Assessment of new information and communication technologies using Activity-Based Costing and Tensor Analysis of Networks

Abstract

Assessment of new information and communication technologies (ICTs) requires simultaneous consideration of a large number of technical, social and economic aspects. We suggest a top-down approach, which includes preliminary analyzing the possible consequences of introducing new technologies. Socio-economical and technical indicators can be connected with each other with the use of Activity-Based Costing (ABC). To cope with the difficulty of the problems emerging in ICTs we suggest expanding this method using Tensor Analysis of Networks (TAN) to represent the information about the activities in information and communication (IC) services and their structural relationships. An illustrative example is given where the introduction of new ICTs in the disaster warning systems is assessed.