Unique selling point: A project management book that focuses on managing projects in business Core audience: Project and business managers Place in the market: Professional book that can be used for continuing education

Operation Research methods are often used in every field of modern life like industry, economy and medicine. The authors have compiled of the latest advancements in these methods in this volume comprising some of what is considered the best collection of these new approaches. These can be counted as a direct shortcut to what you may search for. This book provides useful applications of the new developments in OR written by leading scientists from some international universities. Another volume about exciting applications of Operations Research is planned in the near future. We hope you enjoy and benefit from this series!

1. Understand the audit culture, challenges, and benefits of the CAE role in digitally transforming business environment in smart cities 2. Identify ways to advance the value of Internal Audit in digital era 3. Use and control the resources of the city efficiently, and to ensure that the system units work properly in an integrated way.

1. Understand the audit culture, challenges, and benefits of the CAE role in digitally transforming business environment in smart cities 2. Identify ways to advance the value of Internal Audit in digital era 3. Use and control the resources of the city efficiently, and to ensure that the system units work properly in an integrated way.

Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled spaces have made revolutionary advances in the utility grid. Among these advances, intelligent and energy-efficient services are gaining considerable interest. The use of the smart grid is increasing day after day around us and is not only used in saving energy but also in our daily life for intelligent health, traffic, and even farming systems. The grid enabled with IoT features is also expected to communicate with cellular networks smoothly in the next-generation networks (6G and beyond). This will open the door for other interesting research areas. In this book, we consider the most significant and emergent research topics in this domain, addressing major issues and challenges in IoT-based solutions proposed for the smart grid. The chapters provide insight on comprehensive topics in IoT-based smart grids, combining technical aspects with the most up-to-date theory. It investigates the grid under varying and potential emerging paradigms such as edge/fog computing, in addition to big data aspects considerations in the IoT era. With comprehensive surveys and case studies, this book explores basic and high-level grid aspects in the emerging smart city paradigm, which makes it especially attractive to researchers, academics, and higher-level students. This authored book can be used by computer science undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers and practitioners, city administrators, policymakers, and government regulators.

"Vivek Kale's Creating Smart Enterprises goes smack-dab at the heart of harnessing technology for competing in today's chaotic digital era. Actually, for him, it's SMACT-dab: SMACT (Social media, Mobile, Analytics and big data, Cloud computing, and internet of Things) technologies. This book is required reading for those that want to stay relevant and win, and optional for those that don't." -Peter Fingar, Author of Cognitive Computing and business technology consultant Creating Smart Enterprises unravels the mystery of social media, mobile, analytics and big data, cloud, and Internet of Things (SMACT) computing and explains how it can transform the operating context of business enterprises. It provides a clear understanding of what SMACT really means, what it can do for smart enterprises, and application areas where it is practical to use them. All IT professionals who are involved with any aspect of a SMACT computing project will profit by using this book as a roadmap to make a more meaningful contribution to the success of their computing initiatives. This pragmatic book: Introduces the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity) business ecosystem confronted by the businesses today. Describes the challenges of defining business and IT strategies and of aligning them as well as their impact on enterprise governance. Provides a very wide treatment of the various components of SMACT computing, including the Internet of Things (IoT) and its constituting technologies like RFID, wireless networks, sensors, and wireless sensor networks (WSNs). This book addresses the key differentiator of SMACT computing environments and solutions that combine the power of an elastic infrastructure with analytics. The SMACT environment is cloud-based and inherently mobile. Information management processes can analyze and discern recurring patterns in colossal pools of operational and transactional data. Analytics, big data, and IoT computing leverage and transform these data patterns to help create successful, smart enterprises.

