Overcoming Information Overload Research Articles

Geospatial Intelligence (GEOINT) As A National Defense Strategy for Information Overload in Indonesia

The global phenomenon in the Industrial Revolution 4.0 era is currently hitting Indonesia. Many information floods the public every minute with various content spread across multiple media. This information for a country can be a powerful weapon as a form of intelligence product to prepare a national defense strategy. The demands of an increasingly fast-paced era make GEOINT needed to obtain information quickly, accurately and integrate synthesis and analysis. Therefore, this study was conducted to identify the development of GEOINT in Indonesia and its application in overcoming information overload in the present. This study uses the library method by collecting references relevant to the research problem from various sources. The study results indicate that the overload of information from multiple increasingly sophisticated media due to technological developments has made GEOINT's information sources richer. GEOINT in Indonesia continues to optimize accuracy and speed in geospatial analysis to avoid losing to the rate of data sources that continue to increase, both from human resources, hardware, software, and access to information available according to Indonesia's needs. GEOINT as a national defense strategy can be carried out as a form of effective information collection and can protect confidential information. GEOINT will become increasingly valuable in both military and non-military management over the next few years.

Personalized content recommendation in online health communities

PurposeRecommending suitable content for users of online health communities (OHCs) is critical for overcoming information overload problem and facilitate medical decision making, but remains not fully investigated. This study aims to provide a content recommendation approach to automatically match valuable health-related information for OHC members.Design/methodology/approachA framework of health-related content recommendation was proposed by leveraging rich social information in online communities. The authors constructed user influence relationship (UIR) utilizing users' interaction records, user profiles and user-generated content. The initial user rating matrix and the user post matching matrix were then created by analyzing text content of posts. Finally, the user rating matrix and the recommended content were generated for community members. Datasets were collected from an OHC to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.FindingsThe experimental results revealed that the proposed method statistically outperformed baseline models in content recommendation for users of OHCs.Research limitations/implicationsThe incorporation of social information can significantly enhance the performance of content recommendation in OHCs. The user post matching degree based on text analysis can improve the effectiveness of recommendation.Practical implicationsThis study potentially contributes to the social support exchange and medical decision making of community members and the sustainable prosperity of OHCs.Originality/valueThis study proposes a novel social content recommendation method for online health consumers based on UIRs by leveraging social information in OHCs. The results indicate the significance of social information in content recommendation of healthcare social media.

Enhancing long tail item recommendation in collaborative filtering: An econophysics-inspired approach

• A novel viewpoint of econophysics principles is formulated to address long tail effect. • Rating injection strategy inspired from econophysics principles is proposed. • Performance of the proposed method is evaluated on long tail and non-long tail items. • Proposed approach immensely improved the number of long tail items in recommendations. • The proposed principles can be applied as an add-on to state-of-the-art recommendation technique. Recommender systems have been immensely successful in overcoming information overload problem through personalized suggestions to consumers. Traditional recommendation algorithms tend to recommend more popular items. A significant number of items in an enterprise are non-popular (long tail items) due to lack of visibility in recommendations. These long tail items are left unsold and result in a significant loss to the business. The consumers on the other end are deprived of receiving relevant item recommendations. In this paper, we propose two approaches inspired from econophysics to recommend long tail items. The proposed approaches selectively inject ratings to the long tail items to diminish the bias towards the popular items by utilizing the existing rating information. Subsequently, the injected rating datasets are used to provide recommendations. The results on real-world datasets show that the proposed approaches outperform the existing techniques in mitigating long tail effect with little or no drop in accuracy.

Minimalism as a strategy for overcoming information overload of interface design for interactive city devices

The article is devoted to the consideration of the issues of forming a comfortable urban information environment using graphic design, namely, minimalism as a strategy for organizing visual information obtained through interaction with interactive interfaces in the urban environment. In modern megacities, devices with a touch screen increasingly provide the organization of the process of information interaction between a city and a person. From a visual point of view, they provide ample opportunities for the implementation of a graphic form. However, at the same time, the question remains to what extent the visual design of the software of urban information carriers affects the efficiency of their use, and how their aesthetic characteristics form the information and graphic ecology of the city. In recent years, the information space has expanded significantly; therefore, the organization of an environmentally friendly urban graphical environment has turned out to be associated with the need to apply approaches to organizing data that can reduce information and visual noise, as well as reduce the level of information pollution of the surrounding urban environment. This circumstance, on the one hand, enhances the importance of interaction design as a primary stage in creating an effective information design. On the other hand, it promotes a conscious restriction in the use of graphical tools, reflecting an ethical approach to interface design.

