Application of the Extended Kalman filter to fuzzy modeling: Algorithms and practical implementation

Modeling phase is fundamental both in the analysis process of a dynamic system and the design of a control system. If this phase is in-line is even more critical and the only information of the system comes from input/output data. Some adaptation algorithms for fuzzy system based on extended Kalman filter are presented in this paper, which allows obtaining accurate models without renounce the computational efficiency that characterizes the Kalman filter, and allows its implementation in-line with the process

Fuzzy portfolio allocation models through a new risk measure and fuzzy sharpe ratio

A new portfolio risk measure that is the uncertainty of portfolio fuzzy return is introduced in this paper. Beyond the well-known Sharpe ratio (i.e., the reward-to-variability ratio) in modern portfolio theory, we initiate the so-called fuzzy Sharpe ratio in the fuzzy modeling context. In addition to the introduction of the new risk measure, we also put forward the reward-to-uncertainty ratio to assess the portfolio performance in fuzzy modeling. Corresponding to two approaches based on TM and TW fuzzy arithmetic, two portfolio optimization models are formulated in which the uncertainty of portfolio fuzzy returns is minimized, while the fuzzy Sharpe ratio is maximized. These models are solved by the fuzzy approach or by the genetic algorithm (GA). Solutions of the two proposed models are shown to be dominant in terms of portfolio return uncertainty compared with those of the conventional mean-variance optimization (MVO) model used prevalently in the financial literature. In terms of portfolio performance evaluated by the fuzzy Sharpe ratio and the reward-to-uncertainty ratio, the model using TW fuzzy arithmetic results in higher performance portfolios than those obtained by both the MVO and the fuzzy model, which employs TM fuzzy arithmetic. We also find that using the fuzzy approach for solving multiobjective problems appears to achieve more optimal solutions than using GA, although GA can offer a series of well-diversified portfolio solutions diagrammed in a Pareto frontier.

On a distinction between casual and formative variable models:theoretical issues and practical implications for organizational researchers

Formative measurement has seen increasing acceptance in organizational research since the turn of the 21st Century. However, in more recent times, a number of criticisms of the formative approach have appeared. Such work argues that formatively-measured constructs are empirically ambiguous and thus flawed in a theory-testing context. The aim of the present paper is to examine the underpinnings of formative measurement theory in light of theories of causality and ontology in measurement in general. In doing so, a thesis is advanced which draws a distinction between reflective, formative, and causal theories of latent variables. This distinction is shown to be advantageous in that it clarifies the ontological status of each type of latent variable, and thus provides advice on appropriate conceptualization and application. The distinction also reconciles in part both recent supportive and critical perspectives on formative measurement. In light of this, advice is given on how most appropriately to model formative composites in theory-testing applications, placing the onus on the researcher to make clear their conceptualization and operationalisation.

Framing fashion curation : a theoretical, historical and practical perspective

This research project frames an emerging field – fashion curation – through a theoretical, historical, and practical enquiry. Recent decades have seen fashion curation grow rapidly as a form of praxis and an area of academic attention, predominantly in museums and universities. Within this context, two major models for conceptualising the role of the fashion curator have emerged: the institutional and the independent curator. This project proposes and applies a third model: the adjunct fashion curator. In developing this model my project seeks to move the growing dialogue around fashion curation away from exclusively focusing on the museum. By proposing a third curatorial model for fashion, this research draws on the past of fashion display and exhibition for its context, while simultaneously exploring the adjunct model through my curatorial practice. The impact of sites of display, the role of gender, and the relationship between art and fashion are explored as pivotal themes in the development of fashion curation and thus provide contextual grounding for the proposal of the adjunct curatorial model. Alongside a theoretical and historical account of fashion curation, I conduct a practice-led inquiry that explores these themes through five exhibition projects and one photographic series. I argue that the introduction and application of the adjunct model enables curatorial practitioners to sensitively work around the dominant museum model, and circumvent the divide between institutional and independent curation. Introducing the adjunct model allows the curator to develop personalised narratives relating to the experience of fashion and clothing as an exhibited phenomenon in a variety of institutional and non-institutional sites. Hence this research project contributes to a developing field by proposing a valuable and nuanced model for fashion curation.

