory
• The use of the PBH test to characterize eigenvalues in the state feedback and observer problems rather than its usual role as a test for controllability or observability
• The development of model reduction via balanced realization
• The employment of the L2 gain as a basis for the development of the H??? controller for the design of controllers in the presence of plant model uncertainty

With the growing demand for increased bandwidth, conventional broadband access solutions will quickly become a hindrance in terms of bandwidth provision for network access. ""Optical Access Networks and Advanced Photonics: Technologies and Deployment Strategies"" presents a comprehensive overview of emerging optical access network solutions to efficiently meet the anticipated growth in bandwidth demand. Covering topics such as next-generation networking, communication networks, and photonics, this book provides the latest technology trends in order to grasp the expected beneficial use of optical access infrastructures.

The NeWS Book leads the technical reader through the discovery of a revolutionary window system: the Network extensible Window System, developed by Sun Microsystems. Independent of computer hardware and systems software, NeWS has been ported to a number of platforms and licensed to many computer vendors and software developers. NeWS will be part of the standard UNIX distribution from AT&T in the future as it is combined with the well-known X Window System from MIT in the X11/NeWS product. The specifications are in the public domain. Based on the popular PostScript page description language, NeWS provides a uniquely extensible interpretive programming environment for application developers in a networked graphics and window system environment. Networking is integral to NeWS; NeWS-based programs may span a heterogeneous set of distributed sites. NeWS is the first system to extend the PostScript language's already wide acceptance in printing applications into the realm of graphics and window-based applications. The NeWS Book is intended for a technical audience who may or may not have experience with window system design and programming. It gives practical examples of how to write PostScript programs, that implement interactive user interface techniques, while also exploring how the advanced imaging of the PostScript language model applies to the display as well as the printer. UNIX, NeWS, and graphics programmers, developers of graphical applications, computer science students, PostScript language devotees in desktop publishing, and sophisticated end-users who want to understand leading-edge solutions in window system design all will benefit from The NeWS Book.

Nature-inspired computation and swarm intelligence have become popular and effective tools for solving problems in optimization, computational intelligence, soft computing and data science. Recently, the literature in the field has expanded rapidly, with new algorithms and applications emerging. Nature-Inspired Computation and Swarm Intelligence: Algorithms, Theory and Applications is a timely reference giving a comprehensive review of relevant state-of-the-art developments in algorithms, theory and applications of nature-inspired algorithms and swarm intelligence. It reviews and documents the new developments, focusing on nature-inspired algorithms and their theoretical analysis, as well as providing a guide to their implementation. The book includes case studies of diverse real-world applications, balancing explanation of the theory with practical implementation. Nature-Inspired Computation and Swarm Intelligence: Algorithms, Theory and Applications is suitable for researchers and graduate students in computer science, engineering, data science, and management science, who want a comprehensive review of algorithms, theory and implementation within the fields of nature inspired computation and swarm intelligence.

This book discusses important recent advances in automated negotiations. It introduces a number of state-of-the-art autonomous agents for large-scale and complex negotiations, and demonstrates that automated negotiation is one of the most important areas in the field of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems. Further, it presents automated negotiation scenarios involving negotiation encounters that may have, for instance, a large number of agents or a large number of issues with interdependencies and/or real-time constraints. This book includes carefully selected and reviewed outcomes of the 11th International Workshop on Automated Negotiations (ACAN) held in Stockholm, Sweden, 2018, in conjunction with IJCAI-ECAI-2018. Written by leading academic and industrial researchers, it is a valuable resource for professionals and scholars working on complex automated negotiations. Furthermore, the in-depth descriptions of automated negotiating agent programs help readers who are involved in writing codes for automated agents.

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

A simplified approach to applying the Finite Element Method to geotechnical problems

Predicting soil behavior by constitutive equations that are based on experimental findings and embodied in numerical methods, such as the finite element method, is a significant aspect of soil mechanics. Engineers are able to solve a wide range of geotechnical engineering problems, especially inherently complex ones that resist traditional analysis. "Applied Soil Mechanics with ABAQUS(R) Applications" provides civil engineering students and practitioners with a simple, basic introduction to applying the finite element method to soil mechanics problems.

