Cost-effective Information Technology Research Articles

Cyber-Physical Systems Improving Building Energy Management: Digital Twin and Artificial Intelligence

The research explores the potential of digital-twin-based methods and approaches aimed at achieving an intelligent optimization and automation system for energy management of a residential district through the use of three-dimensional data model integrated with Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and machine learning. The case study is focused on Rinascimento III in Rome, an area consisting of 16 eight-floor buildings with 216 apartment units powered by 70% of self-renewable energy. The combined use of integrated dynamic analysis algorithms has allowed the evaluation of different scenarios of energy efficiency intervention aimed at achieving a virtuous energy management of the complex, keeping the actual internal comfort and climate conditions. Meanwhile, the objective is also to plan and deploy a cost-effective IT (information technology) infrastructure able to provide reliable data using edge-computing paradigm. Therefore, the developed methodology led to the evaluation of the effectiveness and efficiency of integrative systems for renewable energy production from solar energy necessary to raise the threshold of self-produced energy, meeting the nZEB (near zero energy buildings) requirements.

Server consolidation: A technique to enhance cloud data center power efficiency and overall cost of ownership

Cloud computing is a well-known technology that provides flexible, efficient, and cost-effective information technology solutions for multinationals to offer improved and enhanced quality of business services to end-users. The cloud computing paradigm is instigated from grid and parallel computing models as it uses virtualization, server consolidation, utility computing, and other computing technologies and models for providing better information technology solutions for large-scale computational data centers. The recent intensifying computational demands from multinationals enterprises have motivated the magnification for large complicated cloud data centers to handle business, monetary, Internet, and commercial applications of different enterprises. A cloud data center encompasses thousands of millions of physical server machines arranged in racks along with network, storage, and other equipment that entails an extensive amount of power to process different processes and amenities required by business firms to run their business applications. This data center infrastructure leads to different challenges like enormous power consumption, underutilization of installed equipment especially physical server machines, CO2 emission causing global warming, and so on. In this article, we highlight the data center issues in the context of Pakistan where the data center industry is facing huge power deficits and shortcomings to fulfill the power demands to provide data and operational services to business enterprises. The research investigates these challenges and provides solutions to reduce the number of installed physical server machines and their related device equipment. In this article, we proposed server consolidation technique to increase the utilization of already existing server machines and their workloads by migrating them to virtual server machines to implement green energy-efficient cloud data centers. To achieve this objective, we also introduced a novel Virtualized Task Scheduling Algorithm to manage and properly distribute the physical server machine workloads onto virtual server machines. The results are generated from a case study performed in Pakistan where the proposed server consolidation technique and virtualized task scheduling algorithm are applied on a tier-level data center. The results obtained from the case study demonstrate that there are annual power savings of 23,600 W and overall cost savings of US$78,362. The results also highlight that the utilization ratio of already existing physical server machines has increased to 30% compared to 10%, whereas the number of server machines has reduced to 50% contributing enormously toward huge power savings.

Community Health Workers (CHWs) as Innovators

Community health workers (CHWs) have a longstanding role in improving the health and well-being of underserved populations in resource-limited settings. CHWs are trusted in the communities they serve and are often able to see through solutions on community challenges that outside persons cannot. Notwithstanding, such solutions often must be low-cost, easily implementable, and permit knowledge gaps among CHWs to be filled via appropriate training. In this sense, use of cost-effective information technology (IT) solutions can be key to increasing access to knowledge for these community agents. This paper highlights insights gleaned from a pilot study performed in Detroit, Michigan with a group of CHWs in basic grant-writing training via an e-platform, the Community Health Innovator Program (CHIP). The results are discussed within the context of learning theory. It is concluded that e-platforms are necessary for CHWs to leverage knowledge from multiple sources in an adaptive environment towards addressing ever-evolving global health challenges.