Benefits realization management (BRM) is a key part of governance, because it supports the strategic creation of value and provides the correct level of prioritization and executive support to the correct initiatives. Because of its relevance to the governance process, BRM has a strong influence over project success and is a link between strategic planning and strategy execution. This book guides portfolio, program, and project managers through the process of benefits realization management so they can maximize business value. It discusses why and how programs and projects are expected to enable value creation, and it explains the role of BRM in value creation. The book provides a flexible framework for: Translating business strategy drivers into expected benefits and explains the subsequent composition of a program and project portfolio that can realize expected benefits Planning the benefits realization expected from programs and projects and then making it happen Keeping programs and projects on track Reviewing and evaluating the benefits achieved or expected against the original baselines and the current expectations. To help project, program, and portfolio managers on their BRM journey, as well as to support business managers in executing business strategies, the book identifies key organizational responsibilities and roles involved in BRM practices, and it provides a simple reference that can be mapped against any organizational structure. A detailed and comprehensive case study illustrates each phase of the BRM framework as it links business strategy to project work, benefits, and business value. Each chapter ends with a series questions that provide a BRM self-assessment. The book concludes with a set of templates and detailed instructions to ensure successful deployment of BRM.

Within this context, big data analytics (BDA) can be an important tool given that many analytic techniques within the big data world have been created specifically to deal with complexity and rapidly changing conditions. The important task for public sector organizations is to liberate analytics from narrow scientific silos and expand it across internally to reap maximum benefit across their portfolios of programs. This book highlights contextual factors important to better situating the use of BDA within government organizations and demonstrates the wide range of applications of different BDA techniques. It emphasizes the importance of leadership and organizational practices that can improve performance. It explains that BDA initiatives should not be bolted on but should be integrated into the organization's performance management processes. Equally important, the book includes chapters that demonstrate the diversity of factors that need to be managed to launch and sustain BDA initiatives in public sector organizations.

With all signs pointing to an increased use of and interest in project-based work in modern organizations, the better scholars are able to make sense of the current state of the field through theory development and empirical investigation, the more successful projects promise to become. This book is a welcome addition to our field and will be, I am sure, an important work and source for future reference well into the future. -Dr. Jeffrey Pinto, Pennsylvania State University The goal of practicing project managers and scholars alike lies in solving the puzzle of how to manage projects toward successful completion. However, understanding what comprises project "success"-seemingly such an innocent question-has come to represent one of the most challenging problems for project managers and scholars. Who determines success? At what point in time is success best measured? How do diverse stakeholders define success? What happens when their perspectives collide? What is the difference between project success and project management success? These are surprisingly complex problems. For every principle or rule posited, a brief investigation reveals that there are numerous exceptions, muddying the waters and making these ideas increasingly opaque. Project Management Methodologies, Governance and Success addresses this challenge head-on, putting into proper context the critical issues that shape our understanding of the project management research process. Employing a concept referred to as "philosophical triangulation," the book shows how to overcome the weaknesses or intrinsic biases that disrupt and minimize the impact of so much organizational research. It places organizational governance and success within their proper context allowing scholars to identify the best methods for investigating project-based work. It links together in a cogent manner the diverse themes of research theory and design, projects and project success, and organizational governance. In effect, this book demonstrates that to fully understand how to undertake research in projects, theory and method are inextricably interwoven.

This book highlights cutting-edge research into emergency early warning management and decision-making for severe accidents. Using toxic gas leakages as examples, it puts forward new design methods for emergency early warning systems, as well as a systematic description of emergency early warning information communication mechanisms and characteristics of regional evacuation, based on a wide range of theories, including safety engineering, information engineering, communication, behaviorology and others. The book applies a range of methods, such as case analysis, questionnaire interviews, and multi-objective optimization modeling. Drawing on this basis, it subsequently proposes a multi-objective optimization modeling and algorithm for emergency path selection, together with an evacuation risk assessment method. Divided into six chapters prepared by an international team of researchers, the book addresses the design of early warning systems, communication and dissemination mechanisms of early warning information, characteristics of regional evacuation, multi-objective optimization of emergency paths, and evacuation risk assessment. The book offers an essential reference guide for engineering technicians and researchers in a wide range of fields, including emergency management, safety science and engineering, disaster relief engineering, and transportation optimization, as well as graduate students in related majors at colleges and universities.

