High Level Of Interoperability Research Articles

Artificial intelligence-based voice assistant for BIM data management

Existing systems that employ Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) technology to retrieve information from the BIM model fail to provide remote interaction, retrieve a wide range of data, and automate the entire process. This is particularly a problem for users with disabilities. The paper offers a two-way, automated, and agnostic solution to this theoretical and methodological gap. A ‘Proof of Concept’ prototype was developed using Amazon Alexa – as the AI voice assistant platform – to test the applicability. The outcome shows that the created and the retrieved information is valid. Furthermore, there is a high level of interoperability among the components of the proposed solution, including the AI voice assistant interface and mediation environment to convert verbal requests and retrieve information to CSV files. Future research will extend the created solution to retrieve and access information from a BIM cloud model.

UMap: A Free Open-Source Alternative to Google My Maps

Since their release in 2005, Google Maps-based tools have become the de facto solutions for a variety of online cartographic projects. Their success has been accompanied by a range of critiques denouncing the individualistic market-based logic imposed by these mapping services. Alternative options to this dominant model have been released since then; uMap is one of them. uMap is a free, open-source online mapping platform that builds on OpenStreetMap to enable anyone to easily publish web maps individually or collaboratively. In this paper, we propose to reflect on the potential and limits of uMap based on our own experiences of deploying it in six different mapping projects. Through these experiences, uMap appears particularly well-suited for collaborative mapping projects, due to its ease in connecting to remote data and its high level of interoperability with a range of other applications. On the other hand, uMap seems less relevant for crowdmapping projects, due to its lack of built-in options to manage and control public contributions. Finally, the open-source philosophy of uMap, combined with its simplicity of use and its strong collaborative capacity, make it a great option for activist mapping projects as well as for pedagogical purposes to teach a range of topics including online collaborative cartography.

An open system architecture framework for interoperability

The interoperability of systems is a critical factor for firms to make informed operational and strategic decisions and achieve a competitive edge in the marketplace. As a result, open systems that have a higher level of interoperability with secured and stable operations have significant relevance in today's global economy. Interoperability is accomplished through appropriate system architecture and design. Thus, to achieve the open system interoperability, this paper proposes a framework that looks at the system architecture at various levels of abstraction/implementation and identifies the required attributes at each of these levels. This framework can be used as a reference to analyse and determine interoperability requirements at all levels and prioritise the required aspects of interoperability.

METHODS AND MEANS OF ENSURING THE INTEROPERABILITY OF THE COMPONENTS OF THE NATIONAL GEOSPATIAL DATA INFRASTRUCTURE

Interoperability is one of the key characteristics of the national geospatial data infrastructure (NSDI), on which depends the effectiveness of the interaction of holders, producers and users of geospatial data in the network of geoportals. The article substantiates the methods and means of achieving a high level of interoperability of the components of the Ukraine NSDI on the basis of ensuring the consistency of geospatial data supplied by different data producers, standardization of metadata and interfaces of geoinformation services. It is established that the bases of the legislative and organizational level of interoperability are defined in the Law of Ukraine "On the national geospatial data infrastructure " and in the "Procedure for the operation of NSDI".
 To ensure the interoperability of the components of the Ukraine NSDI at the semantic and technical levels, it is necessary to develop a set of technical regulations that define common requirements for: composition and structure of metadata, interfaces and functions of geographic information services, compatibility of geospatial data sets, classification systems, coding and unique identification of geospatial objects, open data exchange formats. These technical regulations should be based on the consistent and comprehensive implementation of the methodology of the basic international standards of the ISO 19100 Geographic Information / Geomatics series, the effectiveness of which has been confirmed by the successful implementation of NSDI in many countries of the world.

AI-Assisted Service Virtualization and Flow Management Framework for 6G-Enabled Cloud-Software-Defined Network-Based IoT

The sixth-generation (6G) communication technology provides a high level of interoperability through terahertz data transfer and latency-less service sharing. Due to its interoperable nature, the integration of heterogeneous networks, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud radio access networks (CRANs), is performed at ease. This integration is managed using software-defined networks (SDNs) for managing the Quality of Service (QoS) experience of the users, irrespective of the application. This manuscript proposes the service virtualization and flow management framework (SVFMF) for the reliable utilization of resources in the 6G-cloud environment. The imbalance in a service request and response due to overloaded and idle virtual resources is addressed in this framework. For this purpose, this framework endorses service virtualization and user allocation modules for mitigating the drawbacks of imbalanced service allocations. Linear decision making of the service virtualization process helps to reduce the computation and service discovery by identifying overloaded services and performing a reallocation. The purpose of user allocation is to distribute the service requests to the idle service providers to reduce the prolonged wait time of the increasing user requests. The performance of the proposed framework is verified using experimental analyses, for the metrics service discovery and computation time, service failure ratio, and flows. The reliability of SVFMF is proved by varying the density of users, virtual machines, service requests, and user allocation per virtual machine, respectively.

