Australasian Conference Research Articles

Preface: Numerical Modelling of Fibre-Reinforced Materials and Structures

This special issue contains selected papers on “Numerical Modelling of Fibre-reinforced Materials and Structures” presented at ACCM 2021, the Fifth Australasian Conference on Computational Mechanics, which was successfully held in Western Sydney University, Sydney, Australia, in December 2021. The selected papers published in this special issue reported advanced computational methods and modelling technology in the niche area of fibre-reinforced materials and structures. Fibre reinforcement has demonstrated effectiveness in strengthening the high performance and durability of materials and structures. The research and development of high-performance fibre-reinforced materials and structures have been increasing, which has also seen growing interest and adoption in engineering practice with greatly enhanced structure safety and infrastructure resilience. The papers collected in this special issue present advanced theory, algorithm, numerical simulation, and/or novel application of computational techniques to the problems associated with fibre-reinforced materials and structures.

Generating Stakeholder Value Through Increasingly Hybridized Conferences: Insights from 30 Years of ACIS Conferences

In the last few years, changes to the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) have accelerated in response to COVID-19, as well as climate change, technological advances, and trends in the tertiary sector. These underlying conditions have generated much discussion within annual conference committees and their partners. These discussions were ongoing before the pandemic but have increased in importance as a result of the pandemic and a trend towards hybridization and virtualization of some or all conference events. In this paper, we distill these ongoing discussions and apply them specifically to the issues identified in a recent AIS task force report on conference virtualization. We identify the stakeholders in the conference ecosystem and the risks they would incur from poor quality conference experiences. Through this analysis we provide 57 recommendations to mitigate the risks of a poor conference experience and to improve value-creation opportunities. We hope our recommendations and reflections can advance the debate and help conferences continuously adapt to their changing environment to realize their potential to generate value for their IS communities.

Welcome to the third Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference

Welcome to the third Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference

Special Section of Invited Papers from the 30th Australasian Conference on Information Systems

This article introduces the papers which were invited for this special section.

Digital Transformation: Environmental Friend or Foe? Panel Discussion at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems 2019

The advent of digital technologies such as social media, mobile, analytics, cloud computing, and the Internet of things has provided unique opportunities for organizations to engage in affordable, easy-to-use, easy-to-learn, and easy-to-implement innovations. Transformations through such technologies often have positive impacts on business processes, products, and services. As such, organizations have managed to increase productivity and efficiency, reduce cycle time, and make substantial gains through digital transformation. Research has also found such transformations to be positively associated with reducing harmful environmental impacts by providing organizations alternative ways to conduct their business activities. However, in recent times when organizations can use many technologies at near-zero cost, questions regarding the potential negative impacts that digital transformation has on the environment have arisen. The contemporary ubiquitous technologies that pervade everyday life necessitate that organizations continue to create large data centers that increase in capacity daily; however, such growth also increases their impact on the environment. Considering this dialectical contradiction, in 2019, we conducted a panel at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems (ACIS) in Perth, Australia, to invigorate the dialogue regarding the impact that digital transformation has on environmental sustainability and investigate some directions for future research in this area.

Preface: Towards the Next Generation of Information Systems: Enhancing Traceability and Transparency

The information systems community plays a significant role in providing theories for guiding the creation of more effective information systems. This is nowadays most prominent in supporting the ongoing evolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and decision-making systems. As these systems are becoming increasingly reliable, and supplanting the presence of humans, the question of accountability and trust in these systems is increasingly coming to the fore. This editorial positions and showcases a collection of papers from the 2018 Australasian Conference on Information Systems within this context.