Internet outfitters: librarians in the twenty-first century

PurposeIn the future, librarians need to prepare users to navigate a profoundly different informational landscape. Addressing issues of information overload and informed selection of both search tools and results, the purpose of this paper is to cast the collaborative relationship between librarian and student in the mode of an outfitter: a guide preparing a client for a journey. Within this context, the authors emerging role involves guiding students through the task at hand using critical thinking skills to access a wider range of publications to meet a broader range of needs.Design/methodology/approachMetaphors created by Raymond and Friedman reflect the current state of information, the relationship users have with these sources, and the role librarians play in a disintermediated environment. In The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond portrays a decentralized environment as a bazaar. In The World is Flat 3.0, Friedman describes how technology flattens organizations through empowering end users. The informational landscape in the twenty-first century is decentralized, and more powerful search tools provide unparalleled access to these sources. Users, however, continue to experience problems finding their information. A librarian/outfitter can prepare users to effectively track information in the new environment.FindingsIn the twenty-first century, a broader range of sources are available, and search engines are turning to dashboards to prioritize the growing list of results. Users need to adapt to the new environment through viewing the search as an activity rather than a destination. Librarians can help this process through sharing their expertise in uncovering likely places relevant information may be found, in evaluating sources, and locating information in a larger context. Through developing the meta-skill of information management, librarians guide users through the process of finding information for personal, professional, and academic needs.Practical implicationsThe author’s goal is what it has always been: empowering end users to successfully access needed information in a disintermediated environment. Today librarians need to emphasize a fundamentally different set of skills in the interactions they have with students and faculty. People can use dashboards and satisficing to find sources they need, but librarian/outfitters can introduce a broader range of sources and tools suitable for completing specific tasks. This paper illustrates the different skills needed to effectively find information for personal, professional, and academic tasks.Originality/valueThis paper provides a new context for the process used for locating and validating information in an increasingly broad and diffuse informational landscape. Librarians become advisors in navigating a more complex informational landscape that is used to meet a broader range of informational needs. While focusing on navigating the broader range of resources through decoding dashboards and satisficing techniques, the author can assist users in overcoming information overload and advocate a broader sense of satisficing through using more sophisticated critical thinking skills.

Adaptive Visualization of Complex Networks with FocalPoint

Maintaining situational awareness of a dynamic global computer network that consists of ten to hundreds of thousands of computers is a complex task for cyber administrators and operators looking to understand, plan and conduct operations in real time. Currently, cyber specialists must manually navigate complex networks by continuous cycles of overviews, drilldowns and manually mapping network incidents to mission impact. This is inefficient as manually maneuvering of network data is laborious, induces cognitive overload, and is prone to errors caused by distractive information resulting in important information and impacts not being seen. We are investigating “FocalPoint” an adaptive level of detail (LOD) recommender system tailored for hierarchical network information structures. FocalPoint reasons about contextual information associated with the network, user task, and user cognitive load to tune the presentation of network visualization displays to improve user performance in perception, comprehension and projection of current situational awareness. Our system is applied to two complex information constructs important to dynamic cyber network operations: network maps and attack graphs. The key innovations include: (a) context-aware automatic tailoring of complex network views, (b) multi-resolution hierarchical graph aggregation, (c) incorporation of new computational models for adaptive-decision making on user tasks, cost/benefit utility and human situation awareness, and (d) user interaction techniques to integrate recommendations into the network viewing system. Our aim is to have a direct impact on planning and operations management for complex networks by; overcoming information overload, preventing tunnel vision, reducing cognitive load, and increasing time available to focus on optimum level of details of the global network space and missions.

Overcoming information overload in retail environments: Imagination and sales promotion in a wine context

Information overload is a common problem in retail environments. Reducing information in a retail environment is not always feasible or desirable given the plethora of products and extent of limitations on retailers in terms of merchandising and display decisions. Therefore, retailers need other ways of overcoming information overload than simply reducing the amount of information. However, extant research is unsettled with respect to arguments in favor of and against adverse effects of information overload. To enhance our understanding of these issues, the present research presents two studies that investigate the moderating role of consumer decision processing approaches in an information overload retail space. The findings reveal that the consumer imagination offers a more efficient processing route, circumventing the frustration associated with information overload and leading to enhanced consumer outcomes compared to the less efficient consideration route. Further, heuristic processing triggered by sales promotions in high information retail environments lead to piqued arousal and enhanced consumer imagination, ultimately bolstering consumer responses to the product. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.

