Applicability of SERVQUAL in restaurants: an exploratory study in a Portuguese resort

SERVQUAL is the most popular instrument to ascertain service quality. However, some debate exists about its ability to characterize different service environments. Furthermore, there is not a consensus about the inclusion of customer expectations in the model. The research presented in this paper intends to discuss the applicability of SERVQUAL to restaurant services and to analyze the inclusion of customer expectations in such environment. The research was developed in a Portuguese resort and more than 300 customers, from two different restaurants, were invited to participate in the study.

Iterative refinement approach for QOS-Aware service configuration

In heterogeneous environments, diversity of resources among the devices may affect their ability to perform services with specific QoS constraints, and drive peers to group themselves in a coalition for cooperative service execution. The dynamic selection of peers should be influenced by user’s QoS requirements as well as local computation availability, tailoring provided service to user’s specific needs. However, complex dynamic real-time scenarios may prevent the possibility of computing optimal service configurations before execution. An iterative refinement approach with the ability to trade off deliberation time for the quality of the solution is proposed. We state the importance of quickly finding a good initial solution and propose heuristic evaluation functions that optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves as the algorithms have more time to run.

Dynamic adaptation of stability periods for service level agreements

A QoS adaptation to dynamically changing system conditions that takes into consideration the user’s constraints on the stability of service provisioning is presented. The goal is to allow the system to make QoS adaptation decisions in response to fluctuations in task traffic flow, under the control of the user. We pay special attention to the case where monitoring the stability period and resource load variation of Service Level Agreements for different types of services is used to dynamically adapt future stability periods, according to a feedback control scheme. System’s adaptation behaviour can be configured according to a desired confidence level on future resource usage. The viability of the proposed approach is validated by preliminary experiments.

Time-bounded distributed QoS-aware service configuration in heterogeneous cooperative environments

The scarcity and diversity of resources among the devices of heterogeneous computing environments may affect their ability to perform services with specific Quality of Service constraints, particularly in dynamic distributed environments where the characteristics of the computational load cannot always be predicted in advance. Our work addresses this problem by allowing resource constrained devices to cooperate with more powerful neighbour nodes, opportunistically taking advantage of global distributed resources and processing power. Rather than assuming that the dynamic configuration of this cooperative service executes until it computes its optimal output, the paper proposes an anytime approach that has the ability to tradeoff deliberation time for the quality of the solution. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed anytime algorithms are able to quickly find a good initial solution and effectively optimise the rate at which the quality of the current solution improves at each iteration, with an overhead that can be considered negligible.

Futures of work and skills: some foresight exercises in Europe and USA

The Knowledge-based society brought a new way of living and working. The increasing decline of work in primary sector and traditional industries, related with the significant increase of employment in the service sector and in the knowledge work, changed the way companies and individuals establish their relations, the way work and life is organised. These changes are usual and fast and so the feeling of insecurity and unpredictability become more and more sharp. In this context, foresight exercises are necessary tools helping in the identification of the key variables and main trends of evolution. This report will present some foresight studies about work and skills in Europe and USA, in order to contribute to think about possible evolutions and trends.

Validity and reliability of a health care service evaluation instrument for tuberculosis

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the validity and reliability of an instrument that evaluates the structure of primary health care units for the treatment of tuberculosis.METHODS This cross-sectional study used simple random sampling and evaluated 1,037 health care professionals from five Brazilian municipalities (Natal, state of Rio Grande do Norte; Cabedelo, state of Paraíba; Foz do Iguaçu, state of Parana; Sao José do Rio Preto, state of Sao Paulo, and Uberaba, state of Minas Gerais) in 2011. Structural indicators were identified and validated, considering different methods of organization of the health care system in the municipalities of different population sizes. Each structure represented the organization of health care services and contained the resources available for the execution of health care services: physical resources (equipment, consumables, and facilities); human resources (number and qualification); and resources for maintenance of the existing infrastructure and technology (deemed as the organization of health care services). The statistical analyses used in the validation process included reliability analysis, exploratory factor analysis, and confirmatory factor analysis.RESULTS The validation process indicated the retention of five factors, with 85.9% of the total variance explained, internal consistency between 0.6460 and 0.7802, and quality of fit of the confirmatory factor analysis of 0.995 using the goodness-of-fit index. The retained factors comprised five structural indicators: professionals involved in the care of tuberculosis patients, training, access to recording instruments, availability of supplies, and coordination of health care services with other levels of care. Availability of supplies had the best performance and the lowest coefficient of variation among the services evaluated. The indicators of assessment of human resources and coordination with other levels of care had satisfactory performance, but the latter showed the highest coefficient of variation. The performance of the indicators “training” and “access to recording instruments” was inferior to that of other indicators.CONCLUSIONS The instrument showed feasibility of application and potential to assess the structure of primary health care units for the treatment of tuberculosis.

Information technology service management: an experimental approach towards IT service prediction

Dissertation presented to obtain a Masters degree in Computer Science

Remote experimentation network - yielding an inter-university peer-to-peer e-service

The goal of this paper is to discuss the benefits and challenges of yielding an inter-continental network of remote laboratories supported and used by both European and Latin American Institutions of Higher Education. Since remote experimentation, understood as the ability to carry out real-world experiments through a simple Web browser, is already a proven solution for the educational community as a supplement to on-site practical lab work (and in some cases, namely for distance learning courses, a replacement to that work), the purpose is not to discuss its technical, pedagogical, or economical strengths, but rather to raise and try to answer some questions about the underlying benefits and challenges of establishing a peer-to-peer network of remote labs. Ultimately, we regard such a network as a constructive mechanism to help students gain the working and social skills often valued by multinational/global companies, while also providing awareness of local cultural aspects.