ПРОФЕСІЙНА МОБІЛЬНІСТЬ ЯК ЧИННИК ГОТОВНОСТІ ПРИКОРДОННИКІВ ДО ДІЯЛЬНОСТІ ЗА ФАХОМ: ВІТЧИЗНЯНИЙ ТА ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКИЙ ДОСВІД

The article presents an analysis and generalization of approaches to the nature and content of professional mobility. It is concluded that professional mobility is directly interrelated with readiness to work in the specialty, since these two concepts have common elements in the structure, in particular professional knowledge, abilities, skills and professionally important qualities. Taking into account the results of the analysis of research related to the problem of professional mobility, it was found out that this concept can be defined as readiness and ability to work in the context of transformation of professional (production, service) tasks, development of new specialties or changing them. Professional mobility covers the ability to successfully switch to another activity or change types of activities, effectively use the system of generalized professional techniques to perform any tasks in the professional sphere, and it is relatively easy to move from one type of activity to another. For professional mobility, it is important to have a high level of generalized professional knowledge, experience in improving them and obtaining them independently. The results of the review of publications on the research topic suggest that there are two types of mobility – horizontal and vertical. Horizontal mobility involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another, which is at the same level, as well as a change of place of residence. As for vertical mobility, it involves the transition of an individual or social object from one social position to another. It was found out that mobility is an integrative property that is formed and developed during practical, educational, social, socio-cultural activities of a person and provides him with the opportunity to realize his inclinations, abilities, opportunities. It was found that in the context of training of border guard agencies' personnel in the EU, professional mobility of border guards is ensured by their high level of interoperability, which is a necessary condition for effective organization of protection of EU external borders by representatives of various European border guard agencies. The most common form of ensuring the professional mobility of European border guards is working within the Permanent Corps of the European Border and Coast Guard Agency Frontex. The training of Ukrainian Border Guard Agency's staff in the context of European integration requires the study of the experience of border agencies in EU countries to provide conditions for the development of professional mobility of border guards, which requires further thorough study of the outlined topic.

BIM Methodology Applied in Structural Design: Analysis of Interoperability in ArchiCAD/ETABS Process

The Building Information Modeling (BIM) methodology considers the representation of the building as a virtual BIM model and its main concept is to centralize all the information generated throughout the development of the project. Structural design involves a set of tasks, namely, structure definition, structural analyses, and after the generation of drawings and technical documentation. In all processes, it is required confidence in data transferred between the BIM systems used, and to support this, a high level of interoperability is claimed. The present study aims to evaluate the degree of interoperability between the BIM-based platforms, ArchiCAD (Graphisoft), Revit (Autodesk), and ETABS (CSI). Two-way data flows between these systems were explored using distinct transfer strategies: add-in applications; Industry Foundation Classes (IFC) standard data format. The research made allows identifying the most appropriate procedure to be adopted by structural engineers, given the interoperability limitations verified, enabling the establishment of a practical guide of sequential procedures on the development of structural designs using BIM tools.

Achieving System‐of‐Systems Interoperability Levels Using Linked Data and Ontologies

AbstractInteroperability is a key concern in systems‐of‐systems (SoS). Numerous frameworks have been proposed to deal with this, but they are generally on a high level and do not provide specific guidance for technical implementation. However, in the context of simulation, the Levels of Conceptual Interoperability Model (LCIM) has been proposed. Also, the semantic web initiative has been introduced to provide description logic information to web pages. This paper investigates how these two concepts can be combined into a general approach for SoS interoperability. It also expands on the LCIM model by providing more details about the world models of a system and its content on the higher levels of interoperability. The combination is illustrated using an example of autonomous vehicles, and experiences from other applications are also discussed.

Alien Wavelengths Over Optical Transport Networks

To reduce network infrastructure cost, network operators want to integrate interoperable and open transponders, since these transponders allow application of the latest technologies over legacy networks at a competitive price. This process of using third-party transponders in a given network is commonly called “alien wavelength” support. Yet, moving toward interoperability raises several challenges: incompatible physical parameters, vendor lock-in, and proprietary software. Manual set up of alien wavelengths has been demonstrated, but automating this process is essential to enable alien wavelength operation in the field. This paper sheds light on the prevailing literature on the concept of alien wavelengths, taking into account many challenges that accompany the concept on its various levels. We particularly focus on several approaches proposed in the literature: protocol message translation, controller cooperation, and open line systems, including our own proposals, an OpenROADM-based approach and a RSVP-TE-based approach. We analyze these approaches with respect to several criteria: applicability to legacy equipment, added operational cost, and the offered level of interoperability and openness. According to these characteristics, we note that, even though some non-interoperable approaches might be applicable to legacy equipment and easy to maintain, they remain infeasible with advanced alien scenarios (high level of interoperability). Finally, a combination has to be made between at least two of the given approaches in order to get the optimal solution.