Accessible to someone with little background in soil mechanics and finite element analysis, "Applied Soil Mechanics with ABAQUS(R) Applications" explains the basic concepts of soil mechanics and then prepares the reader for solving geotechnical engineering problems using both traditional engineering solutions and the more versatile, finite element solutions. Topics covered include: Properties of Soil Elasticity and Plasticity Stresses in Soil Consolidation Shear Strength of Soil Shallow Foundations Lateral Earth Pressure and Retaining Walls Piles and Pile Groups Seepage

Taking a unique approach, the author describes the general soil mechanics for each topic, shows traditional applications of these principles with longhand solutions, and then presents finite element solutions for the same applications, comparing both. The book is prepared with ABAQUS(R) software applications to enable a range of readers to experiment firsthand with the principles described in the book (the software application files are available under "student resources" at www.wiley.com/college/helwany). By presenting both the traditional solutions alongside the FEM solutions, "Applied Soil Mechanics with ABAQUS(R) Applications" is an ideal introduction to traditional soil mechanics and a guide to alternative solutions and emergent methods.

Dr. Helwany also has an online course based on the book available at www.geomilwaukee.com.

This book is an important outcome of the Fifth World Internet Conference. It provides a comprehensive account of the new trends and highlights of global Internet development over the past year, covering network infrastructure, information technology, digital economy, world internet media, cyber security, and international cyberspace governance. This year, the book improves the Global Internet Development Index System and adds more countries into the assessed list, in order to reflect more comprehensively, objectively and accurately the general situation of the world Internet development and thus to provide reference for all countries in promoting Internet development and governance.

This two-volume set of IFIP AICT 617 and 618 constitutes the refereed proceedings of the IFIP WG 8.6 International Working Conference "Re-imagining Diffusion and Adoption of Information Technology and Systems: A Continuing Conversation" on Transfer and Diffusion of IT, TDIT 2020, held in Tiruchirappalli, India, in December 2020.The 86 revised full papers and 36 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 224 submissions. The papers focus on the re-imagination of diffusion and adoption of emerging technologies. They are organized in the following parts: Part I: artificial intelligence and autonomous systems; big data and analytics; blockchain; diffusion and adoption technology; emerging technologies in e-Governance; emerging technologies in consumer decision making and choice; fin-tech applications; healthcare information technology; and Internet of Things Part II: diffusion of information technology and disaster management; adoption of mobile and platform-based applications; smart cities and digital government; social media; and diffusion of information technology and systems

Software is pervasive in our lives. We are accustomed to dealing with the failures of much of that software - restarting an application is a very familiar solution. Such solutions are unacceptable when the software controls our cars, airplanes and medical devices or manages our private information. These applications must run without error. SPARK provides a means, based on mathematical proof, to guarantee that a program has no errors. SPARK is a formally defined programming language and a set of verification tools specifically designed to support the development of software used in high integrity applications. Using SPARK, developers can formally verify properties of their code such as information flow, freedom from runtime errors, functional correctness, security properties and safety properties. Written by two SPARK experts, this is the first introduction to the just-released 2014 version. It will help students and developers alike master the basic concepts for building systems with SPARK.

This open access book brings together perspectives from multiple disciplines including psychology, law, IS, and computer science on data privacy and trust in the cloud. Cloud technology has fueled rapid, dramatic technological change, enabling a level of connectivity that has never been seen before in human history. However, this brave new world comes with problems. Several high-profile cases over the last few years have demonstrated cloud computing's uneasy relationship with data security and trust. This volume explores the numerous technological, process and regulatory solutions presented in academic literature as mechanisms for building trust in the cloud, including GDPR in Europe. The massive acceleration of digital adoption resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic is introducing new and significant security and privacy threats and concerns. Against this backdrop, this book provides a timely reference and organising framework for considering how we will assure privacy and build trust in such a hyper-connected digitally dependent world. This book presents a framework for assurance and accountability in the cloud and reviews the literature on trust, data privacy and protection, and ethics in cloud computing.

