This is the first book to present field studies on the application of subject-oriented business process management (S-BPM). Each case presents a specific story and focuses on an essential modeling or implementation issue, and most end with implications or suggestions for further studies. Significant variables and success factors are identified that were discovered during the respective study and lead to suggesting S-BPM novelties. For each case, the authors explain step-by-step how the story develops, and provide readers guidance by detailing the respective rationale. The studies covered are clustered according to three main S-BPM themes: Part I “Business Operation Support� documents approaches to the practical development of S-BPM solutions in various application domains and organizational settings, while Part II “Consultancy and Education Support� highlights cases that can help to train readers in S-BPM modeling and knowledge acquisition for S-BPM lifecycle iterations. It also refers to architecting S-BPM solutions for application cases based on hands-on experience. Part III “Technical Execution Support� focuses on concepts for utilizing specific theories and technologies to execute S-BPM models. It also addresses how to create reference models for certain settings in the field. Lastly, the appendix covers all relevant aspects needed to grasp S-BPM modeling and apply it based on fundamental examples. Its format reconciles semantic precision with syntactic rigor.>Addressing the needs of developers, educators and practitioners, this book will help companies to learn from the experiences of first-time users and to develop systems that fit their business processes, explaining the latest key methodological and technological S-BPM developments in the fields of training, research and application.

This book presents an Intelligent Control Architecture (ICA) to enable multiple collaborating marine vehicles to autonomously carry out underwater intervention missions. The presented ICA is generic in nature but aimed at a case study where a marine surface craft and an underwater vehicle are required to work cooperatively. It is shown that they are capable of cooperating autonomously towards the execution of complex activities since they have different but complementary capabilities. The ICA implementation is verified in simulation, and validated in trials by means of a team of autonomous marine robots. This book also presents architectural details and evaluation scenarios of the ICA, results of simulations and trials from different maritime operations, and future research directions.

This book focuses on civil and structural engineering and construction management applications. The contributions constitute modified, extended and improved versions of research presented at the  minisymposium organized by the editors at the ECCOMAS conference on this topic in Barcelona 2014.

“Propagation, which looks at spreading in complex networks, can be seen from many viewpoints; it is undesirable, or desirable, controllable, the mechanisms generating that propagation can be the topic of interest, but in the end all depends on the setting. This book covers leading research on a wide spectrum of propagation phenomenon and the techniques currently used in its modelling, prediction, analysis and control. Fourteen papers range over topics including epidemic models, models for trust inference, coverage strategies for networks, vehicle flow propagation, bio-inspired routing algorithms, P2P botnet attacks and defences, fault propagation in gene-cellular networks, malware propagation for mobile networks, information propagation in crisis situations, financial contagion in interbank networks, and finally how to maximize the spread of influence in social networks. The compendium will be of interest to researchers, those working in social networking, communications and finance and is aimed at providing a base point for further studies on current research. Above all, by bringing together research from such diverse fields, the book seeks to cross-pollinate ideas, and give the reader a glimpse of the breath of current research.�

This book presents a comprehensive report on the evolution of Fuzzy Logic since its formulation in Lotfi Zadeh’s seminal paper on “fuzzy sets,� published in 1965. In addition, it features a stimulating sampling from the broad field of research and development inspired by Zadeh’s paper. The chapters, written by pioneers and prominent scholars in the field, show how fuzzy sets have been successfully applied to artificial intelligence, control theory, inference, and reasoning. The book also reports on theoretical issues; features recent applications of Fuzzy Logic in the fields of neural networks, clustering, data mining and software testing; and highlights an important paradigm shift caused by Fuzzy Logic in the area of uncertainty management. Conceived by the editors as an academic celebration of the fifty years’ anniversary of the 1965 paper, this work is a must-have for students and researchers willing to get an inspiring picture of the potentialities, limitations, achievements and accomplishments of Fuzzy Logic-based systems.

The contributions in this volume focus on the Bayesian interpretation of natural languages, which is widely used in areas of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and computational linguistics. This is the first volume to take up topics in Bayesian Natural Language Interpretation and make proposals based on information theory, probability theory, and related fields. The methodologies offered here extend to the target semantic and pragmatic analyses of computational natural language interpretation. Bayesian approaches to natural language semantics and pragmatics are based on methods from signal processing and the causal Bayesian models pioneered by especially Pearl. In signal processing, the Bayesian method finds the most probable interpretation by finding the one that maximizes the product of the prior probability and the likelihood of the interpretation. It thus stresses the importance of a production model for interpretation as in Grice’s contributions to pragmatics or in interpretation by abduction.