Market of resources for virtual enterprise integration

Most definitions of virtual enterprise (VE) incorporate the idea of extended and collaborative outsourcing to suppliers and subcontractors in order to achieve a competitive response to market demands (Webster, Sugden, & Tayles, 2004). As suggested by several authors (Browne & Zhang, 1999; Byrne, 1993; Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, 1999; Cunha, Putnik, & Ávila, 2000; Davidow & Malone, 1992; Preiss, Goldman, & Nagel, 1996), a VE consists of a network of independent enterprises (resources providers) with reconfiguration capability in useful time, permanently aligned with the market requirements, created to take profit from a specific market opportunity, and where each participant contributes with its best practices and core competencies to the success and competitiveness of the structure as a whole. Even during the operation phase of the VE, the configuration can change, to assure business alignment with the market demands, traduced by the identification of reconfiguration opportunities and continuous readjustment or reconfiguration of the VE network, to meet unexpected situations or to keep permanent competitiveness and maximum performance (Cunha & Putnik, 2002, 2005a, 2005b).

Towards a GIS-T database design and implementation for public transit planning: the case study of Dar-Es-salaam metropolitan city, Tanzania.

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Science in Geospatial Technologies

Serviço de visualização de informação geográfica na WEB - A publicação do atlas de Portugal utilizando a especificação WEB MAP SERVICE

Dissertação apresentada como requisito parcial para obtenção do grau de Mestre em Ciência e Sistemas de Informação Geográfica

Plataforma de negociação de componentes multimédia

O objectivo da tese é demonstrar a adequação do paradigma dos mercados electrónicos baseados em agentes para transaccionar objectos multimédia em função do perfil dos espectadores. Esta dissertação descreve o projecto realizado no âmbito da plataforma de personalização de conteúdos em construção. O domínio de aplicação adoptado foi a personalização dos intervalos publicitários difundidos pelos distribuidores de conteúdos multimédia, i.e., pretende-se gerar em tempo útil o alinhamento de anúncios publicitários que melhor se adeqúe ao perfil de um espectador ou de um grupo de espectadores. O projecto focou-se no estudo e selecção das tecnologias de suporte, na concepção da arquitectura e no desenvolvimento de um protótipo que permitisse realizar diversas experiências nomeadamente com diferentes estratégias e tipos de mercado. A arquitectura proposta para a plataforma consiste num sistema multiagente organizado em três camadas que disponibiliza interfaces do tipo serviço Web com o exterior. A camada de topo é constituída por agentes de interface com o exterior. Na camada intermédia encontram-se os agentes autónomos que modelam as entidades produtoras e consumidoras de componentes multimédia assim como a entidade reguladora do mercado. Estes agentes registam-se num serviço de registo próprio onde especificam os componentes multimédia que pretendem negociar. Na camada inferior realiza-se o mercado que é constituído por agentes delegados dos agentes da camada superior. O lançamento do mercado é efectuado através de uma interface e consiste na escolha do tipo de mercado e no tipo de itens a negociar. Este projecto centrou-se na realização da camada do mercado e da parte da camada intermédia de apoio às actividades de negociação no mercado. A negociação é efectuada em relação ao preço da transmissão do anúncio no intervalo em preenchimento. Foram implementados diferentes perfis de negociação com tácticas, incrementos e limites de variação de preço distintos. Em termos de protocolos de negociação, adoptou-se uma variante do Iterated Contract Net – o Fixed Iterated Contract Net. O protótipo resultante foi testado e depurado com sucesso.

Integrating the LMS in service oriented e-learning systems

Learning management systems are routinely used for presenting, solving and grading exercises with large classes. However, teachers are constrained to use questions with pre-defined answers, such as multiple-choice, to automatically correct the exercises of their students. Complex exercises cannot be evaluated automatically by the LMS and require the coordination of a set of heterogeneous systems. For instance, programming exercises require a specialized exercise resolution environment and automatic evaluation features, each provided by a different type of system. In this paper, the authors discuss an approach for the coordination of a network of eLearning systems supporting the resolution of exercises. The proposed approach is based on a pivot component embedded in the LMS and has two main roles: 1) provide an exercise resolution environment, and 2) coordinate communication between the LMS and other systems, exposing their functions as web services. The integration of the pivot component in the LMS relies on Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI). This paper presents an architecture to coordinate a network of eLearning systems and validate the proposed approach by creating such a network integrated with LMS from two different vendors.

CrimsonHex: a service oriented repository of specialised learning objects

The corner stone of the interoperability of eLearning systems is the standard definition of learning objects. Nevertheless, for some domains this standard is insufficient to fully describe all the assets, especially when they are used as input for other eLearning services. On the other hand, a standard definition of learning objects in not enough to ensure interoperability among eLearning systems; they must also use a standard API to exchange learning objects. This paper presents the design and implementation of a service oriented repository of learning objects called crimsonHex. This repository is fully compliant with the existing interoperability standards and supports new definitions of learning objects for specialized domains. We illustrate this feature with the definition of programming problems as learning objects and its validation by the repository. This repository is also prepared to store usage data on learning objects to tailor the presentation order and adapt it to learner profiles.

A contribution to the e-framework: a specification of a programming exercise evaluation service

This work is a contribution to the e-Framework, arguably the most prominent e-learning framework today, and consists of the definition of a service for the automatic evaluation of programming exercises. This evaluation domain differs from trivial evaluations modelled by languages such as the IMS Question & Test Interoperability (QTI) specification. Complex evaluation domains justify the development of specialized evaluators that participate in several business processes. These business processes can combine other type of systems such as Programming Contest Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, Integrated Development Environments and Learning Object Repositories where programming exercises are stored as Learning Objects. This contribution describes the implementation approaches used, more precisely, behaviours & requests, use & interactions, applicable standards, interface definition and usage scenarios.