1) What to do when you get hacked 2) A guide to incident response 3) Incident response and cybersecurity for small businesses

As well as highlighting potentially useful applications for network analysis, this volume identifies new targets for mathematical research that promise to provide insights into network systems theory as well as facilitating the cross-fertilization of ideas between sectors. Focusing on financial, security and social aspects of networking, the volume adds to the growing body of evidence showing that network analysis has applications to transportation, communication, health, finance, and social policy more broadly. It provides powerful models for understanding the behavior of complex systems that, in turn, will impact numerous cutting-edge sectors in science and engineering, such as wireless communication, network security, distributed computing and social networking, financial analysis, and cyber warfare.

The volume offers an insider s view of cutting-edge research in network systems, including methodologies with immense potential for interdisciplinary application. The contributors have all presented material at a series of workshops organized on behalf of Canada s MITACS initiative, which funds projects and study grants in mathematics for information technology and complex systems . These proceedings include papers from workshops on financial networks, network security and cryptography, and social networks. MITACS has shown that the partly ghettoized nature of network systems research has led to duplicated work in discrete fields, and thus this initiative has the potential to save time and accelerate the pace of research in a number of areas of network systems research.

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This volume aims to document the most important worldwide accomplishments in converging knowledge and technology, including converging platforms, methods of convergence, societal implications, and governance in the last ten years. Convergence in knowledge, technology, and society is the accelerating, transformative interaction among seemingly distinct scientific disciplines, technologies, and communities to achieve mutual compatibility, synergism, and integration, and through this process to create added value for societal benefit. It is a movement that is recognized by scientists and thought leaders around the world as having the potential to provide far-reaching solutions to many of today's complex knowledge, technology, and human development challenges. Four essential and interdependent convergence platforms of human activity are defined in the first part of this report: nanotechnology-biotechnology-information technology and cognitive science ("NBIC") foundational tools; Earth-scale environmental systems; human-scale activities; and convergence methods for societal-scale activities. The report then presents the main implications of convergence for human physical potential, cognition and communication, productivity and societal outcomes, education and physical infrastructure, sustainability, and innovative and responsible governance. As a whole, the report presents a new model for convergence. To effectively take advantage of this potential, a proactive governance approach is suggested. The study identifies an international opportunity to develop and apply convergence for technological, economic, environmental, and societal benefits. The panel also suggests an opportunity in the United States for implementing a program aimed at focusing disparate R and D energies into a coherent activity - a "Societal Convergence Initiative". This study received input from leading academic, industry, government, and NGO experts from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Smart homes use Internet-connected devices, artificial intelligence, protocols and numerous technologies to enable people to remotely monitor their home, as well as manage various systems within it via the Internet using a smartphone or a computer. A smart home is programmed to act autonomously to improve comfort levels, save energy and potentially ensure safety; the result is a better way of life. Innovative solutions continue to be developed by researchers and engineers and thus smart home technologies are constantly evolving. By the same token, cybercrime is also becoming more prevalent. Indeed, a smart home system is made up of connected devices that cybercriminals can infiltrate to access private information, commit cyber vandalism or infect devices using botnets. This book addresses cyber attacks such as sniffing, port scanning, address spoofing, session hijacking, ransomware and denial of service. It presents, analyzes and discusses the various aspects of cybersecurity as well as solutions proposed by the research community to counter the risks. Cybersecurity in Smart Homes is intended for people who wish to understand the architectures, protocols and different technologies used in smart homes.

For courses in wireless communication networks and systems A Comprehensive Overview of Wireless Communications Wireless Communication Networks and Systems covers all types of wireless communications, from satellite and cellular to local and personal area networks. Organised into four easily comprehensible, reader-friendly parts, it presents a clear and comprehensive overview of the field of wireless communications. For those who are new to the topic, the book explains basic principles and fundamental topics concerning the technology and architecture of the field. Numerous figures and tables help clarify discussions, and each chapter includes a list of keywords, review questions, homework problems, and suggestions for further reading. The book includes an extensive online glossary, a list of frequently used acronyms, and a reference list. A diverse set of projects and other student exercises enables instructors to use the book as a component in a varied learning experience, tailoring courses to meet their specific needs.