This book investigates the real process of unleashing the power of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) through Open Innovation and strategic choices. It covers the most important aspects of ICT in a nutshell and details the road to the future through business innovation. ICT, of which telecom and IT constitute the core, is currently permeating and transforming every sphere of life, ranging from commerce, manufacturing, education and healthcare, to agriculture, banking, governance, media and entertainment. Today, telecommunication and ICT, in general, are essential to a country's economic development and competitiveness as recognized both by the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank. Due to the powerful, disruptive and rapid forces unleashed by ICT tsunami, organisations not only struggle to harness the potential of ICT but can also be overwhelmed by the changes, complexity, competition and regulatory environment it brings up. This book provides a clue to organisations on how to sustain and succeed by leveraging ICT in absence of extensive in-house expertise across the breadth and depth of these areas. The driving theme of the book is about opening up organizational and business models, by presenting an integrated roadmap to a future with ICT, by co-opting, cooperating and competing with other organisations. Constructing the right strategy and building the necessary social capital for open innovation through collaboration with partners, government, academia and users (Quadruple Helix Model) are essential steps in such a process.

Learn to measure and manage the real value of IT investment and spending

IT investments are becoming more than just business enablers or assets on the books; they provide capability that can drive the business. Thought leadership should migrate towards information investment, getting a bigger bang for the buck from the 'I' in IT and from the 'I' in CIO.

"The IT Value Network: From IT Investment to Stakeholder Economic Value" incorporates new emerging decision support methods, such as real options, which are considered to complement traditional financial measures. Organizational and informational economic based techniques are also incorporated to manage and assess IT investments, including the balanced scorecard (BSC), and investment and portfolio management; in addition to coverage of IT key performance indicators and competitive benchmarking.

Selected as a top 10 best IT-Business book for 2009 by CIO Insight - Praises for "The IT Value Network: From IT Investment to Stakeholder Value"

"This is probably the best 'up-to-date' executive information management resource since Strassmann's works of fifteen years ago. Tony Read provides a comprehensive and insightful assessment of the state of IT investment and the value of various technologies and information management in the modern enterprise. For corporate executives trying to navigate this rapidly changing landscape, this book is highly recommended."
--Paul A. Brinkley, Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (U.S.) for Business Transformation Agency

"Managing technology investments with a value-based approach just works--it has provided significant stakeholder value at Indigo. This book is a must-read for both IT and business managers who want to improve the return on their IT investments."
--Michael Serbinis, President, Shortcovers, CIO & EVP, Indigo Books & Music Inc.

"Difficulty proving the business value of IT remains a key barrier to IT executives. IT Value Network provides a clear road map to chief information officers interested in moving beyond simply aligning business and technology strategies. It is a must-read for IT executives who wish to become true partners to the business."
--Gary Beach, Publisher Emeritus, CIO magazine

"This book is a complete study of how value is derived and measured from IT investments. All IT strategy professionals should read it and have access to it. I strongly recommend it."
--Ali Hamza, Partner, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC)

"IT spending continues to climb, but IT value is invariably left on the table. Tony's new book will enlighten both the practitioner and academic to new approaches and techniques for capturing and realizing stakeholder economic value--with a great perspective to sustaining competitive advantage or as the book promotes network advantage, across the firm's value system."
--Edward Lieblein, PhD, Dean and Professor, Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences, Nova Southeastern University

"Tony Read's book provides excellent insight and strategies for maximizing shareholder return from IT investments. The book gives a timely response to the challenges every CIO and CFO face in the current economic environment. It is now more important than ever to demonstrate IT return on investment and this book is a valuable aid for Cx's looking to leverage every IT dollar to secure maximum business return"
--Albert R. Hitchcock, CIO, Vodafone Group

