Information Expert Systems Research Articles

Springer computing special issue: adaptation in service-oriented and Cloud Computing

Service-oriented computing has enabled the seamless integration of existing software in a unifiedmanner. Moreover, it has enabled a common paradigm accepted and well understood by both business and information systems experts, on the one hand, and computer science and IT providers on the other. The service paradigm allowed for better interaction between these communities, which inevitably led to improved cooperation and united efforts towards enabling businesses with the appropriate IT support. Since recently, technologies enabling service-oriented architectures and service-based systems are considered main stream by the major IT providers. Despite the enormous support of the service-oriented paradigm however, there are still challenges identified by both industry and academia. In the last years, one of the major challenges in service-orientation has been adaptation. The literature shows a broad spectrum of research ranging from adaptation on the level of services,service compositions, or service middleware, to approaches tailored for particular domains. Significant research results have been presented in the areas of engineering of adaptable service-based systems and systematic approaches for supporting their whole life cycle, adaptation mechanisms and adaptation needs, realization in terms of technologies and tools, identification of best practices andprinciples, defining relationships to non-functional properties, context and monitoring. Existing literature has identified adaptation as current and future challenge in particular with respect to distributed service-oriented systems for different application domains. The current focus on Cloud computing broadened this spectrum even further. Besides, the relationship between service-based application and Cloud Computing provided an additional motivation for future research in the direction of adaptability of service-based systems.

Perspectives on the enablers of e-heath adoption: an international interview study of leading practitioners

Studies examining the application of information technology to the delivery of health-care services often highlight the anticipated benefits. In consequence, the benefits of health-care information technology adoption, often referred to as 'e-health', are widely reported yet there is limited empirical evidence as to how such benefits can be realized. Design and implementation guidelines have been considered from a socio-technical perspective and there is support for the successful application of these principles. There are also some global surveys on the topic, but these often report only statistical data and lack richness of content. This study draws on existing literature to examine whether the principles of health-care information technology adoption are currently applied in practice. The paper presents a timely international analysis of the drivers, critical enablers and successful deployment strategies for e-health from the perspective of leading practitioners. The study considers the adoption of e-health in 15 countries. A qualitative research design was used and semistructured interviews were conducted with 38 thought leaders with expertise in health-care information systems and technology. The study presents a comparative analysis of the lessons learned from implementing, integrating and embedding e-health in practice, and presents a four-phase approach from the perspective of practitioners for the accelerated deployment of e-health systems: (i) develop a strategic approach, (ii) engage the workforce, (iii) capitalize on information technology and (iv) partner with the patient/citizen.

Health Impact Assessment of Free Immunization Program in Jinju City, Korea

ObjectivesThis study was conducted to assess the potential health impacts and improve the quality of the free immunization program in Jinju City by maximizing the predicted positive health gains and minimizing the negative health risks.MethodsA steering committee was established in September 2010 to carry out the health impact assessment (HIA) and began the screening and scoping stages. In the appraisal stage, analysis of secondary data, a literature review, case studies, geographic information systems analysis, a questionnaire, and expert consultations were used. The results of the data collection and analyses were discussed during a workshop, after which recommendations were finalized in a written report.ResultsIncreased access to immunization, comprehensive services provided by physicians, the strengthened role of the public health center in increasing immunization rates and services, and the ripple effect to other neighboring communities were identified as potential positive impacts. On the other hand, the program might be inaccessible to rural regions with no private clinics where there are more at-risk children, vaccine management and quality control at the clinics may be poor, and vaccines may be misused. Recommendations to maximize health gains and minimize risks were separately developed for the public health center and private clinics.ConclusionsThe HIA provided an opportunity for stakeholders to comprehensively overview the potential positive and negative impacts of the program before it was implemented. An HIA is a powerful tool that should be used when developing and implementing diverse health-related policies and programs in the community.