The structured and practical approach in development of decision support system for consultant selection in public sector infrastructure project

Nowadays, most of the infrastructure development projects undertaken are complex in nature. Practically, public clients who do not have a good understanding of the design and management may suffer severe losses, especially for infrastructure projects. There is a need for luring the right consultant to secure client's investment in infrastructure developments. Throughout the project life cycle, consultants play vital role from the inception to completion stage of a project. A few studies in Malaysia show that infrastructure projects involving irrigation and drainage have experience problems such as poor workmanship, delay and cost overrun due to the consultant's inability or the client incompetence of recruiting consultants in time. This highlights the need of aided decision making and an efficient system to select the best consultant by using Decision Support System (DSS). On the other hand, recent trends reveal that most DSS in construction only concentrate on decision model development. These models are impractical and unused as they are complicated or difficult for laymen such as project managers to utilize. Thus, this research attempts to develop an efficient DSS for consultant selection namely consultDeSS. Driven by the motivation and research aims, this study deployed Design Science Research Methodology (DSRM) dominant with a combination of case studies at the Malaysian Department of Irrigation and Drainage (DID). Two real projects involving irrigation and drainage infrastructure were used to design, implement and evaluate the artefact. The 3-tier consultDeSS was revised after the evaluation and the design was significantly improved based on user feedback. By developing desirable tools that fit client's needs will enhance the productivity and minimize conflict within groups and organisations. The tool is more usable and efficient compared to previous studies in construction. Thus, this research has demonstrated a purposeful artefact with a practical and valid structured development approach that is applicable in a variety of problems in construction discipline.

Advancing nursing practice : redefining the theoretical and practical integration of knowledge

Aim The aim of this paper is to offer an alternative knowing-how knowing-that framework of nursing knowledge, which in the past has been accepted as the provenance of advanced practice. Background The concept of advancing practice is central to the development of nursing practice and has been seen to take on many different forms depending on its use in context. To many it has become synonymous with the work of the advanced or expert practitioner; others have viewed it as a process of continuing professional development and skills acquisition. Moreover, it is becoming closely linked with practice development. However, there is much discussion as to what constitutes the knowledge necessary for advancing and advanced practice, and it has been suggested that theoretical and practical knowledge form the cornerstone of advanced knowledge. Design The design of this article takes a discursive approach as to the meaning and integration of knowledge within the context of advancing nursing practice. Method A thematic analysis of the current discourse relating to knowledge integration models in an advancing and advanced practice arena was used to identify concurrent themes relating to the knowing-how knowing-that framework which commonly used to classify the knowledge necessary for advanced nursing practice. Conclusion There is a dichotomy as to what constitutes knowledge for advanced and advancing practice. Several authors have offered a variety of differing models, yet it is the application and integration of theoretical and practical knowledge that defines and develops the advancement of nursing practice. An alternative framework offered here may allow differences in the way that nursing knowledge important for advancing practice is perceived, developed and coordinated. Relevance to clinical practice What has inevitably been neglected is that there are various other variables which when transposed into the existing knowing-how knowing-that framework allows for advanced knowledge to be better defined. One of the more notable variables is pattern recognition, which became the focus of Benner’s work on expert practice. Therefore, if this is included into the knowing-how knowing-that framework, the knowing-how becomes the knowledge that contributes to advancing and advanced practice and the knowing-that becomes the governing action based on a deeper understanding of the problem or issue.

Purposeful program theory: Effective use of theories of change and logic models [Book Review]

The purpose of this book by two Australian authors is to: introduce the audience to the full complement of contextual elements found within program theory; offer practical suggestions to engage with theories of change, theories of action and logic models; and provide substantial evidence for this approach through scholarly literature, practice case studies together with the authors' combined experience of 60 years.