State-of-the-art, flat structures called metasurfaces can filter and steer light and sound, render an object completely invisible to electromagnetic waves, and much more. They can deliver automation, remote operation, and advanced performance to a wide variety of existing systems, with applications in communications, medical imaging, sensing, and security. However, for non-specialists, individual metasurfaces are currently restricted to limited reusability and accessibility. This book brings together various scientific disciplines with the aim of outlining a programmable 'plug-and-play' metasurface. The book focuses on a recently proposed platform - known as the HyperSurface - that provides many electromagnetic functions of metasurfaces in a single structure, which can be controlled and reconfigured by software. This revolutionary approach paves the way for new opportunities in wireless communications and programmable wireless environments: HyperSurfaces could link networks with objects and physical environments and create smarter systems that are far more responsive to user demands. Walls that absorb radiation or block digital eavesdropping, and wireless, long-distance charging of devices are among the many possibilities. The book aspires to provide the foundational knowledge for creating an Internet of Materials, enabling smart environments at any scale - from indoor wireless communications to medical imaging equipment. Although the set of disciplines involved covers a considerable span, we hope that the material will benefit experts and students alike.

Building a data-driven organization (DDO) is an enterprise-wide initiative that may consume and lock up resources for the long term. Understandably, any organization considering such an initiative would insist on a roadmap and business case to be prepared and evaluated prior to approval. This book presents a step-by-step methodology in order to create a roadmap and business case, and provides a narration of the constraints and experiences of managers who have attempted the setting up of DDOs. The emphasis is on the big decisions - the key decisions that influence 90% of business outcomes - starting from decision first and reengineering the data to the decisions process-chain and data governance, so as to ensure the right data are available at the right time, every time. Investing in artificial intelligence and data-driven decision making are now being considered a survival necessity for organizations to stay competitive. While every enterprise aspires to become 100% data-driven and every Chief Information Officer (CIO) has a budget, Gartner estimates over 80% of all analytics projects fail to deliver intended value. Most CIOs think a data-driven organization is a distant dream, especially while they are still struggling to explain the value from analytics. They know a few isolated successes, or a one-time leveraging of big data for decision making does not make an organization data-driven. As of now, there is no precise definition for data-driven organization or what qualifies an organization to call itself data-driven. Given the hype in the market for big data, analytics and AI, every CIO has a budget for analytics, but very little clarity on where to begin or how to choose and prioritize the analytics projects. Most end up investing in a visualization platform like Tableau or QlikView, which in essence is an improved version of their BI dashboard that the organization had invested into not too long ago. The most important stakeholders, the decision-makers, are rarely kept in the loop while choosing analytics projects. This book provides a fail-safe methodology for assured success in deriving intended value from investments into analytics. It is a practitioners' handbook for creating a step-by-step transformational roadmap prioritizing the big data for the big decisions, the 10% of decisions that influence 90% of business outcomes, and delivering material improvements in the quality of decisions, as well as measurable value from analytics investments. The acid test for a data-driven organization is when all the big decisions, especially top-level strategic decisions, are taken based on data and not on the collective gut feeling of the decision makers in the organization.

The two-volume set IFIP AICT 639 and 640 constitutes the refereed post-conference proceedings of the 18th IFIP WG 5.1 International Conference on Product Lifecycle Management, PLM 2021, held in Curitiba, Brazil, during July 11-14, 2021. The conference was held virtually due to the COVID-19 crisis.The 107 revised full papers presented in these proceedings were carefully reviewed and selected from 133 submissions. The papers are organized in the following topical sections: Volume I: Sustainability, sustainable development and circular economy; sustainability and information technologies and services; green and blue technologies; AI and blockchain integration with enterprise applications; PLM maturity, PLM implementation and adoption within industry 4.0; and industry 4.0 and emerging technologies: Volume II: Design, education and management; lean, design and innovation technologies; information technology models and design; and models, manufacturing and information technologies and services.

This book offers a selection of the best papers presented at the 13th International Symposium on Location Based Services (LBS 2016), which was held in Vienna (Austria) from November 14 to 16, 2016. It provides an overview of recent research in the field, including the latest advances in outdoor/indoor positioning, smart environment, spatial modeling, personalization and context awareness, cartographic communication, novel user interfaces, crowd sourcing, social media, big data analysis, usability and privacy.

