Future Information Infrastructure Research Articles

Practice and thinking of the informationized cabin hospitals during the novel coronavirus pneumonia period

Novel coronavirus pneumonia, which has emerged in Wuhan since the end of 2019, has posed a huge challenge for medical institutions in the city. Rapid completion of a number of cabin hospitals plays a vital role in preventing further spreading of the epidemic, by means of collecting and treating mild patients of the disease. This paper presents the key process of Tongji Hospital in its rapid informatization since it took over a cabin hospital. Based on the network architecture of the Tongji cloud platform, the shared service center is used to share data and integrate services between the cabin hospital and Tongji hospital. This practice can prevent cross-infection and improve service efficiency as well, hence offering a reference for future information infrastructure development of cabin hospitals. Key words: Novel coronavirus pneumonia; Cabin hospital; Informatization; Information sharing

Cloud service performance evaluation: status, challenges, and opportunities – a survey from the system modeling perspective

With rapid advancement of Cloud computing and networking technologies, a wide spectrum of Cloud services have been developed by various providers and utilized by numerous organizations as indispensable ingredients of their information systems. Cloud service performance has a significant impact on performance of the future information infrastructure. Thorough evaluation on Cloud service performance is crucial and beneficial to both service providers and consumers; thus forming an active research area. Some key technologies for Cloud computing, such as virtualization and the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), bring in special challenges to service performance evaluation. A tremendous amount of effort has been put by the research community to address these challenges and exciting progress has been made. Among the work on Cloud performance analysis, evaluation approaches developed with a system modeling perspective play an important role. However, related works have been reported in different sections of the literature; thus lacking a big picture that shows the latest status of this area. The objectives of this article is to present a survey that reflects the state of the art of Cloud service performance evaluation from the system modeling perspective. This articles also examines open issues and challenges to the surveyed evaluation approaches and identifies possible opportunities for future research in this important field.

Semantic web, ubiquitous computing, or internet of things? A macro-analysis of scholarly publications

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate concepts that are used in depicting future visions of society, as afforded by technology, to map the extent of their use, examine the level of their dominance in different research areas and geographic boundaries, identify potential overlaps, analyse their longitudinal growth, and examine whether any of the identified concepts has assumed an overarching position.Design/methodology/approach– In total, 14 concepts, each of which is used to depict visions of future information infrastructures, were identified. More than 20,000 scholarly documents related to 11 of these concepts (those with 20 or more documents) are analysed by various qualitative/quantitative methods.Findings– The concepts most referred to aresemantic webandubiquitous computing(all years), andinternet of things(Year 2013). Publications on some newer concepts (e.g.digital living,real world internet) are minimal. There are variations in the extent of use and preferred concepts based on geographic and disciplinary boundaries. The overlap in the use of these terms is minimal and none of these terms has assumed an overarching umbrella position.Research limitations/implications– This study is limited to scholarly publications; it would be relevant to also study the pattern of usage in governmental communications and policy documents.Social implications– By mapping multiplicity of concepts and the dispersion of discussions, the authors highlight the need for, and facilitate, a broader discussion of related social and societal implications.Originality/value– This paper is the first to present a collective of these related concepts and map the pattern of their occurrence and growth.

Design of DPSS based fiber bragg gratings and their application in all-optical encryption, OCDMA, optical steganography, and orthogonal-division multiplexing.

The future information infrastructure will be affected by limited bandwidth of optical networks, high energy consumption, heterogeneity of network segments, and security issues. As a solution to all problems, we advocate the use of both electrical basis functions (orthogonal prolate spheroidal basis functions) and optical basis functions, implemented as FBGs with orthogonal impulse response in addition to spatial modes. We design the Bragg gratings with orthogonal impulse responses by means of discrete layer peeling algorithm. The target impulse responses belong to the class of discrete prolate spheroidal sequences, which are mutually orthogonal regardless of the sequence order, while occupying the fixed bandwidth. We then design the corresponding encoders and decoders suitable for all-optical encryption, optical CDMA, optical steganography, and orthogonal-division multiplexing (ODM). Finally, we propose the spectral multiplexing-ODM-spatial multiplexing scheme enabling beyond 10 Pb/s serial optical transport networks.

A New Robust Technique for Constructing Intelligent Environment using Video Image

AbstractA new robust technique for constructing intelligent environment with video image for mobile robots is proposed. The state of the art of the technique is an approach using autonomous extraction of feature from video images which captured in daily activities. Intelligent space embedded several sensors for supporting human activities are expected to expand future information infrastructure. However, in terms of practically, the robustness and computational cost are significant issues. In order to extract the feature robustly and to resolve an issue of tradeoff between accuracy and computational cost, support vector machine (SVM) is implemented for the classification and detection. Experiments in real world are conducted to evaluate the algorithm. The results show that the technique enables to detect image tag for constructing intelligent space.