Recent years have seen the development of two significant trends namely: the adoption of some Traditional Chinese Medicine Practices into mainstream Allopathic Western Medicine and the advent of the internet and broad band networks leading to an increased interest in the use of Telemedicine to deliver medical services. In this book, we see the convergence of these two trends leading to a semantically-based TCM Telemedicine system that utilizes an ontology to provide sharable knowledge in the TCM realm to achieve this. The underpinning research required the development of a three-layer architecture and an Ontology of the TCM knowledge. As TCM knowledge like all medical knowledge is not frozen in time it was important to develop an approach that would allow evolution of the Ontology when new evidence became available. In order for the system to be practically grounded it was important to work with an industry partner PuraPharm Group/HerbMiners Informatics Limited. This partnership was initiated through Professor Allan Wong and the Chairman of PuraPharm Group Mr. Abraham Chan. This led to the system being utilized in more than 20 Mobile Clinics in Hong Kong and 300 Hospitals in China. In order for these different deployments of the system to be coherent with the main core Ontology, it was necessary for us to develop an Ontology Driven Software System Generation approach.

3D GeoInfo aims to bring together international state-of-the-art research and facilitate the dialogue on emerging topics in the field of 3D geo-information. The conference offers an interdisciplinary forum in the fields of 3D data collection and modeling; reconstruction and methods for 3D representation; data management for maintenance of 3D geo-information or 3D data analysis and visualization. The book covers the best papers from 3D GeoInfo held in Istanbul in November 2013.

This book is the proceedings of the 3rd World Conference on Soft Computing (WCSC), which was held in San Antonio, TX, USA, on December 16-18, 2013. It presents start-of-the-art theory and applications of soft computing together with an in-depth discussion of current and future challenges in the field, providing readers with a 360 degree view on soft computing. Topics range from fuzzy sets, to fuzzy logic, fuzzy mathematics, neuro-fuzzy systems, fuzzy control, decision making in fuzzy environments, image processing and many more. The book is dedicated to Lotfi A. Zadeh, a renowned specialist in signal analysis and control systems research who proposed the idea of fuzzy sets, in which an element may have a partial membership, in the early 1960s, followed by the idea of fuzzy logic, in which a statement can be true only to a certain degree, with degrees described by numbers in the interval [0,1]. The performance of fuzzy systems can often be improved with the help of optimization techniques, e.g. evolutionary computation, and by endowing the corresponding system with the ability to learn, e.g. by combining fuzzy systems with neural networks. The resulting “consortium� of fuzzy, evolutionary, and neural techniques is known as soft computing and is the main focus of this book.

This important volume examines European perspectives on the historical relations that women have maintained with information and communication technologies (ICTs), since the telegraph. Features: describes how gendered networks have formed around ICT since the late 19th Century; reviews the gendered issues revealed by the conflict between the actress Ms Sylviac and the French telephone administration in 1904, or by 'feminine' blogs; examines how gender representations, age categories, and uses of ICT interact and are mutually formed in children's magazines; illuminates the participation of women in the early days of computing, through a case study on the Rothamsted Statistics Department; presents a comparative study of women in computing in France, Finland and the UK, revealing similar gender divisions within the ICT professions of these countries; discusses diversity interventions and the part that history could (and should) play to ensure women do not take second place in specific occupational sectors.

Computational and mathematical models provide us with the opportunities to investigate the complexities of real world problems. They allow us to apply our best analytical methods to define problems in a clearly mathematical manner and exhaustively test our solutions before committing expensive resources. This is made possible by assuming parameter(s) in a bounded environment, allowing for controllable experimentation, not always possible in live scenarios. For example, simulation of computational models allows the testing of theories in a manner that is both fundamentally deductive and experimental in nature. The main ingredients for such research ideas come from multiple disciplines and the importance of interdisciplinary research is well recognized by the scientific community. This book provides a window to the novel endeavours of the research communities to present their works by highlighting the value of computational modelling as a research tool when investigating complex systems. We hope that the readers will have stimulating experiences to pursue research in these directions.