Factors Influencing Interoperability Level Required for the Implementation of T-Government in Saudi Arabia

Governments around the world have invested significant sums of money on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of services being provided to their citizens. However, they have not achieved the desired results because of the lack of interoperability between different government entities. Therefore, many governments have started shifting away from the original concept of e-Government towards a much more transformational approach that encompasses the entire relationship between different government departments and users of public services, which can be termed as transformational government (t-Government). This implementation of t-Government requires a high level of interoperability between government organisations. In this paper, a model is proposed to explore and investigates the key factors that influence interoperability required for the implementation of t-Government in Saudi Arabian context from four key areas, namely, organisational, technological, political and social using institutional theory as a lens. This model was developed comprising the effect of six main constructs: technological compatibility, organizational compatibility, governance readiness, citizen centricity and e-Government program on interoperability required for the implementation of t-Government. The model factors, relationships, and hypotheses stemmed from the literature on Information Sharing, Information Integration, G2G, interoperability and t-Government models.The results show that technological compatibility, organizational compatibility, and governance readiness have a positive impact on the interoperability required for the implementation of t-Government in this particular context. Unexpectedly, it indicates that citizen centricity has negative impact on the interoperability required for the implementation of t-Government. It also shows that there is a direct and positive impact from e-Government program (Yesser) to technological compatibility and governance readiness. Moreover, it shows that there is a direct and positive impact from citizen centricity to e-Government program (Yesser). Unexpectedly, the results indicate that e-Government program (Yesser) has no impact on the interoperability required for the implementation of t-Government. It also indicates that the e-Government program (Yesser) doesn’t affect organizational compatibility.This paper provides a model for creating interoperability between government organisations to help e-Government officials and policy makers to identify the key factors that can affect the interoperability level required for the implementation of t-Government, and examines how these issues could be treated in practice. It also provides a guideline to researchers with regard to the impact of these identified factors on interoperability required for t-Government implementation.

The Scholix Framework for Interoperability in Data-Literature Information Exchange

The Scholix Framework (SCHOlarly LInk eXchange) is a high level interoperability framework for exchanging information about the links between scholarly literature and data, as well as between datasets. Over the past decade, publishers, data centers, and indexing services have agreed on and implemented numerous bilateral agreements to establish bidirectional links between research data and the scholarly literature. However, because of the considerable differences inherent to these many agreements, there is very limited interoperability between the various solutions. This situation is fueling systemic inefficiencies and limiting the value of these, separated, sets of links. Scholix, a framework proposed by the RDA/WDS Publishing Data Services working group, envisions a universal interlinking service and proposes the technical guidelines of a multi-hub interoperability framework. Hubs are natural collection and aggregation points for data-literature information from their respective communities. Relevant hubs for the communities of data centers, repositories, and journals include DataCite, OpenAIRE, and Crossref, respectively. The framework respects existing community-specific practices while enabling interoperability among the hubs through a common conceptual model, an information model and open exchange protocols. The proposed framework will make research data, and the related literature, easier to find and easier to interpret and reuse, and will provide additional incentives for researchers to share their data.

E-Government Information Systems Interoperability in Developing Countries

Objective: This study examines the factors that influence information system (IS) interoperability of e-Government focusing on IS Interoperability as the key concept to reach successful e-Government implementation in Jordan.
 Methodology: Use of qualitative methods of inquiry has been made to explore study variables and their relationships. A variety of published literatures related to scope of the study has been reviewed along with analyzing the e-Government strategy in Jordan during period 2014-2016. The interoperability levels of e-Government IS have been discussed in this paper. Finally, significant barriers that affect IS interoperability have been identified along with the factors that can drive it successful implementation.
 Findings: Technical, semantic, and organizational interoperability are main stages for successful e-Government IS interoperability. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure, top management support, human resources, data and information, security and privacy, and business process have been found as the major obstacles. Whereas, high level interoperability goals, commitment of government bodies, and customer focus have been identified as main success factors that lead to e-Government IS interoperability. The study suggests that strategies and work process should be aligned, common standards and knowledge should be shared to move towards e-transformation in Jordan.
 Implications: This study can be starting point for the real life practical solutions for successful implementation of e-Government conceptual frame work. Finding of the study can be used to generalize about the factors that lead to success of IS interoperability within government agencies in other developing countries. This study enriches existing literature in this context. On practical side, the study contributes by identifying IS interoperability success factors and barriers within government agencies. The proposed conceptual model is first stage in the process of understanding factors that influence e-Government IS interoperability. Further studies may be needed to empirically evaluate the proposed conceptual model.