Section 5: Decision Support, Knowledge Representation and Management: Free and Open Source Enabling Technologies for Patient-Centric, Guideline-Based Clinical Decision Support: A Survey

SummaryGuideline-based clinical decision support is an emerging paradigm to help reduce error, lower cost, and improve quality in evidence-based medicine. The free and open source (FOS) approach is a promising alternative for delivering cost-effective information technology (IT) solutions in health care. In this paper, we survey the current FOS enabling technologies for patient-centric, guideline-based care, and discuss the current trends and future directions of their role in clinical decision support.We searched PubMed, major biomedical informatics websites, and the web in general for papers and links related to FOS health care IT systems. We also relied on our background and knowledge for specific subtopics. We focused on the functionalities of guideline modeling tools, and briefly examined the supporting technologies for terminology, data exchange and electronic health record (EHR) standards.To effectively support patient-centric, guideline-based care, the computerized guidelines and protocols need to be integrated with existing clinical information systems or EHRs. Technologies that enable such integration should be accessible, interoperable, and scalable. A plethora of FOS tools and techniques for supporting different knowledge management and quality assurance tasks involved are available. Many challenges, however, remain in their implementation.There are active and growing trends of deploying FOS enabling technologies for integrating clinical guidelines, protocols, and pathways into the main care processes. The continuing development and maturation of such technologies are likely to make increasingly significant contributions to patient-centric, guidelinebased clinical decision support.

AMCIS 2007 Panel on IT Service Management: IT Service Management in the IS Curriculum

The fundamental function of information technology (IT), whether internal or external, is the costeffective provision of IT services that meet organizational needs and align with organizational strategy. With ever-increasing adoption of IT management “best practices,” industry now leads the academic community by recognizing the need for IT professionals educated in the IT service management (ITSM) processes -- processes directly associated with the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective IT services. This article presents a summary of panel member presentations and subsequent discussions at Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS) 2007 concerning the need to, and means for, incorporating ITSM concepts into business-school MIS/IS/CIS curricula. Panel members from industry strongly advocated the importance of including ITSM principles and concepts within business-school IS curricula. Academic members of the panel also articulated this need and described initiatives at their and other schools where ITSM concepts have been or are planned for inclusion in business school curricula at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. ITSM research opportunities, faculty preparedness, and possible resistance from within the IS academic community were additionally addressed.

Information technology and productivity: a comparison of Japanese and Asia-Pacific banks

Banks throughout Asia have achieved productivity improvement through information technology (IT) use. Retail and wholesale IT products positively influence productivity. IT use increases outputs and decreases costs. Both IT capital investments and IT human resources have a positive relationship to productivity. Japanese banks benefit less from IT use than Asia-Pacific banks. To improve, these banks should better utilize their IT human resources and capabilities and acquire more cost-effective IT from international sources. The positive impact of IT on productivity is difficult to determine in net profit and asset (predominantly loans) increases. However, both Japanese and Asia-Pacific banks can enhance productivity by increased spending on IT and better management of IT resources. This would increase their competitiveness through differentiation and customer service improvement, reduced costs, better risk avoidance, and maintaining the stability of their customer base and market share.

Information technology support for reengineering public administration: A conceptual framework

The growing complexity of the society and the need for government regulation of economic and social development is confronting public administration with a great deal of complex problems which may be hard to solve unless public administration becomes more efficient and cost-effective. As for developing countries, the high efficiency and cost-effectiveness of their public administration in place of the existing inefficiencies are equally important for sustaibable development. Thus, public administration in both industrialized and developing countries is increasingly charged with the responsibility of improving its performance but, at the same time, make it more cost-effective. This dilemma could be possibly resolved by reengineering public administration processes through innovative and cost-effective information technology (IT) support. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for information technology support in public administration. The framework conceptualizes public administration as policy planning, policy implementation, and policy administration; and proposes a three-tier architecture for support systems for the three aspects of policy management. Further, within each tier of support systems, the framework also proposes appropriate types of systems (such as decision support systems, executive support systems, expert systems, etc) for realizing appropriate support from IT. A phased approach to the implementation of this architecture and issues related to its application in developing countries are also discussed.

Information management support for international negotiations

This paper examines the information processing requirements that surround the international negotiations process. General problem-solving models and generic task taxonomies are explored to provide insight into this process, a process that can be characterized as iterative options analysis. The paper also identifies a set of existing and emerging information technologies that can support the negotiation process, technologies that range from electronic mail to group decision support systems. The premise of the paper is that cost-effective information technology can support many important negotiation tasks and that existing technology has been vastly under-exploited by negotiators and their staffs. A program for introducing and evaluating information technology is also proposed.