A policy analysis of Korean smart grid project

This study provides an overview of the socio-technical vision of smart grid project by analysing Korea's ubiquitous city development cases. The study approaches the concept of ubiquitous computing by illustrating current ongoing projects to give socio-technical insights on the nature and scope of ubiquitous computing. A case study was conducted on the ongoing projects. Qualitative data were collected from archival documents, drawing on the retrospective data of diverse stakeholders: strategic policy groups, user groups, technical groups and functional groups. This study illustrates how ubiquitous computing is interpreted and reflected in South Korea's policy-making arena. The findings of this study provide a prospect toward a future information infrastructure in the context of dynamic socio-technical changes.

Next generation of information infrastructure: A comparative case study of Korea versus the United States of America

AbstractThis study compares the United States of America and Korea's cases of national information infrastructure (NII) development, focusing on the role of the governments in the development of their NIIs and on the realization of the next generation of information infrastructure vision. The important similarities and differences can be seen by comparison on sociotechnical dimensions: government function, histories, visions, policy design, implementation plans, and realities and prospects. Findings show different patterns of NII development, providing insights for the next generation of NIIs. This study provides a prospect towards future information infrastructure needs in the context of dynamic sociotechnical changes.

A Framework for Building Scientific Knowledge Grids Applied to Thermochemical Tables

An important part of enabling the future information infrastructure is to provide convenient services for application users that make such an environment highly functional and easy to use for the non-expert. In other words, the scientist should be able to focus on the science but should have sophisticated tools at hand that enable new and enhanced modalities in which science can be performed. We describe a general architecture that provides access to scientific applications. We demonstrate how such services can interact with each other and be reused by the scientific application architect to orchestrate Grid services. Our architecture is implemented by reusing concepts, infrastructures, and middleware from Web and Grid services, as well as from the newest Globus Toolkit and the Java CoG Kit. We apply our general architecture to a specific application: Active Thermochemical Tables. This application demonstrates a number of interesting and future-oriented uses, such as the need for batch processing, interactive and collaborative steering, use of multiple platforms,visualization through large displays, and access via a portal framework. Besides the innovative use of the Grid and Web services, we also provide a novel algorithmic contribution to scientific disciplines that use thermochemical tables. Specifically, we modified the original approach to constructing thermochemical tables to include an iterative process of refinement leading to increased accuracy. We have designed a variety of access environments including a shell, a Grid desktop, and a portal for accessing the set of services provided, which include the display of network dependencies between the reactions a chemist may be interested in and interactive querying of associated species data. Modalities that need to be supported are the protection of intellectual property, the creation of metadata and information shared with and gathered by the community, and easy access to the service by the application scientists.

Model of an Information and Decision Centre for Developing Countries

Developing Countries (DCs) are typically faced with weak infrastructures. The lack of reliable transport and communication systems compounds the general misery of disease, ignorance and poverty which in most African DCs has not only not been overcome - as had been hoped for at the time of independence from colonial powers - but has become worse in the last three decades. Partly, this deterioration must be attributed to a fundamental lack of information and inappropriate decision- making practices, characterized by distinct deficiencies with regard to stakeholder participation, transparency and accountability.Information and Decision Centres (InfoDeCs) are designed to help DCs address common problems, resulting from over-centralization, lack of power-sharing, insufficient participation of civil society in development planning, and uncontrollable migration from rural to urban centres due to the typical neglect of rural development.The authors have developed the InfoDeC concept as an expansion of the Multipurpose Community Telecentre (MCT) approach started by IDRC, ITU, and UNESCO in five African countries and have designed a low- cost prototype of an InfoDeC for the district capital of Bagamoyo in Tanzania. The design was based on the University of Dar es Salaam's management decision centre implemented in 1996. The paper presents reasons and rationale for InfoDeCs as intelligent hubs of the future information infrastructure of DCs, summarizes their technical and organizational functions, and assesses their potential for economic and social development.

Supporting IP on the ATM networks: an overview

In the past 10 years, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology has emerged as a key component of next-generation networks. It can offer unprecedented scalability and performance/cost ratio, as well as the ability to reserve network resources for real-time traffic and support for multimedia and multipoint communications. Obviously, in the future information infrastructure, ATM will play an important role. However, today's information infrastructure, e.g. the vast installed base of local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) is constructed by using internetwork layer protocols such as IP, IPX and AppleTalk to internetwork the subnets. Therefore, a key to ATM's success and the Internet's further success will be the ability to allow for interoperation between existing network technologies and ATM. The key to such connectivity is the use of the same network layer protocols, such as IP and IPX, on both existing networks and on ATM, since it is the function of the network layer to provide a uniform network view to higher-level protocols and applications [RFC1943, IP over ATM: A Framework Document; A. Alles, ATM Internetworking, Cisco Systems, Inc., May, 1995]. Until now, there have been various different ways of running IP across an ATM network, e.g. LAN Emulation and Multiprotocol over ATM standardized by ATM Forum, classical IP over ATM and Next Hop Resolution Protocol proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, IP Switching implemented by Ipsilon Networks Inc., Tag Switching presented by Cisco Systems Inc., etc. This paper gives an overview and an assessment on these proposed schemes.