개방형 BIM 기반 IFC 모델을 이용한 실내공간정보 시각화 도구개발 및 활용방안 연구

MOLIT (Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport) authorized Indoor Spatial Information as Basic spatial information in 2013. It became a legal evidence for constructing and managing Indoor Spatial Information. Although it has a little advantage to utilize as service level that Indoor Spatial Information by laser scan or measurement, it has a lot of problems such as consuming many resources, requiring additional progresses for inputting Object Information. In conclusion, it is inefficient to utilize for the maintenance and domestic AEC/FM field. The purposes of this study is to output Indoor Spatial Information by operating IFC model which based on open BIM and to improve availability of Indoor Spatial Information with data visualization. The open-sources of IFC Exporter, a inner program of Revit (Autodesk Inc), is used to output Indoor Spatial Information. Directs 3D Library is also operated to visualize Indoor Spatial Information. It is possible to inter-operate between XML format and the objects of Indoor Spatial Information. It can be utilized in various field as well. For example COBie linkage in facility management, construction of geo-database using air-photogrammetry of UAV (Unmaned Areal Vehicle), the simulation of large-scale military operations and the simulation of large-scale evacuation. The method that is purposed in this study has outstanding advantages such as conformance with national spatial information policy, high level of interoperability as indoor spatial information objects based on IFC, convenience of editing information, light level of data and simplifying progress of producing information.

Design and Experiment of a Collaborative Planning Service for NetCentric International Brigade Command

Complex operational environments require improved tactical mission command capabilities with a high level of interoperability among coalition control and command (C2) systems. This paper focuses on two areas of interest: decision support based on automated planning and Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) for rapid service development. Previous experiments were performed bilaterally by US, France and Germany to focus on collaborative mission planning using Web Services (WSs). The results reported herein were obtained from a unified experiment performed by US, France and Germany involving a common scenario. The operational benefit from the experimentation has been to improve mutual understanding among allied forces, to dynamically plan for assistance among ground support troops (logistics, MEDEVAC, and other areas) as well as to improve their coordination. The effort addressed system design, and integration within an experimental framework. It enabled the evolution of the CERDEC Mission Command Gateway (MCG) architecture as well as a constraint based planner ORTAC, developed by French DGA and Sagem. It takes into account near real-time multimodal Situation Awareness and readiness status from tactical edge units. The trilateral experiment, entitled From Data to Decision included Net-Centric manned and unmanned assets from all three nations (France Germany US) operating as a cohesive coalition force while preserving command and support relationships as required through their respective chains of command.

Implementation of linked data in the life sciences at BioHackathon 2011.

BackgroundLinked Data has gained some attention recently in the life sciences as an effective way to provide and share data. As a part of the Semantic Web, data are linked so that a person or machine can explore the web of data. Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the standard means of implementing Linked Data. In the process of generating RDF data, not only are data simply linked to one another, the links themselves are characterized by ontologies, thereby allowing the types of links to be distinguished. Although there is a high labor cost to define an ontology for data providers, the merit lies in the higher level of interoperability with data analysis and visualization software. This increase in interoperability facilitates the multi-faceted retrieval of data, and the appropriate data can be quickly extracted and visualized. Such retrieval is usually performed using the SPARQL (SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language) query language, which is used to query RDF data stores. For the database provider, such interoperability will surely lead to an increase in the number of users.ResultsThis manuscript describes the experiences and discussions shared among participants of the week-long BioHackathon 2011 who went through the development of RDF representations of their own data and developed specific RDF and SPARQL use cases. Advice regarding considerations to take when developing RDF representations of their data are provided for bioinformaticians considering making data available and interoperable.ConclusionsParticipants of the BioHackathon 2011 were able to produce RDF representations of their data and gain a better understanding of the requirements for producing such data in a period of just five days. We summarize the work accomplished with the hope that it will be useful for researchers involved in developing laboratory databases or data analysis, and those who are considering such technologies as RDF and Linked Data.

