Accessibility Instrument Survey

This chapter presents the main results of the Accessibility Instrument Survey (AIS), collecting basic information on each of the accessibility instruments reviewed in this report (for more detail on these Instruments see Chapter 3). The aim of the survey was to enable quick, objective and comparable overviews of each of the reviewed accessibility instruments. The information collected will enable the categorization of accessibility instruments present in this research, aiming to be a reference for future categorization of accessibility instruments for planning practice. These categories will support the analysis of the coverage of accessibility instruments in this research, i.e., identify how representative this research is across different accessibility instrument types. In addition, these will be used to analyse the characteristics and concerns which most frequently underlie the development of accessibility instruments. Finally, the survey also collects developer’s perceptions on the usefulness of their accessibility instruments in planning practice, enabling the first insight into the main research question of this COST Action, although limited to the developer’s point of view. In summary, the results of the survey will be used for four purposes: Development of an accessibility instrument sheet for each accessibility instrument summarizing its main characteristics (Appendix A); Identify the coverage of accessibility instrument types present in this research (Section 4.3.1) discussing the representativeness of this Action; Provide a glimpse on the characteristics and concerns which most frequently underlie the development of accessibility instruments (Section 4.3.2); Provide a first insight into the perceived usefulness of accessibility instruments in planning practice from the point of view of the developer (Section 4.3.2 and Section 4.3.3). The next section provides an overview of the Survey describing the information collected. This section also describes the development process of this survey including data collection, dates and means. The results of the survey are analysed in the third section starting with a discussion on the coverage of accessibility instruments reviewed by this research (Section 4.3.1), identifying accessibility measure types which are represented and which are absent. This discussion is accompanied by the presentation of the main categories of accessibility instruments from the perspective of the end user. These categories try to summarize the main concerns planning practitioners are expected to have when searching for an accessibility instrument and is built upon some of the information collected by the survey. Following, the third section also presents a general analysis of the results (Section 4.3.2), focussing on the dominant characteristics of the accessibility instruments reviewed and on the developer’s perception of the usefulness their instrument will have for end users. The section ends with a brief cross analysis of results (Section 4.3.3) trying to identify relationships between accessibility instrument characteristics and perceptions of usefulness by developers. The fourth and last section presents the main conclusions of this study.

Reflections of professional practice: using electronic discourse analysis networks (EDANs) to examine embedded business emails

Emails have become a central genre in business communication, reflecting both how people communicate and how they go about their professional practices. This chapter examines embedded business emails as reflections of the professional practices of the regulatory and policy department of a multinational based in London, UK. It argues that the nature of online communication in international organisations, with its high levels of intertextuality and interdiscursivity, requires multidimensional analytical approaches that are capable of capturing its complexity and dynamics. To this end, the chapter introduces electronic discourse analysis networks (EDANs) as one example of such approaches. It begins with a brief review of the literature that has informed the study reported on here before it discusses EDANs as its analytical framework. Using a group of embedded emails and a number of networked data sets, the chapter shows how EDANs can be used to further our understanding of professional online communication.

Business Process Modelling based on formal temporal theory with an application to hospital patient flows

Existing Workflow Management Systems (WFMSs) follow a pragmatic approach. They often use a proprietary modelling language with an intuitive graphical layout. However the underlying semantics lack a formal foundation. As a consequence, analysis issues, such as proving correctness i.e. soundness and completeness, and reliable execution are not supported at design level. This project will be using an applied ontology approach by formally defining key terms such as process, sub-process, action/task based on formal temporal theory. Current business process modelling (BPM) standards such as Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) Activity Diagram (AD) model their constructs with no logical basis. This investigation will contribute to the research and industry by providing a framework that will provide grounding for BPM to reason and represent a correct business process (BP). This is missing in the current BPM domain, and may result in reduction of the design costs and avert the burden of redundant terms used by the current standards. A graphical tool will be introduced which will implement the formal ontology defined in the framework. This new tool can be used both as a modelling tool and at the same time will serve the purpose of validating the model. This research will also fill the existing gap by providing a unified graphical representation to represent a BP in a logically consistent manner for the mainstream modelling standards in the fields of business and IT. A case study will be conducted to analyse a catalogue of existing ‘patient pathways’ i.e. processes, of King’s College Hospital NHS Trust including current performance statistics. Following the application of the framework, a mapping will be conducted, and new performance statistics will be collected. A cost/benefits analysis report will be produced comparing the results of the two approaches.

A general framework for Business Process Modelling (BPM) based on Formal Temporal Theory with an application to Hospital Patient flows

Existing Workflow Management Systems (WFMSs) follow a pragmatic approach. They often use a proprietary modelling language with an intuitive graphical layout. However the underlying semantics lack a formal foundation. As a consequence, analysis issues, such as proving correctness i.e. soundness and completeness, and reliable execution are not supported at design level. This project will be using an applied ontology approach by formally defining key terms such as process, sub-process, action/task based on formal temporal theory. Current business process modelling (BPM) standards such as Business Process Modelling Notation (BPMN) and Unified Modelling Language (UML) Activity Diagram (AD) model their constructs with no logical basis. This investigation will contribute to the research and industry by providing a framework that will provide grounding for BPM to reason and represent a correct business process (BP). This is missing in the current BPM domain, and may result in reduction of the design costs and avert the burden of redundant terms used by the current standards. A graphical tool will be introduced which will implement the formal ontology defined in the framework. This new tool can be used both as a modelling tool and at the same time will serve the purpose of validating the model. This research will also fill the existing gap by providing a unified graphical representation to represent a BP in a logically consistent manner for the mainstream modelling standards in the fields of business and IT. A case study will be conducted to analyse a catalogue of existing ‘patient pathways’ i.e. processes, of King’s College Hospital NHS Trust including current performance statistics. Following the application of the framework, a mapping will be conducted, and new performance statistics will be collected. A cost/benefits analysis report will be produced comparing the results of the two approaches.