The Tenet experience and the design of protocols for integrated-services internetworks

The research done by the Tenet Group in multimedia networking has reached a point where it may be useful to reflect on the significance of its results for the current debate on how integrated-services internetworks should be designed. Such reflections constitute the main subject of this paper. The principles of the work and the conclusions reached so far by the Tenet researchers are discussed in the light of the conflict between the two major technologies being proposed to build future information infrastructures: namely, the Internet and the ATM technologies. The Tenet approach suggests one feasible way for resolving the conflict to the advantage of all the users of those infrastructures. This paper discusses various fundamental aspects of integrated-services network design: the choice of the service model, the type of charging policy to be adopted, and the selection of a suitable architecture.

Future information infrastructure as a base for the knowledge society ‐ a comparison of librarianship in East and West

The cultural determination of information behaviour is deeply influencing the way information is looked for, used and handled. Therefore, libraries in Central and Eastern Europe show, to a certain extent, the same characteristics due to the centralist information environment of the previous socialist rule. However, the deeply rooted belief in education and knowledge which was the pursued idea, regardless of frequent misuse by the Communist government may, in comparison to Western countries, ease the way into a knowledge society. The newly created information infrastructure in all European countries due to the technological development which will change libraries, for example in Germany, could be useless, or maybe even dangerous, without being embedded in a solid base of learning and knowledge.

The Internet: a Paradigmatic Rupture in Cumulative Telecom Evolution

The paper investigates the impact the Internet may have in the evolution of telecommunications networks. First, we show why the Internet, emerging from a different cognitive perception of the data communication problem, has led to a new network architecture based on: (i) the distribution of the ‘network intelligence’ to the user equipment; (ii) the very cost-effective ‘statistical sharing’ of the network resources (i. e. getting the whole bandwidth of the network for short periods of time); (iii) the establishment of an Internet Protocol (IP) ‘gateway’ facilitating interoperability between heterogeneous infrastructure facilities—instead of the operator—controlled homogeneity of the telecom networks; and (iv) an ‘adaptative’ way for open standards—setting. Second, we suggest that two technological trajectories (telecom— ‘creative accumulation’ and Internet—‘creative destruction’) should dynamically co-exist henceforth and compete for market shares—possibly during later evolutionary stages generating relatively different national or even localized (e. g. local providers) trajectories of evolution (with differing interfaces and standards). Furthermore, we explore the question of whether the Internet’s interoperability model may be a useful policy paradigm for future information infrastructures, and we start to discuss the implications of requisite interoperability on the comunications industry‘s structure itself. Overall, our preliminary observations raise questions about the possibilities of two ‘technological trajectories’ co-existing, and the relationship between the interoperability and learning conditions in the network industries.

Universal service in future information infrastructure (<Special feature>Information access and geography)

Universal service in future information infrastructure (<Special feature>Information access and geography)

UK reply to Japanese fifth generation project

In the past 10 years, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM) technology has emerged as a key component of next-generation networks. It can offer unprecedented scalability and performance/cost ratio, as well as the ability to reserve network resources for real-time traffic and support for multimedia and multipoint communications. Obviously, in the future information infrastructure, ATM will play an important role. However, today's information infrastructure, e.g. the vast installed base of local area networks (LANs) and wide area networks (WANs) is constructed by using internetwork layer protocols such as IP, IPX and AppleTalk to internetwork the subnets. Therefore, a key to ATM's success and the Internet's further success will be the ability to allow for interoperation between existing network technologies and ATM. The key to such connectivity is the use of the same network layer protocols, such as IP and IPX, on both existing networks and on ATM, since it is the function of the network layer to provide a uniform network view to higher-level protocols and applications [RFC1943, IP over ATM: A Framework Document; A. Alles, ATM Internetworking, Cisco Systems, Inc., May, 1995]. Until now, there have been various different ways of running IP across an ATM network, e.g. LAN Emulation and Multiprotocol over ATM standardized by ATM Forum, classical IP over ATM and Next Hop Resolution Protocol proposed by the Internet Engineering Task Force, IP Switching implemented by Ipsilon Networks Inc., Tag Switching presented by Cisco Systems Inc., etc. This paper gives an overview and an assessment on these proposed schemes.