Integrating remotely sensed data, GIS and expert knowledge to update object-based land use/land cover information

Remote-sensing technology provides a powerful means for land use/land cover (LU/LC) monitoring at global and regional scales. However, it is more efficient and effective to combine remote-sensing measurements with a geographic information system (GIS) database and expert knowledge for change updating than to use remote-sensing technology alone. In this article, these different sources of information are integrated in the proposed framework, which is able to provide rapid updating of LU/LC information. An object-based data analysis is adopted for thematic mapping, taking both spectral and spatial properties into consideration. An expert knowledge coding is introduced and combined quantitatively with other evidence provided by remotely sensed data and the GIS database. A case study using Landsat Thematic Mapper (TM) datasets demonstrated an overall successful LU/LC map updating and a satisfactory change detection using the proposed change-updating framework.

Smart health and wellbeing [Trends & Controversies

In light of such overwhelming interest from governments and academia in adopting and advancing IT for effective healthcare, there are great opportunities for researchers and practitioners alike to invest efforts in conducting innovative and high-impact healthcare IT research. This IEEE Intelligent Systems Trends and Controversies (T&C) Department hopes to raise awareness and highlight selected recent research that helps move us toward such goals. This department includes three articles on Smart Health and Wellbeing from distinguished experts in computer science, information systems, and medicine. Each article presents unique perspectives, advanced computational methods, and selected results and examples.

Automated line search in molecular spectra based on nonparametric statistical methods: Regularization in estimating parameters of spectral lines

The application of pattern-recognition methods to automated processing of spectroscopic information is described. Model shapes of spectral lines are fitted by the least squares method with a regularizing addition. Some additional ways of increasing the stability of the fitting process are described. The results can be interesting for specialists who solve problems of spectroscopy and pattern recognition and construct expert and developmental support information systems.

Integrating Remote Sensing Data Into Geographic Information Systems

Bridging the Gap Between Remote Sensing and GIS; Redlands, California, 17–18 November 2010; Fifty remote sensing scientists and geographic information systems (GIS) experts attended a joint NASA–Environmental Science Research Institute (ESRI) workshop at the headquarters of ESRI. The purpose of the workshop was to bring together a diverse community of experts to explore benefits and barriers to the integration of remote sensing data into GIS. Remote sensing represents an ever‐expanding source of scientific data about our planet. Some individual NASA missions alone provide more than 1 terabyte of data per day. Remote sensing data can help solve problems in diverse applications, including disaster response, environmental planning, global change, insurance, and private investment. These data attain their greatest value when combined with other data from a variety of sources, yet this seemingly simple step is often very challenging.

Let’s Leave the Bias to the Mainstream Media: A Wikipedia Community Fighting for Information Neutrality

Let’s Leave the Bias to the Mainstream Media: A Wikipedia Community Fighting for Information Neutrality

AI and Opinion Mining, Part 2

Opinion mining, a subdiscipline within data mining and computational linguistics, refers to the computational techniques for extracting, classifying, understanding, and assessing the opinions expressed in various online news sources, social media comments, and other user-generated content. This Trends & Controversies department and the previous one include articles on opinion mining from distinguished experts in computer science and information systems. Each article presents a unique innovative research framework, computational methods, and selected results and examples.

Using GIS-based multicriteria evaluation and path optimization for effective forest field inventory

The inventory practices concerning non-industrial privately owned forests are undergoing significant changes in Finland. In the future, the collection of information will be increasingly carried out by the means of remote sensing technologies, which is bound to have strong implications for the traditional and extensive field inventory practices. This study presents a new method for determining the importance of individual forest stands to the field inventory, including a technique for using this information to calculate efficient field inventory tours. The proposed method is essentially based on expert knowledge modeling and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which enable the production of an inventory importance map for any forest area. In a similar fashion, it is possible to produce a traversability map for the particular area, which serves as a basis for inventory tour planning. The method incorporates an optimization technique, which can be used to determine the forest stands encompassing the highest overall inventory utility and the optimal traversal path for inventorying them under the presence of time constraint. Preliminary tests on the method have been carried out in a case study area located in Kuortane, Finland. The results of the tests suggest that the method has a lot of application potential, but more information and experience is needed about the new forest inventory system for further development of the method.