Impact ofthe modulus switching technique on some attacks against learning problems

The modulus switching technique has been used in some cryptographic applications as well as in cryptanalysis. For cryptanalysis against the learning with errors (LWE) problem and the learning with rounding (LWR) problem, it seems that one does not know whether the technique is really useful or not. This work supplies a complete view of the impact of this technique on the decoding attack, the dual attack and the primal attack against both LWE and LWR. For each attack, the authors give the optimal formula for the switching modulus. The formulas get involved the number of LWE/LWR samples, which differs from the known formula in the literature. They also attain the corresponding sufficient conditions saying when one should utilise the technique. Surprisingly, restricted to the LWE/LWR problem that the secret vector is much shorter than the error vector, they also show that performing the modulus switching before using the so-called rescaling technique in the dual attack and the primal attack make these attacks worse than only exploiting the rescaling technique as reported by Bai and Galbraith at the Australasian conference on information security and privacy (ACISP) 2014 conference. As an application, they theoretically assess the influence of the modulus switching on the LWE/LWR-based second round NIST PQC submissions.

Efficient modular operations using the adapted modular number system

The adapted modular number system (AMNS) is an integer number system which aims to speed up arithmetic operations modulo a prime p. Such a system is defined by a tuple $$(p, n, \gamma , \rho , E)$$, where p, n, $$\gamma $$ and $$\rho $$ are integers and $$E\in \mathbb {Z}[X]$$. In El Mrabet and Gama (in: WAIFI, lecture notes in computer science, Springer, 2012) conditions required to build AMNS with $$E(X)=X^n + 1$$ are provided. In this paper, we generalise their approach and provide a method to generate multiple AMNS for a given prime p with $$E(X)=X^n-\lambda $$ and $$\lambda \in \mathbb {Z}{\setminus }\{0\}$$. Moreover, we propose a complete set of algorithms without conditional branching to perform arithmetic and conversion operations in the AMNS, using a Montgomery-like method described in Negre and Plantard (in: Information security and privacy, 13th Australasian conference, ACISP 2008, Wollongong, Australia, 2008). We show that our implementation outperforms GNU MP and OpenSSL libraries. Finally, we highlight some properties of the AMNS which state that it could lead to a helpful countermeasure against some side-channel attacks.

Preface to the Special Section of Selected Papers from the 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Preface to the Special Section of Selected Papers from the 28th Australasian Conference on Information Systems

Welcome to the second Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference

Welcome to the second Australasian Exploration Geoscience Conference

Preface to the Special Section of Selected Papers from the Australasian Conference on Data Mining (AusDM) 2016

This is a preface for the special section.

Vitamin D, bones and muscle: myth versus reality

Evidence regarding the efficacy and dosing of vitamin D on fall and fracture prevention, with or without calcium, is characterised by uncertainty. A panel of experts was organised at the First Australasian Conference on Sarcopenia and Frailty in Melbourne, Australia, in November 2016 to provide an interpretation of the current evidence and to give their opinions regarding the supplementation of vitamin D in three hypothetical cases. The authors conclude that (i) target serum 25(OH)D concentration should be 50 to 60nmol/L year round, with a conservative upper limit <100nmol/L; (ii) change in serum concentrations at any given dose is highly variable among individuals; (iii) dosing interval may need to be <2months to have a continuous benefit; (iv) a loading dose can raise levels to target quickly, but there is no evidence yet that this has any positive effect on falls or fracture outcomes; and (v) a maintenance dose of 1000IU/day, or given as an equivalent dose weekly or monthly, is sufficient for most individuals.

Barrier interactions: The good, the bad and the ugly!

Dr Marlène Läubli Loud was a keynote speaker at the 2015 international Australasian Evaluation Society Conference in Melbourne, Australia. She gave an address reflecting on her own experiences and that of others in managing an internal evaluation unit—particularly noting how boundaries can be overcome to ensure that the commissioning, management and use of evaluation is instrumental. This article provides an overview of Marlène's conference address. While much of the article is grounded in the context of Switzerland, Marlène also shares insights from internal evaluation managers in a range of different settings, and applies these learnings to advance the discipline of evaluation.

Ethics and ICT: Why all the fuss?