This book offers a straight-forward guide to the fundamental work of governing bodies and the people who serve on them. The aim is of the book is to help every member serving on a governing body understand and improve their contribution to the entity and governing body they serve. The book is rooted in research, including five years' work by the author as a Research Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford.

Based on the technical accumulation and practice of Huawei iLab in the Cloud VR field, this book systematically describes the advantages of Cloud VR technologies; technical requirements on clouds, networks, and terminals as well as solution implementation; Cloud VR experience evaluation baselines and methods; and current business practices. Cloud VR introduces cloud computing and cloud rendering to VR services. With fast and stable networks, cloud-based display output and audio output are coded, compressed, and transmitted to user terminals, implementing cloud-based VR service content and content rendering. Cloud VR has stringent requirements on bandwidth and latency, making it a proficient application for 5G and gigabit home broadband networks in the era of "dual G". As the first advocate of Cloud VR, Huawei iLab developed the first prototype of the Cloud VR technical solution, initiated the industry's first Cloud VR industry cooperation plan - VR OpenLab with partners - and incubated the world's first Cloud VR commercial project with China Mobile Fujian. Cloud VR: Technology and Application is the first official publication of Huawei iLab's research and practice achievements. It systematically and thoroughly introduces the Cloud VR concept, solution architecture, key technologies, and business practices and is of great value in academic and social applications. This book is easy to understand, practical, and suitable for VR vendors, VR technology enthusiasts, carriers, network vendors, cloud service providers, universities, and other enterprises and scientific research institutes.

This book serves three basic purposes: (1) a tutorial-type reference for complex systems engineering (CSE) concepts and associated terminology, (2) a recommendation of a proposed methodology showing how the evolving practice of CSE can lead to a more unified theory, and (3) a complex systems (CSs) initiative for organizations to invest some of their resources toward helping to make the world a better place. A wide variety of technical practitioners-e.g., developers of new or improved systems (particularly systems engineers), program and project managers, associated staff/workers, funders and overseers, government executives, military officers, systems acquisition personnel, contract specialists, owners of large and small businesses, professional society members, and CS researchers-may be interested in further exploring these topics. Readers will learn more about CS characteristics and behaviors and CSE principles and will therefore be able to focus on techniques that will better serve them in their everyday work environments in dealing with complexity. The fundamental observation is that many systems inherently involve a deeper complexity because stakeholders are engaged in the enterprise. This means that such CSs are more difficult to invent, create, or improve upon because no one can be in total control since people cannot be completely controlled. Therefore, one needs to concentrate on trying to influence progress, then wait a suitable amount of time to see what happens, iterating as necessary. With just three chapters in this book, it seems to make sense to provide a tutorial introduction that readers can peruse only as necessary, considering their background and understanding, then a chapter laying out the suggested artifacts and methodology, followed by a chapter emphasizing worthwhile areas of application.

Based on a rigorous selection from 58 proposals coming from across the world, this volume will include some of the most recent ideas and technical results in computer systems, computer science, and computer-communication networks. The book will offer the reader with a timely access to innovative research from many different areas of the world where advances in computing and communications are created.

The Internet of Edges is a new paradigm whose objective is to keep data and processing close to the user. This book presents three different levels of Edge networking: MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing), Fog and Far Edge (sometimes called Mist or Skin). It also reviews participatory networks, in which user equipment provides the resources for the Edge network. Edge networks can be disconnected from the core Internet, and the interconnection of autonomous edge networks can then form the Internet of Edges. This book analyzes the characteristics of Edge networks in detail, showing their capacity to replace the imposing Clouds of core networks due to their superior server response time, data security and energy saving.

This book brings together papers from the 2018 International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and Systems, which was held in Dalian, China on July 14-16, 2018. Presenting the latest developments and discussing the interactions and links between these multidisciplinary fields, the book spans topics ranging from communications, signal processing and systems. It is aimed at undergraduate and graduate electrical engineering, computer science and mathematics students, researchers and engineers from academia and industry as well as government employees.