This book provides an in-depth insight into the emerging paradigm of End-User Development (EUD), discussing the diversity and potential for creating effective environments for end users. Containing a unique set of contributions from a number of international researchers and institutes, many relevant issues are discussed and solutions proposed, making important aspects of end-user development research available to a broader audience. Most people are familiar with the basic functionality and interfaces of computers. However, developing new or modified applications that can effectively support users' goals still requires considerable programming expertise that cannot be expected of everyone. One of the fundamental challenges that lie ahead is the development of environments that enable users with little or no programming experience to develop and modify their own applications. The ultimate goal is to empower people to flexibly employ and personalise advanced inform ation and communication technologies.

This book presents multibiometric watermarking techniques for security of biometric data. This book also covers transform domain multibiometric watermarking techniques and their advantages and limitations. The authors have developed novel watermarking techniques with a combination of Compressive Sensing (CS) theory for the security of biometric data at the system database of the biometric system. The authors show how these techniques offer higher robustness, authenticity, better imperceptibility, increased payload capacity, and secure biometric watermarks. They show how to use the CS theory for the security of biometric watermarks before embedding into the host biometric data. The suggested methods may find potential applications in the security of biometric data at various banking applications, access control of laboratories, nuclear power stations, military base, and airports.

Managers today are experiencing an increased focus on emergent collaborative technologies designed to enable virtual organization users to share resources and accomplish complex tasks better. Grid Technology for Maximizing Collaborative Decision Management and Support: Advancing Effective Virtual Organizations provides a state-of-the-art collection of opportunities and applicable practices of grid technology to sustain competitive advantage. Offering a collection of international research studies by leading experts, this book describes how grid technology can be applied to serve the purpose within interconnected organizations in an effective and efficient collaborative setting.

This book presents the design of delay-efficient packet schedulers for heterogeneous M2M uplink traffic classified into several classes, based on packet delay requirements, payload size, arrival process, etc. Specifically, the authors use tools from queuing theory to determine the delay-optimal scheduling policy. The proposed packet schedulers are designed for a generic M2M architecture and thus equally applicable to any M2M application. Additionally, due to their low implementation complexity and excellent delay-performance, they authors show how they are also well-suited for practical M2M systems. The book pertains primarily to real-time process scheduler experts in industry/academia and graduate students whose research deals with designing Quality-of-Service-aware packet schedulers for M2M packet schedulers over existing and future cellular infrastructure. Presents queuing theoretic analysis and optimization techniques used to design proposed packet scheduling strategies; Provides utility functions to precisely model diverse delay requirements, which lends itself to formulation of utility-maximization problems for determining the delay- or utility-optimal packet scheduler; Includes detail on low implementation complexity of the proposed scheduler by using iterative and distributed optimization techniques.

A secured system for Healthcare 4.0 is vital to all stakeholders, including patients and caregivers. Using the new Blockchain system of trusted ledgers would help guarantee authenticity in the multi-access system that is Healthcare 4.0. This is the first comprehensive book that explores how to achieve secure systems for Healthcare 4.0 using Blockchain, with emphasis on the key challenges of privacy and security. The book is organized into four sections. The first section is focused on 5G healthcare privacy and security concerns. The second section discusses healthcare architecture and emerging technologies. The third section covers the role of artificial intelligence for data security and privacy in 5G healthcare services. Finally, the last section systematically illustrates the adoption of blockchain in various applications of 5G healthcare. The book is essential reading for all involved in setting up, running, and maintaining healthcare information systems. Engineers, scientists, technologists, developers, designers, and researchers in healthcare technologies, health informatics, security, and information technology will find the content particularly useful.

This volume presents the second part of the proceedings of the Mediterranean Conference on Information & Communication Technologies (MedICT 2015), which was held at Saidia, Morocco during 7-9 May, 2015. MedICT provides an excellent international forum to the researchers and practitioners from both academia as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development. The conference has also a special focus on enabling technologies for societal challenges, and seeks to address multidisciplinary challenges in Information & Communication Technologies such as health, demographic change, wellbeing, security and sustainability issues. The proceedings publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories, as well as emerging and practical applications of particular interest to the ICT community. This second volume provides a compact yet broad view of recent developments in Data, Systems, Services and Education, and covers recent research areas in the field including Control Systems, Software Engineering, Data Mining and Big Data, ICT for Education and Support Activities, Networking, Cloud Computing and Security, ICT Based Services and Applications, Mobile Agent Systems, Software Engineering, Data Mining and Big Data, Online Experimentation & Artificial Intelligence in Education, Networking, Cloud Computing and Security, ICT Based Education and Services ICT Challenges and Applications, Advances in ICT Modeling and Design ICT Developments.