Migration and perinatal health surveillance: An international Delphi survey

ObjectiveWhile the perinatal health of migrants has been identified as a priority by many governments, there is no consensus on indicators for monitoring migration and perinatal health. The Reproductive Outcomes and Migration international research collaboration and the EURO-PERISTAT project convened an expert panel to recommend migration indicators for national and international monitoring of migration and perinatal health. Study designA Delphi consensus process involved 38 perinatal clinicians, epidemiologists, and experts in health information systems from 22 countries who completed one or more questionnaires. Panel members ranked migration indicators from a list inventoried from the published literature. ResultsCountry of birth was considered ‘essential’ or ‘recommended’ for routine collection by 100% of respondents, followed by length of time in country (88%), language fluency (70%), immigration status (67%), and ethnicity as defined by maternal parents’ place of birth (55%). Feasibility with ‘minor’ or ‘no modifications’ to current data collection systems was highest for country of birth (69%), followed by length of time in country (61%). Other indicators were judged to be less feasible. In respect to migration, the perinatal health indicators considered to be ‘essential’ by 94% of respondents included fetal, neonatal, and infant mortality. A smaller proportion (73%) considered maternal mortality to be ‘essential’. ConclusionsA strong consensus was achieved for including country of birth in core perinatal health indicator sets. Length of time in country was also recommended as a second indicator for routine data collection. Specific studies should be undertaken to complement routine data collection on: immigration status, language fluency, and ethnicity as defined by maternal parents’ place of birth.

Exploring the personality characteristics in information and digital age expertise

The widespread use of new technologies and, more specifically, of computers has created a new global financial and social setting. In today's society of knowledge and information, the ‘digitally literate citizen’ is not just a necessity but a social demand. Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are essential in enterprises and organizations, creating new perspectives in human intelligence and transforming alternative ways and solutions, in which we cooperate and communicate with each other. Therefore, the relationship among the personalization characteristics in the use of Information Technologies attracts the interest of social and psychological research. This study explores the net of relationships between self-concept, locus of control, global/computer self-efficacy and occupational values, using the constructive equation models on a sample of 207 freshmen and senior students specializing in the field of Information and Digital Systems Expertise.

How to be a responsible slave: managing the use of expert information systems

Computer ethicists have for some years been troubled by the issue of how to assign moral responsibility for disastrous events involving erroneous information generated by expert information systems. Recently, Jeroen van den Hoven has argued that agents working with expert information systems satisfy the conditions for what he calls epistemic enslavement. Epistemically enslaved agents do not, he argues, have moral responsibility for accidents for which they bear causal responsibility. In this article, I develop two objections to van den Hoven's argument for epistemic enslavement of agents working with expert information systems.

Use of Informatics and Information Technologies in the Clinical Research Enterprise Within US Academic Medical Centers

BackgroundData on the state of information systems infrastructures used in the clinical research enterprise of academic medical centers are limited and mostly anecdotal. What has been published is slowly beginning...

Vinken and Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology

Vinken and Bruyn's Handbook of Clinical Neurology (HCN) is best characterized as an encyclopedia. In this paper we describe the origin, production, and reception of HCN. Data were gathered from a literature search, by screening of HCN-volumes, interviewing key-role persons and a study of an HCN-archive. The initiative for HCN was taken by two Excerpta Medica staff members, the one a strategist with expertise in information systems, the other a gifted neurologist with an expert knowledge of who is who in the world of neurological literature. Within a period of 38 years, 2799 authors, 28 volume editors, the two initiators, and a third chief editor for the American continent described the whole of neurology in 1909 chapters on all together 46,025 pages (excluding index volumes). HCN was sold mainly to medical institutes in affluent countries. A digital version of the revised edition was proposed by the editors but refused by the publisher for commercial reasons. HCN was in general well received by book reviewers. The main criticisms concerned the price of the volumes, lack of editorial control, inadequacy of indexes, and lack of cross references. HCN offers unrivalled information on the state of the art of the clinical neurosciences in the second half of the twentieth century. In addition, it contains extensive reviews of the history of neurological diseases in the volumes of the original edition.