Explanations in recommender systems: an overview

Personalisation of product and services is one of the most important aspects in e-commerce and web-based companies. Recommender system is the technology that helps build personalisation features. One promising and emerging area in the field of recommender systems is explanations. Explanation is the reasoning behind the information presented about a recommendation and plays an important role in helping the user evaluate the recommendation received on websites related to e-commerce, social networking, search engines, etc. In this paper, we present an overview of this emerging concept of explanation which is important in present day context as an aid for overcoming information overload. Present status of research in this field is discussed on the three important areas-objectives and evaluation of performance of explanations, effect of explanation interfaces on the users and the growing influence of explanations in social networking sites. We conclude the paper with discussions on areas of future research in this upcoming field which can be of academic interest to the researchers and of practical utility to the system designers of recommender systems for increasing its effectiveness.

Generating Personalized Navigation Learning Path Based on Knowledge Map

With a rapid development of Internet, E-Learning is becoming a new learning mode. E-Learning is not limited by time and space. It also has a large number of on-line learning resource. However, it has many disadvantages for students, such as information overload, disorientation, low learning efficiency, low user satisfaction and so on. Our aim is to improve learning efficiency and user satisfaction by overcoming information overload and disorientation of E-Learning system. This paper proposes an algorithm by combining Spreading-Activation Theory and techniques of classifying and sorting knowledge. The algorithm can generate a near optimal navigation learning path(NLP) based on a student's target knowledge unit(TKU) and knowledge map(KM) which it belongs to. NLP provides students an appropriate learning instruction to effectively eliminate disorientation during the process when they are learning interested knowledge units. The essential tasks of the algorithm is to filter redundant information and sort candidate knowledge units. So its realization process can be divided into three phrases: first, generating candidate complement map to overcome information overload. Because the candidate complement map only contains essential candidate knowledge units and learning dependencies among them to master TKU. Second, constructing learning features to discrete the candidate complement map to implement techniques of sorting knowledge conveniently. Final, sorting candidate knowledge units to get an appropriate NLP by using a Secondary Sort Strategy(SSS). The experimental results have shown that our method is sound for improving learning efficiency and users' satisfaction.

Bounded Rationality in Policy Learning Amongst Cities: Lessons from the Transport Sector

The internationalization of policy regimes and the reorganization of the state have provided new opportunities for cities to bypass nation-state structures and work with other cities internationally. This provides greater opportunity for cities to learn from each other and could be an important stimulus to the transfer of policies across the globe. Few studies exist however which focus on the processes that shape the search for policy lessons and how they are affected by the institutional context within which they are conducted. This paper describes research conducted in the field of urban transport and planning policy across eleven cities in Northern Europe and North America which seeks to explore the motivations for and mechanisms supporting learning about new policies. Thirty policies were examined across the eleven sites using document review and interviews with key actors. The paper explores the search for lessons and the learning process and considers the influences of institutional context, organizational behaviour, and individual cognitive constraints. The process of seeking out and learning policy lessons is defined by individuals operating within a particular policy space and exhibits a number of characteristics of strongly bounded rational choice. The search parameters are significantly influenced by preconceptions of the nature of the preferred solutions and the likelihood of cities in other contexts offering meaningful learning opportunities. Trusted peer networks emerge as critical in overcoming information overload, resource constraints, and uncertainty in the potential for policy transfer. The mobility of policies seems also to be linked to the mobility of the key transfer agents. Cities adopt quite different approaches to engaging with the communities of policy mobilizers which seems likely to impact on the pace and pattern of the movement of policies.

Website browsing aid: A navigation graph-based recommendation system

Websites nowadays are an important and popular source of publicly available information. However, due to their exploding scale and complexity, overcoming information overload to find relevant information is a major challenge. In addition to website maps and search engines, self-adaptive websites or websites with intelligent navigation aid are very useful tools in addressing this issue. In this paper, a navigation graph-based recommendation system is proposed, in which the navigation patterns of previous website visitors are utilized to provide recommendations for newcomers. The performance of the proposed recommendation algorithm is tested using the data collected from a real world website. Experimental results reveal that the proposed system can yield satisfactory recommendations, especially to the visitors in their early navigation steps.

