Collaborative Support System Research Articles

Psychological stress in geriatric patients with genito-urinary cancers.

Two-thirds of all cancer cases affect patients who are older than 65years, yet the specific conditions of the treatment and supportive care in this age group are poorly studied. There are limited data on the specific psycho-oncological problems in elderly patients with genito-urinary cancers. The aim of this study was to investigate the psychosocial needs of elderly patients with genito-urinary tumors using screening questionnaires and to use such screening questionnaires for an in-patient psychosocial treatment program. Patients (≥65years, n=319) who underwent surgical (n=295) or medical treatment (n=24) for genito-urinary malignancies between 06/2014 and 11/2015 in our institution were included for prospective stress assessment. This was done with standardized questionnaires for stress screening and for the identification of need for care (NCCN Distress Thermometer and Hornheider Screening Instrument, HSI). The patients scored an average of 4.4 on the Distress Thermometer. According to the survey evaluation, 28% of patients had need for psychosocial care. However, only a minority of patients (4%) did actually communicate any need for psychosocial care. We also assessed the actual utilization of inpatient psychosocial support which is offered to all patients. There is a significant number of elderly patients with genito-urinary cancer with increased psychological stress and a consecutive need of psychosocial care. This is underreported and underused by the patients. Therefore, an easy low-threshold access system with an interdisciplinary and inter-professional collaborative support system would be desirable. Measuring psychological distress systematically can be helpful in treating older patients with malignant diseases.

Large-Scale Online Multitask Learning and Decision Making for Flexible Manufacturing

Large-scale machine coordination is a primary approach for flexible manufacturing, enabling large-scale autonomous machines to dynamically coordinate their actions in pursuit of a custom task. One of the key challenges for such large-scale systems is finding high-dimensional coordination decision-making policies. Multitask policy gradient algorithms can be used in search of high-dimensional policies, particularly in collaborative decision support systems and distributed control systems. However, it is difficult for these algorithms to learn online high-dimensional coordination control policies (CCP) from large-scale custom manufacturing tasks. This paper proposes a large-scale online multitask learning and decision-making approach, which can consecutively learn high-dimensional CCP in order to quickly coordinate machine actions online for large-scale custom manufacturing task. A large-scale online multitask leaning algorithm is developed, which is able to learn large-scale high-dimensional CCP in a flexible manufacturing scenario. An online stochastic planning algorithm is proposed, which online optimizes the Markov network structure in order to avoid expensive global search for the optimal policy. Experiments have been undertaken using a professional flexible manufacturing testbed deployed within a smart factory of Weichai Power in China. Results show the proposed approach to be more efficient when compared with previous works.

An Innovative System to Enhance Situational Awareness in Disaster Response

Abstract A collaborative decision support system has been developed to enhance situation awareness in case of complex disasters. It includes three modules: (1) UAV carrying multiple sensors; (2) Computer-based expert system (CES); (3) 2D-plume dispersion model. This research focuses on how contemporary technology, combined with commercial off-the-shelf-technology, can be used to fuse information and speed up decision-making. The system provides a context based common operational picture for first responders on scene, and incident commanders in control rooms. The research was conducted in close collaboration with different first response teams, to develop an end user oriented system. We present the design process the regulatory requirements, and the end user needs that will help future developers of such systems. We also highlight some of the areas where further research effort is required. The core system has been evaluated by local police and fire departments, and an EU review team including medical and firefighting practitioners.

An examination of Chinese preservice and inservice early childhood teachers’ perspectives on the importance and feasibility of the implementation of key characteristics of quality inclusion

ABSTRACTThe Chinese Preschool Inclusion Survey, which is an adaptation of Odom et al. [2004. ‘Preschool inclusion in the United States: A review of research from an ecological systems perspective’. Journal of Research in Special Educational Needs 4 (1): 17–149] a list of the features of quality preschools, was given to 234 preservice teachers and 307 inservice teachers in a large Chinese province so as to examine whether early childhood education (ECE) teachers agree on the key characteristics of high quality inclusion in terms of importance and feasibility. One significant finding of the study is that both preservice and inservice teachers highly ranked the importance of the key characteristics of high quality inclusion in ECE settings, yet both ECE teachers ranked the feasibility of implementing the key characteristics lower. Additionally, two factors that influenced preservice teachers’ perceived importance and feasibility of inclusion were years of study and courses related to special education, and five factors that influenced inservice teachers’ perceived inclusion beliefs were bianzhi, certification, years of teaching, opportunities for professional development and degree. Teacher education reform is called upon to affect change in terms of creating positive beliefs regarding high quality inclusion services and implementation of effective practices in stronger, collaborative support systems for Chinese children with special needs and their families. Implications for policy, professional development, and teacher education reform are provided.