Organizing for Emergencies - Issues in Wildfire Fighting in Croatia

Croatia’s accession to the European Union implies inevitable changes in the national emergency management system. New requirements for adjustment in accordance with the EU standards and practices also apply to the fire- services organization. Harmonious functioning of a large number of relatively autonomous organizations related to the National Protection and Rescue Directorate necessitates clear decision-making authority and coordination mechanisms as well as a high level of interoperability and core competencies development. This paper gives an overview of the Croatian fire protection organization along with its accompanying legislation, followed by an analysis of identified problems, especially those concerning fighting of wildfire. In our research a survey questionnaire comprised of Likert-scale items was used to assess the attitudes and experiences of trained fire department members. The respondents reported a relatively low evaluation of effectiveness and appropriateness of the following key fire service attributes: organizational structure, legislation and firefighting logistics support. From the obtained results guidelines can be drawn for possible redesign of the emergency management organization, especially those concerning the fire protection service.

Design, programming and orchestration of heterogeneous manufacturing systems through VR-powered remote collaboration

Modern manufacturing systems are often composed of a variety of highly customized units and specifically designed manufacturing cells. Optimization of assembly and training of staff requires a series of demo installations and excessive use of costly operational resources. In some cases, components are located at different sites, making the orchestration of the whole system even more difficult.Virtual Reality (VR) collaboration environments offer a solution by enabling high fidelity testing and training of complex manufacturing systems. On the other hand, such platforms are difficult to implement in an engineering perspective, as they are required to provide reliable, standard interfaces towards both robotic components and human operators.The VirCA (Virtual Collaboration Arena) platform is a software framework that supports various means of collaboration through the use of 3D augmented/virtual reality as a communication medium. VirCA offers functions for the high-level interoperability of heterogeneous components in a wide range of domains, spanning from research & development, through remote education to orchestration and management of industrial processes in manufacturing applications. This paper provides an overview of the industrial requirements behind high-fidelity virtual collaboration and demonstrates how the VirCA platform meets these requirements. Use cases are provided to illustrate the usability of the platform. HighlightsThe paper identifies the synergies of recent advances in Future Internet and ICT.Surveys the need of high-fidelity virtual collaboration for industrial robotics.Introduces the VirCA platform as a remote collaboration and orchestration framework.Shows the integration of ontologies and CogInfoCom methods into industrial setups.Presents use case examples of knowledge-driven automation scenarios based on VirCA.

200th ENMC International Workshop “European Reference Networks: Recommendations and Criteria in the Neuromuscular field”, 18–20 October 2013, Naarden, the Netherlands

200th ENMC International Workshop “European Reference Networks: Recommendations and Criteria in the Neuromuscular field”, 18–20 October 2013, Naarden, the Netherlands

Applying model-driven engineering to the development of Rich Internet Applications for Business Intelligence

Business Intelligence (BI) applications have been gradually ported to the Web in search of a global platform for the consumption and publication of data and services. On the Internet, apart from techniques for data/knowledge management, BI Web applications need interfaces with a high level of interoperability (similar to the traditional desktop interfaces) for the visualisation of data/knowledge. In some cases, this has been provided by Rich Internet Applications (RIA). The development of these BI RIAs is a process traditionally performed manually and, given the complexity of the final application, it is a process which might be prone to errors. The application of model-driven engineering techniques can reduce the cost of development and maintenance (in terms of time and resources) of these applications, as they demonstrated by other types of Web applications. In the light of these issues, the paper introduces the Sm4RIA-B methodology, i.e., a model-driven methodology for the development of RIA as BI Web applications. In order to overcome the limitations of RIA regarding knowledge management from the Web, this paper also presents a new RIA platform for BI, called [email protected], which extends the functionalities of traditional RIAs by means of Semantic Web technologies and B2B techniques. Finally, we evaluate the whole approach on a case study--the development of a social network site for an enterprise project manager.

StarFL – a modularised metadata language for sensor descriptions

An ever-increasing number of sensor resources are being exposed via the World Wide Web to become part of the Digital Earth. Discovery, selection and use of these sensors and their observations require a robust sensor information model, but the consistent description of sensor metadata is a complex and difficult task. Currently, the only available robust model is SensorML, which is intentionally designed in a very generic way. Due to this genericness, interoperability can hardly be achieved without the definition of application profiles that further constrain the use and expressiveness of the root language. So far, such SensorML profiles have only been developed up to a limited extent. This work describes a new approach for defining sensor metadata, the Starfish Fungus Language (StarFL) model. This language follows a more restrictive approach and incorporates concepts from the recently published Semantic Sensor Network Ontology to overcome the key issues users are experiencing with SensorML. StarFL defines a restricted vocabulary and model for sensor metadata to achieve a high level of interoperability and a straightforward reusability of sensor descriptions.