This accessible compendium examines a collection of significant technology firms that have helped to shape the field of computing and its impact on society. Each company is introduced with a brief account of its history, followed by a concise account of its key contributions. The selection covers a diverse range of historical and contemporary organizations from pioneers of e-commerce to influential social media companies. Features: presents information on early computer manufacturers; reviews important mainframe and minicomputer companies; examines the contributions to the field of semiconductors made by certain companies; describes companies that have been active in developing home and personal computers; surveys notable research centers; discusses the impact of telecommunications companies and those involved in the area of enterprise software and business computing; considers the achievements of e-commerce companies; provides a review of social media companies.

This is a unique book addressing the integration of risk methodology from various fields. It will stimulate intellectual debate and communication across disciplines, promote better risk management practices and contribute to the development of risk management methodologies. Individual chapters explain fundamental risk models and measurement, and address risk and security issues from diverse areas such as finance and insurance, the health sciences, life sciences, engineering and information science. Integrated Risk Sciences is an emerging discipline that considers risks in different fields, aiming at a common language, and at sharing and improving methods developed in different fields. Readers should have a Bachelor degree and have taken at least one basic university course in statistics and probability. The main goal of the book is to provide basic knowledge on risk and security in a common language; the authors have taken particular care to ensure that all content can readily be understood by doctoral students and researchers across disciplines. Each chapter provides simple case studies and examples, open research questions and discussion points, and a selected bibliography inviting readers to further study.

Research into social systems is challenging due to their complex nature. Traditional methods of analysis are often difficult to apply effectively as theories evolve over time. This can be due to a lack of appropriate data, or too much uncertainty. It can also be the result of problems which are not yet understood well enough in the general sense so that they can be classified, and an appropriate solution quickly identified. Simulation is one tool that deals well with these challenges, fits in well with the deductive process, and is useful for testing theory. This field is still relatively new, and much of the work is necessarily innovative, although it builds upon a rich and varied foundation. There are a number of existing modelling paradigms being applied to complex social systems research. Additionally, new methods and measures are being devised through the process of conducting research. We expect that readers will enjoy the collection of high quality research works from new and accomplished researchers.    

Sparse grids have gained increasing interest in recent years for the numerical treatment of high-dimensional problems. Whereas classical numerical discretization schemes fail in more than three or four dimensions, sparse grids make it possible to overcome the “curse� of dimensionality to some degree, extending the number of dimensions that can be dealt with. This volume of LNCSE collects the papers from the proceedings of the second workshop on sparse grids and applications, demonstrating once again the importance of this numerical discretization scheme. The selected articles present recent advances on the numerical analysis of sparse grids as well as efficient data structures, and the range of applications extends to uncertainty quantification settings and clustering, to name but a few examples.

This book describes the trends in digital innovation that are of most importance for businesses and explores the key challenges. The book is in three parts, the first of which focuses on developments in digital systems. Here, the ever-growing relevance of big data, cloud computing, and mobile services for business is discussed, and detailed consideration is given to the importance of social listening for understanding user behavior and needs and the implications of IT consumerization. In the second part, trends in digital management are examined, with chapters devoted to work practice, digital business identity as well as branding and governance. The final part of the book presents and reviews case studies of digital innovation at the global level that provide a benchmark of best practices, with inclusion of instructive fact sheets. While the book offers academic coverage of the digital transformation of business organizations and the associated challenges, it also describes concrete, real-world issues in clear, easy-to-understand language and will serve as a toolbox for managers that can be readily consulted. The text is supported by informative illustrations and tables, and practitioners will also benefit from the reported case studies and highlighted insights and recommendations.