A DSS-Based Framework for Enhancing Collaborative Web-Based Operations Management in Manufacturing SME Supply Chains

The precision engineering sector lies at the heart of the UK’s manufacturing capability. Companies that operate in this sector support major economy-driving industries such as aerospace, defence, motorsport, nuclear, off-highway equipment, oil and gas, and renewable energy. The main companies that constitute this sector are small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Successful precision engineering businesses are required to master process innovation and supply chain solutions, and in these types of business, the implementation of innovative, collaborative solutions has become a necessary strategy for enhancing SME decision-making capability as well as for improving overall business competitiveness. The aim of the research described in this paper is to present how, by mentoring and supporting SME organisations through on-line based collaboration, it is possible to engage in improved collaborative alliances and how precision-engineering SMEs can benefit and are able to enhance their performance. The research is supported by a description of a case study undertaken in a precision engineering SME, from the UK northwest region, in order to demonstrate the application of the collaborative decision support systems approach.

REMOCOP: Remote Collaboration Platform for a Next Generation Remote Collaboration Support System

REMOCOP: Remote Collaboration Platform for a Next Generation Remote Collaboration Support System

Minimally invasive surgery and robotic surgery: surgery 4.0?

Surgery can only maintain its role in a highly competitive environment if results are continuously improved, accompanied by further reduction of the interventional trauma for patients and with justifiable costs. Significant impulse to achieve this goal was expected from minimally invasive surgery and, in particular, robotic surgery; however, a real breakthrough has not yet been achieved. Accordingly, the new strategic approach of cognitive surgery is required to optimize the provision of surgical treatment. A full scale integration of all modules utilized in the operating room (OR) into a comprehensive network and the development of systems with technical cognition are needed to upgrade the current technical environment passively controlled by the surgeon into an active collaborative support system (surgery 4.0). Only then can the true potential of minimally invasive surgery and robotic surgery be exploited.

Application and Research on The Model of Distributed Intelligent Cooperative Decision Support System

Combined with distributed processing, traditional decision support and collaborative technology, an intelligent distributed collaborative decision support system model is proposed. The architecture, component and functions of the model is described in detail .Analyzed the problem solving process of distributed collaborative decision problem and intelligent collaborative decision-making model is proposed. Finally the intelligent agent model of the system and its application technology is given, which laid the foundation of this new model and its application in military decision making system.

Semantic Collaboration And Sensing As A Service In Semantic Web Of Things

Abstract The intrinsic contradiction hidden in the Internet of things, which is the mismatching between the diversification of forms expressing the thing’s information and the insufficiency of understanding ability of the agents using the thing’s information, hinders its intelligent development. Adding a semantic annotation for the expression of thing’s information based on ontology will improve the ability to understand, to reason and to obtain information for the agents, and will essentially promote the Internet of things to “semantic web of things”. For semantic web of things, its open and dynamic natures inevitably determine it is an open service ecosystem, and whether the hyper world itself and the individual in their sub worlds are in continuous development and evolution, so the semantic web of things must be self-adaptive to provide semantic collaboration services. To achieve all, this is based on “sensing as a service”. From different points of view, such as dynamic space, service collaboration and web-based context management services, we analyze semantic collaboration mechanism. Respectively put forward self-adaptiveness formulas and self-adaptive support framework of semantic web of things, propose the definition and architecture of semantic web of things and present sensing as a service model. This paper discusses semantic coordination mechanism and key support technologies for semantic web of things, which lay a theory and technology foundation for subsequent semantic collaboration application schemas, and the application experiments, validation and evaluation of semantic collaboration support system

Assessing the awareness mechanisms of a collaborative programming support system

The learning and teaching of Programming can benefit from the principles of Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (CSCL). With that purpose in mind, the COLLECE system was created to support synchronous collaborative programming in learning settings. Unlike other systems with similar objectives, COLLECE incorporates many elements to support group awareness. This article presents an empirical study in which the usefulness of some of the awareness mechanisms included in this system is evaluated. One of the main contributions of this work is the combination of different techniques to evaluate interactive systems, such as questionnaires, laboratory testing, heuristic evaluation, automatic logging and eye tracking techniques. The joint use of these techniques (of both a subjective and objective nature) allows us to carry out a more complete analysis of the system under study and, in particular, about its support of awareness.