Site selection to test an integrated approach to agricultural research for development: combining expert knowledge and participatory Geographic Information System methods

The sub-Saharan Africa challenge programme is designed to address the problems of failures of agricultural markets, inappropriate policies and natural resource degradation, that contribute to the continuing deterioration of livelihoods and food security in the region. It is seeking to do this by redefining the roles of scientists and farmers through collaborative learning processes, addressing questions about the level, timing, type and formof participation, as well as themost effective approaches andmethods to foster them. The research domains of the programme deal with sustainable intensification of smallholder agriculture, the sustainable management of natural resources, the development of efficient markets, and the promotion of enabling policies. One question that was addressed in designing the initiative was deciding where to work so as to maximize the chances of successful testing of this new approach, so that it would lead to significant reductions of rural poverty. A participatory process was put in place to design a framework to accomplish this site selection, and then to apply it in west, east and southern Africa. A mixture of spatial data analysis and expert knowledge on spatial and non-spatial factors was used, and one primary site in each region was identified to form the basis for the next phase of the challenge programme. Several lessons were learnt from the process, including the importance of adapting themethods to actual conditions, the increased utility of targetting when the quantitative and the qualitative are freely combined, and the continued need for baseline spatial and non-spatial data to improve the targeting of research in the future that is designed to alleviate poverty in sub-Saharan Africa.

An Exploratory Study of Factors Influencing M-Learning Success

The measure of m-learning success is important to understand the value of management actions and investment in m-learning. Focusing on technology aspects of m-learning, no research has been done in m-learning success factors from the user's perspective. The objective of this study is to investigate key determinants of m-learning success perceived by users. Potential determinants of m-learning success are inferred from the general characteristics of m-learning system, the literature in Information System (IS) success and expert interviews. The potential factors are grouped into system quality, contents quality and service quality. User satisfaction construct is used to measure m-learning success. The questionnaire is used to assess the satisfaction of users who had recently purchased learning products from m-learning vendors. The data collected by questionnaire were analyzed to check the validity of constructs. Then hypotheses describing the relationships between the identified constructs and user satisfaction were formulated and tested.

The Information-Expert System for Investigation of Structural and Mechanical Properties of Materials

This paper is devoted to the presentation of approaches applied to the development of an information-expert system for the investigation of structural-mechanical properties of materials. The demand for such a system follows from the necessity of the solution of an important technological problem, namely, automation of the process of developing essential products with rigidly regulated functional properties. A general architecture of the system and theoretical aspects of the development of its basic components are described, along with subsystems of automation of workflow processes, automatic classification, and three-dimensional visualization.

Applying the Australian and New Zealand Risk Management Standard to Information Systems in SMES

This paper advocates the use of the Australia/New Zealand Risk Management Standard (SA/SNZ, 1999) in conjunction with of a modified version of Birch and McEvoy’s (1992) Structured Risk Analysis for Information Systems (SRA-IS) to identify information systems security risks in SMEs. The use of Internet based commerce by SMEs exposes them to information systems security risks that they are ill equipped to recognise let alone mitigate. Unlike the identification of some business risks, identification of risks associated with information systems requires certain technical expertise. The structure of the existing information system must be understood and modelled before risks can be identified and it is acknowledged that the required technical expertise may not be present in SMEs, thus the involvement of information systems consultants may be necessary. Once the information system has been modelled little information systems expertise is required to complete the analysis, keeping consultant involvement to a minimum and maximising owner/manager involvement.

Towards a distinctive body of knowledge for Information Systems experts: coding ISD process knowledge in two IS journals

Abstract. This paper introduces the idea of coding a practically relevant body of knowledge (BoK) in Information Systems (IS) that could have major benefits for the field. In its main part, the paper focuses on the question if and how an underlying body of action‐oriented knowledge for IS experts could be distilled from the IS research literature. For this purpose the paper identifies five knowledge areas as the most important parts for an IS expert's BoK. Two of these are claimed as distinct areas of competence for IS experts: IS application knowledge and IS development (ISD) process knowledge. The paper focuses particularly on ISD process knowledge because it allows the organizing of practically relevant IS knowledge in an action‐oriented way. The paper presents some evidence for the claim that a considerable body of practically relevant IS process knowledge might, indeed, exist, but also notes that it is highly dispersed in the IS literature. It then argues that the IS research community should take stock of this knowledge and organize it in an action‐oriented way. Based on results from prior work it proposes a four‐level hierarchical coding scheme for this purpose. In order to test the idea of coding action‐oriented knowledge for IS experts, the paper reports the results of a coded literature analysis of ISD research articles published from 1996 to 2000 in two leading IS journals – Information Systems Journal and MIS Quarterly. The results suggest that ISD approaches form a useful framework for organizing practically relevant IS knowledge.