Visualizing a high recall search strategy output for undergraduates in an exploration stage of researching a term paper

When accessing an information retrieval system, it has long been said that undergraduates who are in an exploratory stage of researching their essay topic should use a high recall search strategy; what prevents them from doing so is the information overload factor associated with showing the undergraduate a long list of citations. One method of overcoming information overload is summarizing and visualizing the citation list. This paper examines five summarization and visualization schemes for presenting information retrieval (IR) citation output, then discusses whether these schemes are appropriate for undergraduates and other domain novice users. We ask and answer four questions: (1) What is the message these schemes try to communicate and (2) is this message appropriate for domain novice users like undergraduates? (3) How do these schemes communicate their message and (4) is how they communicate the message appropriate for a domain novice? We conclude that (i) the most appropriate message for information space visualizations for domain novice users is associative thinking, and (ii) the message should be communicated with a standardized look that remains relatively constant over time so that the shape and form of the visualization can become familiar and thus useful to students as they navigate their way through the information space produced by a high recall search strategy.

Knowledge Management: An Information Technology Prospective

Knowledge management describes the way in which organisations are attempting to capture, enhance, and use the knowledge necessary for their survival. In this paper, the author discusses about concept of knowledge management, contribution of information technology in enabling its initiatives which have their aim of achieving the competitive advantage for both the organisation and its employees. The information-based paradigm shift now-a-days is the result of the effective application of information technology to knowledge resources. Further, the paper highlights .transformational role of knowledge manager from 'Information keeper' to 'knowledge smith'. Finally, the paper reflects knowledge management issues, which include developing, implementing and maintaining the appropriate technical and organisational infrastructure to enable knowledge sharing, developing information technology skills in the staff and overcoming information overload. http://dx.doi.org/10.14429/dbit.19.6.3501

Thinternet: life at the end of a tether

As the Internet continues its exponential growth, the user profile is changing. Many of the newer Internet hosts are personal workstations, often connected by dial-up or other slow links. We examine some factors that motivate or mandate “thin” (low-bandwidth) connections to the Internet. We notice that the motivation for adopting thin links in the West can be different from those in developing countries. Using a profile of such typical users, we show how techniques exist that allow practical and adequately efficient use of the Internet even “at the end of a tether”. We are exploring the use of these methods in routine Internet use from a site in India (a software development laboratory, multi-user LAN, connected to an Internet service provider through an expensive dial-up link) and from mobile computers (e.g., HP100LX and Gateway Handbook) in the US. In each case the user's Internet access is through a thin link, with a bandwidth somewhere between 2400 bps and 28.8 kbps. Local caching and prefetching of resources naturally suggests itself as a useful candidate. It appears that transparent replay of application protocols is a practical way to retrofit resource caching into existing (shrinkwrapped) software. One promising method which works with most services of interest is Postel spoofing. Given the “browsing” mode of network usage, progressive encoding mechanisms are shown to effectively reduce the access time for particularly large Internet objects, such as Web pages. An ideal progressive encoding of a resource sends a gross quality rendering followed by successive refinements. Since only a fraction of the images retrieved in a session actually have long-term value, such techniques can reduce on-line bandwidth demands by an order of magnitude. Obviously, such encoding methods apply also to large archive and distribution files (such as from FTP archives). Filtering and relevance feedback have been recognised as effective tools in overcoming information overload. Many sophisticated general techniques are a subject of active research. However, we found that exploiting certain behaviour patterns typical in Internet usage permits particularly efficient filtering using surprisingly simple methods. We apply this to USENET communication, and extend this to other services (FTP, HTTP, Gopher, mail, etc.), and outline a method of filtering network hypermedia on the basis of relevance contours. Our method recognises the amount of selected information that can be digested by a user in a day, and maximises the value of the packet so selected. It also differs from others by integrating all network hypermedia and selecting and filtering items without regard to the service they were accessed from (USENET, Web, Gopher, FTP, etc.). It does not depend on a-priori categorisation such as news groups and the consequent need for explicit subscription and unsubscription.