Collaborative Editing Support System for Cancer Information Distribution

Collaborative Editing Support System for Cancer Information Distribution

Semantic Based Support for Planning Information Delivery in Human-agent Collaborative Teams

Collaborative teams are organizations where joint members work together to solve mutual goals. Mixed-initiative planning systems are useful tools in such situations, because they can support several common activities performed in these organizations. However, as collaborative members are involved in different decision making planning levels, they consequently require different information types and forms of receiving planning information. Unfortunately, collaborative planning delivery is a subject that has not been given much attention by researchers, so that users cannot make the most of such systems since they do not have appropriate support for interaction with them. This work presents a general framework for planning information delivery, which is divided into two main parts: a knowledge representation aspect based on an ontological set and a reasoning mechanism for multimodality visualization. This framework is built on a mixed-initiative planning basis, which considers the additional requirements that the human presence brings to the development of collaborative support systems.

Telerobot-enabled HUB-CI model for collaborative lifecycle management of design and prototyping

The HUB-CI model is investigated in a telerobotic system in a client/server network to manage the lifecycle of engineering design and prototyping. The purpose of this platform is to support collaborative engineering design and proof of concept to enhance distributed team collaboration and resource utilization. The suggested platform is exemplified in two collaboration support tools and a physical prototyping platform. Structured Co-Insight Management is developed to support innovative idea exchanges and the consensus decision-making during the design process. Conflict/error detection management helps preventing conflicts and errors during the lifecycle of design and development. Physical collaboration over the network occurs when a team controls the telerobot operation during prototyping and testing in design cycles. A pilot system is implemented with a group project for the design of an electronic circuit (including both hardware and software designs). The functional assessment method is used to compare this platform to other collaborative design tools. The system presented offers unique qualitative advantages as an integrated collaboration support system.

On a Drawing-Frequency based Layered Canvas Mechanism for Collaborative Paper Editing Support Systems

We propose a Drawing-Frequency based Layered (DFL) Canvas approach to reduce a synchronization delay in collaborative web applications. The synchronization delay consists of a network delay and a drawing delay. The network delay is well-argued topic by various researches. We focus on the drawing delay, which is a primary bottleneck of Canvas objects synchronizations. We introduce the DFL Canvas approach in order to solve the drawing problem. The DFL Canvas divides Canvas objects by drawingfrequency. We implemented a collaborative paper editing support system with the DFL Canvas. Users can edit the same document and share Canvas objects on papers in real-time on web browsers. We present an evaluation result that indicates the approach is suited for collaborative paper editing support systems.

Towards a PLM Interoperability for a Collaborative Design Support System

Because of the increasing complexity of systems, their variability, and constant evolution of customer needs, engineering design has become more and more challenging and requires the collaboration between heterogeneous teams holding expertise in specific design-tasks. Thus, design outcomes of each expert field have to be put together without affecting the global design integrity. Typical enterprise application integration solutions propose dedicated tools which allow the coupling between engineering software by mapping data representation from one tool to another. This may result in a considerable mass of one-to-one interlinked software, which cannot provide an overall coherence between data. In this paper we propose a prototype enabling the interoperability between PLM systems and external engineering tools, with respect to the coherence concerns mentioned previously.

An agent-based distributed collaborative decision support system

The agent-based technology has emerged as a new paradigm for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing software systems. It has been considered as an important approach for developing industrial distributed systems. In this paper, we propose a Multi-agent view of a distributed collaborative decision support systems. These systems refer to a group of logically decentralized participants facilitator and decision-makers that cooperate to achieve objectives that are typically beyond the capabilities of any individual participant, and where the facilitator acts as a manager of the overall collaborative decision making activities that requires among those participant collaborating on decision making The main aims of the proposed multi-agent distributed collaborative decision support system are a distributed work support by enabling the flow of information and interoperation among distributed decision makers, and an efficient management of the information circulated in a distributed environment by providing content related aid. Specifically, agents were used to support a geographically dispersed collaborative decision making to solve jointly a problem and make a decision. In such systems, intelligent agents offer tremendous potential in supporting all stages of collaborative decision process such as idea generation, alternatives organizing and evaluation that would allow the group members focus on solutions that were found to be significant. They enhance overall system performance, in particular along such dimensions as computational efficiency, reliability, extensibility, responsiveness, maintainability reuse, and flexibility. In this way, we take advantage of the capacities of both the decision-maker and the machine. We apply the multi-agent system paradigm to decision support in a global contingency management.