Purpose This paper aims to introduce a special section based on papers from Australasian Conference for Information Systems 2014. Design/methodology/approach This paper comments on key contextualisation moments in relevant history. Findings This paper describes the initiative in Australia to widen Information and Communication Technology ethics awareness. Originality/value This is a new attempt to bring Ethics and Information Systems academics closer together.

The history of wildlife camera trapping as a survey tool in Australia

This paper provides an historical review of the technological evolution of camera trapping as a zoological survey tool in Australia. Camera trapping in Australia began in the 1950s when purpose-built remotely placed cameras were used in attempts to rediscover the thylacine (Thylacinus cynocephalus). However, camera traps did not appear in Australian research papers and Australasian conference proceedings until 1989–91, and usage became common only after 2008, with an exponential increase in usage since 2010. Initially, Australian publications under-reported camera trapping methods, often failing to provide fundamental details about deployment and use. However, rigour in reporting of key methods has increased during the recent widespread adoption of camera trapping. Our analysis also reveals a change in camera trap use in Australia, from simple presence–absence studies, to more theoretical and experimental approaches related to population ecology, behavioural ecology, conservation biology and wildlife management. Practitioners require further research to refine and standardise camera trap methods to ensure that unbiased and scientifically rigorous data are obtained from quantitative research. The recent change in emphasis of camera trapping research use is reflected in the decreasing range of camera trap models being used in Australian research. Practitioners are moving away from less effective models that have slow reaction times between detection and image capture, and inherent bias in detectability of fauna, to more expensive brands that offer faster speeds, greater functionality and more reliability.

John Passant (ATTA) Australasian Tax Teachers Conference 20 Minute Talk - Income Tax in Australia: From Appearance to Reality

John Passant (ATTA) Australasian Tax Teachers Conference 20 Minute Talk - Income Tax in Australia: From Appearance to Reality

FireWatch: Creative Responses to Bushfire Catastrophes

FireWatch: Creative Responses to Bushfire Catastrophes

A graph theoretic approach to authorization delegation and conflict resolution in decentralised systems

The problem of resolving conflicts in delegated authorizations has not been systematically addressed by researchers. In (Ruan and Varadharajan in Proceedings of the 7th Australasian Conference on Information Security and Privacy, pp. 271---285, 2002) we proposed a graph based framework that supports authorization delegation and conflict resolution. In this paper, we have extended the model to allow grantors of delegations to express degrees of certainties about their delegations and grants of authorizations. This expression of certainty gives the subjects (e.g. users) more flexibility to control their delegations of access rights. We propose a new conflict resolution policy based on weighted lengths of authorization paths. This policy provides a greater degree of flexibility in that it enables to specify and analyse the effect of predecessor-successor relationship as well as the weights of authorizations on the conflicts. We present a detailed algorithm to evaluate authorization delegations and conflict resolutions. The correctness proof and time complexity of the algorithm are also provided. Since in a dynamic environment, the authorization state is not static, we have considered how authorization state changes occur and have developed an algorithm to analyse authorization state transformations and given correctness proofs. Finally, we discuss how to achieve a global decision policy from local authorization policies in a distributed environment. Three integration models based on the degrees of node autonomy are proposed, and different strategies of integrating the local policies into the global policies in each model are systematically discussed.

ACIS 2007 Panel Report: Lack of Relevance in IS Research

Relevance of IS research to practitioners has been one of the most fervently debated meta discussions in the IS discipline. To address the concern of lack of relevance, an IS relevance index was suggested in 2005 and used in an exploratory study using two years of conference review data. This paper reports on a 2007 panel presented at the Australasian Conference on Information Systems, which explored the idea of this IS relevance index and discussed openly the issue of lack of relevance in conducting, evaluating and presenting IS research. This paper first introduces the debate and the concept of an IS relevance index. Next, viewpoints of individual panel members are presented and finally the subsequent panel discussion is summarized.

The Abstracts of the 35th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference

The Abstracts of the 35th Australasian Experimental Psychology Conference