This uniquely accessible book helps readers use CABology to solve real-world business problems and drive real competitive advantage. It provides reliable, concise information on the real benefits, usage and operationalization aspects of utilizing the "Trio Wave" of cloud, analytic and big data. Anyone who thinks that the game changing technology is slow paced needs to think again. This book opens readers' eyes to the fact that the dynamics of global technology and business are changing. Moreover, it argues that businesses must transform themselves in alignment with the Trio Wave if they want to survive and excel in the future. CABology focuses on the art and science of optimizing the business goals to deliver true value and benefits to the customer through cloud, analytic and big data. It offers business of all sizes a structured and comprehensive way of discovering the real benefits, usage and operationalization aspects of utilizing the Trio Wave.

This book presents selected papers on Business Management and Technology, focusing on recent research in Business, Optimization, Technology, and Global Issues. Organized in four broad tracks, papers examine Management Challenges in Today's Industry, especially concerning changes in customer demands; Optimization Challenges in Today's Business, looking at efficiency and effectiveness in providing goods and services at affordable prices; Innovation in Hospitality and Tourism; and Technological Challenges in the Era of Globalization. The book covers both production systems and service systems, including the growing area of Information Technology, and also looks at the quality of work life in various sectors of business. It presents a balanced blend of theoretical and practical papers.

This book provides an overview of the problems involved in engineering scalable, elastic, and cost-efficient cloud computing services and describes the CloudScale method - a description of rescuing tools and the required steps to exploit these tools. It allows readers to analyze the scalability problem in detail and identify scalability anti-patterns and bottlenecks within an application. With the CloudScale method, software architects can analyze both existing and planned IT services. The method allows readers to answer questions like: * With an increasing number of users, can my service still deliver acceptable quality of service? * What if each user uses the service more intensively? Can my service still handle it with acceptable quality of service? * What if the number of users suddenly increases? Will my service still be able to handle it? * Will my service be cost-efficient? First the book addresses the importance of scalability, elasticity, and cost-efficiency as vital quality-related attributes of modern cloud computing applications. Following a brief overview of CloudScale, cloud computing applications are then introduced in detail and the aspects that need to be captured in models of such applications are discussed. In CloudScale, these aspects are captured in instances of the ScaleDL modeling language. Subsequently, the book describes the forward engineering part of CloudScale, which is applicable when developing a new service. It also outlines the reverse and reengineering parts of CloudScale, which come into play when an existing (legacy) service is modified. Lastly, the book directly focuses on the needs of both business-oriented and technical managers by providing guidance on all steps of implementing CloudScale as well as making decisions during that implementation. The demonstrators and reference projects described serve as a valuable starting point for learning from experience. This book is meant for all stakeholders interested in delivering scalable, elastic, and cost-efficient cloud computing applications: managers, product owners, software architects and developers alike. With this book, they can both see the overall picture as well as dive into issues of particular interest.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 14th IFIP WG 2.13 International Conference on Open Source Systems, OSS 2018, held in Athens, Greece, in June 2018. The 14 revised full papers and 2 short papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from 38 submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the field of free/libre open source software (FLOSS) and are organized in the following thematic sections: organizational aspects of OSS projects, OSS projects validity, mining OSS data, OSS in public administration, OSS governance, and OSS reusability.

Containing twenty six contributions by experts from all over the world, this book presents both research and review material describing the evolution and recent developments of various pattern recognition methodologies, ranging from statistical, linguistic, fuzzy-set-theoretic, neural, evolutionary computing and rough-set-theoretic to hybrid soft computing, with significant real-life applications.Pattern Recognition and Big Data provides state-of-the-art classical and modern approaches to pattern recognition and mining, with extensive real life applications. The book describes efficient soft and robust machine learning algorithms and granular computing techniques for data mining and knowledge discovery; and the issues associated with handling Big Data. Application domains considered include bioinformatics, cognitive machines (or machine mind developments), biometrics, computer vision, the e-nose, remote sensing and social network analysis.