Collaborative intelligence in knowledge based service planning

E-services are provided by several web-enabled companies. While some of them are competitive in nature, others are collaborative. There are few methodologies currently existing for measuring the value of e-collaboration among these e-service providers. The objective of this research is to measure collaborative intelligence (CI) in the knowledge based service (KBS) industry and to identify measures for finding the best collaborators during the formation and functioning stages of collaborative networks. The model developed in this research, CIMK (collaborative intelligence measure of KBS), measures CI by multi-objective optimization on parameters for collaboration, and suggests optimal operating points for various clients with greater flexibility. CIMK allows decision makers to customize the model based on their knowledge of the industry. Then, the CNOA (Collaborative Network Optimization Algorithm) is applied to select the best providers for requests based on their CI levels. CNOA has been implemented over a HUB-CI (HUB with CI) platform, which is a next generation collaboration support system developed at Purdue University. Three analytic experiments are designed and performed to validate the models (1) in terms of usability, (2) to compare the CIMK with alternative methods, and (3) to find the relative advantages of the CIMK model. The results of the experiments indicate that the average service cost can decrease by close to 50% when operating points with high CI, suggested by CIMK model, are implemented. The CI level computed by CIMK is successfully used as a decision parameter for on-going matching e-service providers to different requests.

Effective Transitional Plan from Secondary Education to Employment for Individuals with Learning Disabilities: A Case Study

One of the major goals in the education and training of individuals with special needs is to prepare them for independence. However, in the Malaysian context, parents who have special adolescents are in doubt as to what would be the future of their children soon after they have finished the vocational training. This case study explores the transitional needs and subsequently to develop an effective transitional plan from secondary education to employment for Malaysian individuals with special needs. The sample comprises two high school special educators and four persons with learning disabilities who are at work. The findings were triangulated among five co-ordinators of Non-Governmental Organisation, as well as parents for the four persons with learning disabilities and their employers. The findings reveal that transitional needs of individuals with special needs includes collaborative support system, job coaching, self-advocacy skills training, career guidance and transition assessment, vocational training, trained transition personnel and transition services. The transition process would be a collaborative process between the government and non-governmental sector. From the findings, an effective transitional plan from secondary education to employment for students with learning disabilities was drawn. Several implications have been drawn from this study.

Collaborative Air Traffic Decision Support Based on Web-based Intelligent Argumentation

Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a process of reaching consensus on a potential solution of an issue through the evaluation of the different possible alternatives. The web-based intelligent computational argumen- tation system allows concerned decision making agents to post their arguments on different alternatives, assign degree of strengths to their arguments and identify the most favorable alternative using our system over the internet. Agents are a group of people who participate in the argumentation process for the collaborative decision making process. Our system resolves the conflicts through intelligent argumentation and captures the rationale of the agents from their arguments. The exchange of information among the agents in the form of arguments helps them present their views and opinions and drives the group towards collective intelligence. In this article, we present an approach on how the intelligent argumentation based collaborative decision support system can facilitate the resolution of conflicts in air traffic management. It could enhance the Ground Delay Program (GDP) and help the Air Traffic Control System Com- mand Center (ATCSCC) to take a better decision depending on the argumentation of Air Route Traffic Control Centers (ARTCC) and agents from different airlines.

A Collaborative Enterprise Framework to Support Engineering Changes in Manufacturing Planning and Control

The main challenges for the enterprises are complexity of the products and uncertainty of the processes. This challenge involves engineering change that frequently requires redesign or altering the products which may call for enterprise agility and flexibility. To meet such a requirement, enterprises require better tools for resilient manufacturing planning and control, and execution. Due to the limitations of the enterprise resource planning (ERP), there is a question how would the future enterprise systems will look like. To approach an answer to this question, this research paper provides an analysis of engineering changes, its characteristics, problems and their implications. Against the background, a conception of future collaborative enterprise model (CoPIDSS: Collaborative planning, information and decision support system) is proposed. In this paper, we discuss the importance of collaborative planning for enterprise resilient manufacturing planning and control. We have analysed user stories provided by industry as scenarios, to understand the collaborative processes in their workplaces and their needs for collaborative platform support. This paper aims to address the following research questions: How does engineering changes and error handling affect the degree of collaboration and decision making within and across enterprises and how CoPDISS helps to overcome this? Is the storage and management of knowledge the one of the key factor to engineering changes and error handling control in a collaboration and decision environment?