Nowadays embedded and real-time systems contain complex software. The complexity of embedded systems is increasing, and the amount and variety of software in the embedded products are growing. This creates a big challenge for embedded and real-time software development processes and there is a need to develop separate metrics and benchmarks. “Embedded and Real Time System Development: A Software Engineering Perspective: Concepts, Methods and Principles� presents practical as well as conceptual knowledge of the latest tools, techniques and methodologies of embedded software engineering and real-time systems. Each chapter includes an in-depth investigation regarding the actual or potential role of software engineering tools in the context of the embedded system and real-time system. The book presents state-of-the art and future perspectives with industry experts, researchers, and academicians sharing ideas and experiences including surrounding frontier technologies, breakthroughs, innovative solutions and applications. The book is organized into four parts “Embedded Software Development Process�, “Design Patterns and Development Methodology�, “Modelling Framework� and “Performance Analysis, Power Management and Deployment� with altogether 12 chapters. The book is aiming at (i) undergraduate students and postgraduate students conducting research in the areas of embedded software engineering and real-time systems; (ii) researchers at universities and other institutions working in these fields; and (iii) practitioners in the R&D departments of embedded system. It can be used as an advanced reference for a course taught at the postgraduate level in embedded software engineering and real-time systems.

Today the cost of solid-state two-dimensional imagers has dramatically dropped, introducing low cost systems on the market suitable for a variety of applications, including both industrial and consumer products. However, these systems can capture only a two-dimensional projection (2D), or intensity map, of the scene under observation, losing a variable of paramount importance, i.e., the arrival time of the impinging photons. Time-Of-Flight (TOF) Range-Imaging (TOF) is an emerging sensor technology able to deliver, at the same time, depth and intensity maps of the scene under observation. Featuring different sensor resolutions, RIM cameras serve a wide community with a lot of applications like monitoring, architecture, life sciences, robotics, etc. This book will bring together experts from the sensor and metrology side in order to collect the state-of-art researchers in these fields working with RIM cameras. All the aspects in the acquisition and processing chain will be addressed, from recent updates concerning the photo-detectors, to the analysis of the calibration techniques, giving also a perspective onto new applications domains.

The Internet of Services and the Internet of Things are major building blocks of the Future Internet. The digital enterprise of the future is based not only on mobile, social, and cloud technologies, but also on se­mantic technologies and the future Internet of Everything. Semantic technologies now enable mass cus­tomization for the delivery of goods and services that meet individual customer needs and tastes with near mass production efficiency and reliability. This is creating a competitive advantage in the industrial econ­omy, the service economy, and the emerging data economy, leading to smart products, smart services, and smart data, all adaptable to specific tasks, locations, situations, and contexts of smart spaces. Such tech­nologies allow us to describe, revise, and adapt the characteristics, functions, processes, and usage patterns of customization targets on the basis of machine-understandable content representation that enables auto­mated processing and information sharing between human and software agents.   This book explains the principal achievements of the Theseus research program, one of the central pro­grams in the German government's Digital 2015 initiative and its High-Tech Strategy 2020. The methods, toolsets, and standards for semantic technologies developed during this program form a solid basis for the fourth industrial revolution (Industrie 4.0), the hybrid service economy, and the transformation of big data into useful smart data for the emerging data economy.   The contributing authors are leading scientists and engineers, representing world-class academic and in­dustrial research teams, and the ideas, technologies, and representative use cases they describe in the book derive from results in multidisciplinary fields, such as the Internet of Services; the Semantic Web, and semantic technologies, knowledge management, and search; user interfaces, multimodal interaction, and visualization; machine learning and data mining; and business process support, manufacturing, automa­tion, medical systems, and integrated service engineering.   The book will be of value to both researchers and practitioners in these domains.

This book collects innovative research presented at the 17th Conference of the Association of Geographic Information Laboratories for Europe (AGILE) on Geographic Information Science, held in 2014 in Castellón, Spain. The scientific papers cover a variety of fundamental research topics as well as applied research in Geospatial Information Science, including measuring spatiotemporal phenomena, crowdsourcing and VGI, geosensor networks, indoor navigation, spatiotemporal analysis, modeling and visualization, spatiotemporal decision support, digital earth and spatial information infrastructures. The book is intended for researchers, practitioners, and students working in various fields and disciplines related to Geospatial Information Science and technology.

This book summarizes research carried out in workshops of the SAGA project, an Initial Training Network exploring the interplay of Shapes, Algebra, Geometry and Algorithms. Written by a combination of young and experienced researchers, the book introduces new ideas in an established context. Among the central topics are approximate and sparse implicitization and surface parametrization; algebraic tools for geometric computing; algebraic geometry for computer aided design applications and problems with industrial applications. Readers will encounter new methods for the (approximate) transition between the implicit and parametric representation; new algebraic tools for geometric computing; new applications of isogeometric analysis and will gain insight into the emerging research field situated between algebraic geometry and computer aided geometric design.