A unifying foundation to design and implement process-aware information systems
This publication takes on the formidable task of establishing a unifying foundation and set of common underlying principles to effectively model, design, and implement process-aware information systems. Authored by leading authorities and pioneers in the field, Process-Aware Information Systems helps readers gain a thorough understanding of major concepts, languages, and techniques for building process-aware applications, including:
* UML and EPCs: two of the most widely used notations for business process modeling
* Concrete techniques for process design and analysis
* Process execution standards: WfMC and BPEL
* Representative commercial tools: ARIS, TIBCO Staffware, and FLOWer
Each chapter begins with a description of the problem domain and then progressively unveils relevant concepts and techniques. Examples and illustrations are used extensively to clarify and simplify complex material. Each chapter ends with a set of exercises, ranging from simple questions to thought-provoking assignments. Sample solutions for many of the exercises are available on the companion Web site.
Armed with a new and deeper understanding, readers are better positioned to make their own contributions to the field and evaluate various approaches to a particular task or problem. This publication is recommended as a textbook for graduate and advanced undergraduate students in computer science and information systems, as well as for professionals involved in workflow and business process management, groupware and teamwork, enterprise application integration, and business-to-business integration.
A Solution's Manual is available online. An Instructor Support FTP site is also available.

This book analyzes multiple aspects of the Chinese livestreaming e-commerce industry, including its development and evolution, macro environment, market landscape, platforms, streamer structure trends, influencers, production, and explosive marketing methods, MCN operations, risk assessment and policy management. It not only describes the highly developed state of the industry in China and how it has advanced further as a result of COVID lockdowns, but also focuses on the problems of livestreaming e-commerce and proposes solutions and development strategies. Investigating the development trends, the book also discusses how far livestreaming e-commerce can go during the wind-up period. In particular, based on the underlying logic of people, goods and fields, it assesses the streamer structure of universal participation, product selection, goods supply and price setting, exploring the scene marketing methods of pop-up conversion and the strategic layout of the operating platform. It objectively describes the current state of the Chinese livestreaming e-commerce market, and taking into account Chinese social, cultural, and economic characteristics, proposes solutions to problems in the livestreaming e-commerce industry. This unique book reflects on the Chinese livestreaming e-commerce, and offers insights to help readers understand the industry and the process of industrialization. It is intended for a wide range of readers, ranging from non-experts interested in livestreaming e-commerce, to professionals wanting an overview of the industry's development.

Recently, nature has stimulated many successful techniques, algorithms, and computational applications allowing conventionally difficult problems to be solved through novel computing systems. ""Nature-Inspired Informatics for Intelligent Applications and Knowledge Discovery: Implications in Business, Science, and Engineering"" provides the latest findings in nature-inspired algorithms and their applications for breakthroughs in a wide range of disciplinary fields. This defining reference collection contains chapters written by leading researchers and well-known academicians within the field, offering readers a valuable and enriched accumulation of knowledge.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 20th IFIP WG 5.5 Working Conference on Virtual Enterprises, PRO-VE 2019, held in Turin, Italy, in September 2019. The 56 revised full papers were carefully reviewed and selected from 141 submissions. They provide a comprehensive overview of major challenges and recent advances in various domains related to the digital transformation and collaborative networks and their applications with a strong focus on the following areas related to the main theme of the conference: collaborative models, platforms and systems for digital revolution; manufacturing ecosystem and collaboration in Industry 4.0; big data analytics and intelligence; risk, performance, and uncertainty in collaborative networked systems; semantic data/service discovery, retrieval, and composition in a collaborative networked world; trust and sustainability analysis in collaborative networks; value creation and social impact of collaborative networks on the digital revolution; technology development platforms supporting collaborative systems; collective intelligence and collaboration in advanced/emerging applications; and collaborative manufacturing and factories of the future, e-health and care, food and agribusiness, and crisis/disaster management.