This volume presents the first part of the proceedings of the Mediterranean Conference on Information & Communication Technologies (MedICT 2015), which was held at Saidia, Morocco during 7-9 May, 2015. MedICT provides an excellent international forum to the researchers and practitioners from both academia as well as industry to meet and share cutting-edge development. The conference has also a special focus on enabling technologies for societal challenges, and seeks to address multidisciplinary challenges in Information & Communication Technologies such as health, demographic change, wellbeing, security and sustainability issues. The proceedings publish high quality papers which are closely related to the various theories, as well as emerging and practical applications of particular interest to the ICT community. This first volume provides a compact yet broad view of recent developments in devices, technologies and processing, and covers recent research areas in the field including Microwave Devices and Printed Antennas, Advances in Optical and RF Devices and Applications, Signal Processing and Information Theory, Wireless and Optical Technologies and Techniques, Computer Vision, Optimization and Modeling in Wireless Communication Systems, Modeling, Identification and Biomedical Signal Processing, Photovoltaic Cell & Systems, RF Devices and Antennas for Wireless Applications, RFID, Ad Hoc and Networks Issues.

This book provides a deep analysis and wide coverage of the very strong trend in computer vision and visual indexing and retrieval, covering such topics as incorporation of models of Human Visual attention into analysis and retrieval tasks. It makes the bridge between psycho-visual modelling of Human Visual System and the classical and most recent models in visual content indexing and retrieval. The large spectrum of visual tasks, such as recognition of textures in static images, of actions in video content, image retrieval, different methods of visualization of images and multimedia content based on visual saliency are presented by the authors. Furthermore, the interest in visual content is modelled with the means of the latest classification models such as Deep Neural Networks is also covered in this book. This book is an exceptional resource as a secondary text for researchers and advanced level students, who are involved in the very wide research in computer vision, visual information indexing and retrieval. Professionals working in this field will also be interested in this book as a reference.

While high quality library and information services continue to thrive and strengthen economic and social development, much of the knowledge that exists on user's needs and behaviours is fundamentally based on the results of users in English-speaking, western developed countries. Information Access and Library User Needs in Developing Countries highlights the struggles that developing countries face in terms of information gaps and information-seeking user behaviour. The publication highlights ways in which users in developing countries can benefit from properly implementing LIS services. Researchers, academics, and practitioners interested in the design and delivery of information services will benefit from this collection of research.

The amount of data shared and stored on the web and other document repositories is steadily on the rise. Unfortunately, this growth increases inefficiencies and difficulties when trying to find the most relevant and up-to-date information due to unstructured data. Advanced Metaheuristic Methods in Big Data Retrieval and Analytics examines metaheuristic techniques as an important alternative model for solving complex problems that are not treatable by deterministic methods. Recent studies suggest that IR and biomimicry can be used together for several application problems in big data and internet of things, especially when conventional methods would be too expensive or difficult to implement. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as ontology, plagiarism detection, and machine learning, this book is ideally designed for engineers, graduate students, IT professionals, and academicians seeking an overview of new trends in information retrieval in big data.

Video Data Management and Information Retrieval combines the two important areas of research within computer technology and presents them in comprehensive, easy to understand manner. Video Data Management and Information Retrieval is ideal for graduates and under-graduates, as well as researchers working in either video data management or information retrieval. It takes an in depth look at many relevant topics within both video data management and information retrieval. In addition to dissecting those issues, the book also provides a ""big picture"" view of each topic. This shows the relevance of each issue and how those areas affect every one today.

Advanced Topics in Database Research is a series of books in the fields of database, software engineering, and systems analysis and design. They feature the latest research ideas and topics on how to enhance current database systems, improve information storage, refine existing database models, and develop advanced applications. Advanced Topics in Database Research, Volume 4 is a part of this series. Advanced Topics in Database Research, Volume 4 is enriched with authors who have submitted their best works for inclusion in this scholarly book. Advanced Topics in Database Research, Volume 4 is a useful reference and a valuable collection for both researchers and practitioners.