The ethics, aesthetics and practical politics of ownership in co-creative media

What is ‘best practice’ when it comes to managing intellectual property rights in participatory media content? As commercial media and entertainment business models have increasingly come to rely upon the networked productivity of end-users (Banks and Humphreys 2008) this question has been framed as a problem of creative labour made all the more precarious by changing employment patterns and work cultures of knowledge-intensive societies and globalising economies (Banks, Gill and Taylor 2014). This paper considers how the problems of ownership are addressed in non-commercial, community-based arts and media contexts. Problems of labour are also manifest in these contexts (for example, reliance on volunteer labour and uncertain economic reward for creative excellence). Nonetheless, managing intellectual property rights in collaborative creative works that are created in community media and arts contexts is no less challenging or complex than in commercial contexts. This paper takes as its focus a particular participatory media practice known as ‘digital storytelling’. The digital storytelling method, formalised by the Centre for Digital Storytelling (CDS) from the mid-1990s, has been internationally adopted and adapted for use in an open-ended variety of community arts, education, health and allied services settings (Hartley and McWilliam 2009; Lambert 2013; Lundby 2008; Thumin 2012). It provides a useful point of departure for thinking about a range of collaborative media production practices that seek to address participation ‘gaps’ (Jenkins 2006). However the outputs of these activities, including digital stories, cannot be fully understood or accurately described as user-generated content. For this reason, digital storytelling is taken here to belong to a category of participatory media activity that has been described as ‘co-creative’ media (Spurgeon 2013) in order to improve understanding of the conditions of mediated and mediatized participation (Couldry 2008). This paper reports on a survey of the actual copyrighting practices of cultural institutions and community-based media arts practitioners that work with digital storytelling and similar participatory content creation methods. This survey finds that although there is a preference for Creative Commons licensing a great variety of approaches are taken to managing intellectual property rights in co-creative media. These range from the use of Creative Commons licences (for example, Lambert 2013, p.193) to retention of full copyrights by storytellers, to retention of certain rights by facilitating organisations (for example, broadcast rights by community radio stations and public service broadcasters), and a range of other shared rights arrangements between professional creative practitioners, the individual storytellers and communities with which they collaborate, media outlets, exhibitors and funders. This paper also considers how aesthetic and ethical considerations shape responses to questions of intellectual property rights in community media arts contexts. For example, embedded in the CDS digital storytelling method is ‘a critique of power and the numerous ways that rank is unconsciously expressed in engagements between classes, races and gender’ (Lambert 117). The CDS method privileges the interests of the storyteller and, through a transformative workshop process, aims to generate original individual stories that, in turn, reflect self-awareness of ‘how much the way we live is scripted by history, by social and cultural norms, by our own unique journey through a contradictory, and at times hostile, world’ (Lambert 118). Such a critical approach is characteristic of co-creative media practices. It extends to a heightened awareness of the risks of ‘story theft’ and the challenges of ownership and informs ideas of ‘best practice’ amongst creative practitioners, teaching artists and community media producers, along with commitments to achieving equitable solutions for all participants in co-creative media practice (for example, Lyons-Reid and Kuddell nd.). Yet, there is surprisingly little written about the challenges of managing intellectual property produced in co-creative media activities. A dialogic sense of ownership in stories has been identified as an indicator of successful digital storytelling practice (Hayes and Matusov 2005) and is helpful to grounding the more abstract claims of empowerment for social participation that are associated with co-creative methods. Contrary to the ‘change from below’ philosophy that underpins much thinking about co-creative media, however, discussions of intellectual property usually focus on how methods such as digital storytelling contribute to the formation of copyright law-compliant subjects, particularly when used in educational settings (for example, Ohler nd.). This also exposes the reliance of co-creative methods on the creative assets storytellers (rather than on the copyrighted materials of the media cultures of storytellers) as a pragmatic response to the constraints that intellectual property right laws impose on the entire category of participatory media. At the level of practical politics, it also becomes apparent that co-creative media practitioners and storytellers located in copyright jurisdictions governed by ‘fair use’ principles have much greater creative flexibility than those located in jurisdictions governed by ‘fair dealing’ principles.

Intelligent agents and distributed models for cooperative task support

Purpose – To describe some research done, as part of an EPSRC funded project, to assist engineers working together on collaborative tasks. Design/methodology/approach – Distributed finite state modelling and agent techniques are used successfully in a new hybrid self-organising decision making system applied to collaborative work support. For the particular application, analysis of the tasks involved has been performed and these tasks are modelled. The system then employs a novel generic agent model, where task and domain knowledge are isolated from the support system, which provides relevant information to the engineers. Findings – The method is applied in the despatch of transmission commands within the control room of The National Grid Company Plc (NGC) – tasks are completed significantly faster when the system is utilised. Research limitations/implications – The paper describes a generic approach and it would be interesting to investigate how well it works in other applications. Practical implications – Although only one application has been studied, the methodology could equally be applied to a general class of cooperative work environments. Originality/value – One key part of the work is the novel generic agent model that enables the task and domain knowledge, which are application specific, to be isolated from the support system, and hence allows the method to be applied in other domains.

Modeling architecture and reference models for the ERF5 project

The adoption of ERPs systems by small and middle-sized companies may not be possible due to their cost. At the same time, when adapting ERP to the company's particular needs, the user keeps depending on the system's sellers due to the lack of access and knowledge of the respective code. Free and open-source software may promote advantages to the enterprises, however, for its adoption it is necessary the development of techniques and tools in order to facilitate its deployment and code maintenance. This article emphasizes the importance of defining modeling architectures and reference models for the development and maintenance of open-source ERPs, in special the ERP5 project.

Debate : arm's- length bodies and alternative models of service delivery

This article reflects on the UK coalition government’s ‘alternative models’ agenda, specifically in terms of the adoption of new models of service delivery by arm’s-length bodies (ALBs). It provides an overview of the alternative models agenda and discusses barriers to implementation. These include practical challenges involved in the set up of alternative models, the role of sponsor departments, and the effective communication of best practice. Finally, the article highlights some issues for further discussion.