Hybrid modelling of turbulent flows, combining RANS and LES techniques, has received increasing attention over the past decade to fill the gap between (U)RANS and LES computations in aerodynamic applications at industrially relevant Reynolds numbers. With the advantage of hybrid RANS-LES modelling approaches, being considerably more computationally efficient than full LES and more accurate than (U)RANS, particularly for unsteady aerodynamic flows, has motivated numerous research and development activities. These activities have been increasingly stimulated by the provision of modern computing facilities. The present book contains the contributions presented at the Third Symposium on Hybrid RANS-LES Methods, held in Gdansk, Poland, 10-12 June 2009. To a certain extent, this conference was a continuation of the first symposium taking place in Stockholm (Sweden, 2005) and the second in Corfu (Greece, 2007). Motivated by the extensive interest in the research community, the papers presented at the Corfu symposium were published by Springer in the book entitled “Advances in Hybrid RANS-LES Modelling� (in Notes on Numerical Fluid Mechanics and Multidisciplinary Design, Vol. 97). At the Gdansk symposium, along with four invited keynotes, given respectively by S. Fu, U. Michel, M. Sillen and P. Spalart, another 28 papers were presented on the following topics: Unsteady RANS, LES, Improved DES Methods, Hybrid RANS-LES Methods, DES versus URANS and other Hybrid Methods, Modelli- related Numerical Issues and Industrial Applications. After the symposium all full papers have been further reviewed and revised for publication in the present book.

This book deals with the issues of modelling management processes of information technology and IT projects while its core is the model of information technology management and its component models (contextual, local) describing initial processing and the maturity capsule as well as a decision-making system represented by a multi-level sequential model of IT technology selection, which acquires a fuzzy rule-based implementation in this work. In terms of applicability, this work may also be useful for diagnosing applicability of IT standards in evaluation of IT organizations. The results of this diagnosis might prove valid for those preparing new standards so that – apart from their own visions – they could, to an even greater extent, take into account the capabilities and needs of the leaders of project and manufacturing teams. The book is intended for IT professionals using the ITIL, COBIT and TOGAF standards in their work. Students of computer science and management who are interested in the issue of IT project and technology management are also likely to benefit from this study. For young students of IT, it can serve as a source of knowledge in the field of information technology evaluation. This book is also designed for specialists in modelling socio-technical systems.  

Nature-inspired algorithms such as cuckoo search and firefly algorithm have become popular and widely used in recent years in many applications. These algorithms are flexible, efficient and easy to implement. New progress has been made in the last few years, and it is timely to summarize the latest developments of cuckoo search and firefly algorithm and their diverse applications. This book will review both theoretical studies and applications with detailed algorithm analysis, implementation and case studies so that readers can benefit most from this book. Application topics are contributed by many leading experts in the field. Topics include cuckoo search, firefly algorithm, algorithm analysis, feature selection, image processing, travelling salesman problem, neural network, GPU optimization, scheduling, queuing, multi-objective manufacturing optimization, semantic web service, shape optimization, and others. This book can serve as an ideal reference for both graduates and researchers in computer science, evolutionary computing, machine learning, computational intelligence, and optimization, as well as engineers in business intelligence, knowledge management and information technology.  

Towards Solid-State Quantum Repeaters: Ultrafast, Coherent Optical Control and Spin-Photon Entanglement in Charged InAs Quantum Dots summarizes several state-of-the-art coherent spin manipulation experiments in III-V quantum dots. Both high-fidelity optical manipulation, decoherence due to nuclear spins and the spin coherence extraction are discussed, as is the generation of entanglement between a single spin qubit and a photonic qubit. The experimental results are analyzed and discussed in the context of future quantum technologies, such as quantum repeaters. Single spins in optically active semiconductor host materials have emerged as leading candidates for quantum information processing (QIP). The quantum nature of the spin allows for encoding of stationary, memory quantum bits (qubits), and the relatively weak interaction with the host material preserves the spin coherence. On the other hand, optically active host materials permit direct interfacing with light, which can be used for all-optical qubit manipulation, and for efficiently mapping matter qubits into photonic qubits that are suited for long-distance quantum communication.