Reengineering: An Objectoriented Model for Data, Knowledge and System Reengineering (S.M. Huang et al.). Uturn Methodology: A Database Reengineering Methodology Based on the Entity -Structure- Relationship Data Model (I.K. Jeong, D.K. Baik). The Management Perspective of Database Reengineering (C. Yau). Reengineering VSAM, IMS, and DL/1 Applications into Relational Databases (R. England). Reengineering Library Data: The Long Way from ADABAS to NIMARC (D. Aebi, R. Largo). Reverse Engineering in a Client'Server Environment Case Studies on Relational Database Design (B. Siu, J. Fong). Eliminating the Impedance Mismatch between Relational Systems and Objectoriented Programming Languages (J. Chen, Q. Huang). Generalization without Reorganization in a Simple Objectoriented DBMS (T. Beldjilali). Interoperability: Semantic Query Transformation: An Approach to Achieve Semantic Interoperability in Heterogeneous Application Domains (N. Bolloju). On Interoperability Verification and Testing of Objectoriented Databases (T.Y. Kuo, T.Y. Cheung). An Objectoriented Approach to Query Interoperability (J. Zhan, W.S. Luk). Building Parameterized Canonical Representations to Achieve Interoperability among Heterogeneous Databases (Y. Chang, L. Raschid). Flexible Transaction Management in an Interoperable Database Environment (W. Yu, F. Eliassen). A Pilot Survey of Database Reengineering for Data Interoperability (I.S.Y. Kwan). Designing Client-Server Applications for Enterprise Database Connectivity (C. Moffatt). Handling Terabyte Databases on Open Systems (T. Banham). Integration: Schema Integration Methodology including Structural Conflict Resolution and Checking Similarity (G. Suzuki, M. Yamamuro). Extensional Issues in Schema Integration (M. GarciaSolaco et al.). Towards Intelligent Integration of Heterogeneous Information Sources (S.B. Navathe, M.J. Donahoo). A Business ProcessDriven Multidatabase Integration Methodology (R.M. Muhlerger, M.E. Orlowska). A Database Integration System and an Example of Its Application (A.E. James). DEE: A Data Exchange Environment (G.N. Benadjaoud, B.T. David). Database Replica Management Strategies in Multidatabase Systems with Mobile Hosts (M. Faiz, A. Zaslavsky). Providing Multidatabase Access: An Association Approach (P. Missier et al.). Index.

The history and future of geographic information (GI) in the context of big data creates new avenues of concern over its organization, access and use. In this book the authors explore both the background and present challenges facing the preservation of GI, focusing on the roles of librarians, archivists, data scientists, and other information professionals in the creation of GI records for its organization, access, and use.

This informative book goes beyond the technical aspects of data management to provide detailed analyses of quality problems and their impacts, potential solutions and how they are combined to form an overall data quality program, senior management's role, methods used to make improvements, and the life-cycle of data quality. It concludes with case studies, summaries of main points, roles and responsibilities for each individual, and a helpful listing of "dos and don'ts".

Seeking to define a new approach to data management at the enterprise level, this work takes the reader beyond information management to information control, where the methods of data capture and manipulation supersede data quantity. Using the metadata approach ensures long-term, universal control of all data characteristics and improves the effectiveness of IT as a corporate function by minimizing the potential for errors, and improving communication and understanding between IT and other disciplines. By describing how to establish metadata management within an organization, this volume provides examples of data structure architectures, and reviews issues associated with metadata management in relation to the Internet and data warehousing. It offers to help the reader to control the factors that make data useable throughout an organization and manage data so that it becomes a valuable corporate asset. The book examines real-world business departments that can benefit from this approach and ways in which sets of metadata can be both autonomous and overlapping.

This book explains the fundamentals of control theory for Internet of Things (IoT) systems and smart grids and its applications. It discusses the challenges imposed by large-scale systems, and describes the current and future trends and challenges in decision-making for IoT in detail, showing the ongoing industrial and academic research in the field of smart grid domain applications. It presents step-by-step design guidelines for the modeling, design, customisation and calibration of IoT systems applied to smart grids, in which the challenges increase with each system's increasing complexity. It also provides solutions and detailed examples to demonstrate how to use the techniques to overcome these challenges, as well as other problems related to decision-making for successful implementation. Further, it anaylses the features of decision-making, such as low-complexity and fault-tolerance, and uses open-source and publicly available software tools to show readers how they can design, implement and customise their own system control instantiations. This book is a valuable resource for power engineers and researchers, as it addresses the analysis and design of flexible decision-making mechanisms for smart grids. It is also of interest to students on courses related to control of large-scale systems, since it covers the use of state-of-the-art technology with examples and solutions in every chapter. And last but not least, it offers practical advice for professionals working with smart grids.

This provides a comprehensive overview of the key principles of security concerns surrounding the upcoming Internet of Things (IoT), and introduces readers to the protocols adopted in the IoT. It also analyses the vulnerabilities, attacks and defense mechanisms, highlighting the security issues in the context of big data. Lastly, trust management approaches and ubiquitous learning applications are examined in detail. As such, the book sets the stage for developing and securing IoT applications both today and in the future.