Knowledge-Intensive Business Processes: Proceedings of the 1st International Workshop on Knowledge-intensive Business Processes [CEUR Workshop Proceedings, Volume 861]

Nowadays, Workflow Management Systems (WfMSs) and, more generally, Process Management Systems (PMPs) are process-aware Information Systems (PAISs), are widely used to support many human organizational activities, ranging from well-understood, relatively stable and structures processes (supply chain management, postal delivery tracking, etc.) to processes that are more complicated, less structured and may exhibit a high degree of variation (health-care, emergency management, etc.). Every aspect of a business process involves a certain amount of knowledge which may be complex depending on the domain of interest. The adequate representation of this knowledge is determined by the modeling language used. Some processes behave in a way that is well understood, predictable and repeatable: the tasks are clearly delineated and the control flow is straightforward. Recent discussions, however, illustrate the increasing demand for solutions for knowledge-intensive processes, where these characteristics are less applicable. The actors involved in the conduct of a knowledge-intensive process have to deal with a high degree of uncertainty. Tasks may be hard to perform and the order in which they need to be performed may be highly variable. Modeling knowledge-intensive processes can be complex as it may be hard to capture at design-time what knowledge is available at run-time. In realistic environments, for example, actors lack important knowledge at execution time or this knowledge can become obsolete as the process progresses. Even if each actor (at some point) has perfect knowledge of the world, it may not be certain of its beliefs at later points in time, since tasks by other actors may change the world without those changes being perceived. Typically, a knowledge-intensive process cannot be adequately modeled by classical, state of the art process/workflow modeling approaches. In some respect there is a lack of maturity when it comes to capturing the semantic aspects involved, both in terms of reasoning about them. The main focus of the 1st International Workshop on Knowledge-intensive Business processes (KiBP 2012) was investigating how techniques from different fields, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Knowledge Representation (KR), Business Process Management (BPM), Service Oriented Computing (SOC), etc., can be combined with the aim of improving the modeling and the enactment phases of a knowledge-intensive process. The 1st International Workshop on Knowledge-intensive Business process (KiBP 2012) was held as part of the program of the 2012 Knowledge Representation & Reasoning International Conference (KR 2012) in Rome, Italy, in June 2012. The workshop was hosted by the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Informatica, Automatica e Gestionale Antonio Ruberti of Sapienza Universita di Roma, with financial support of the University, through grant 2010-C26A107CN9 TESTMED, and the EU Commission through the projects FP7-25888 Greener Buildings and FP7-257899 Smart Vortex. This volume contains the 5 papers accepted and presented at the workshop. Each paper was reviewed by three members of the internationally renowned Program Committee. In addition, a further paper was invted for inclusion in the workshop proceedings and for presentation at the workshop. There were two keynote talks, one by Marlon Dumas (Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia) on "Integrated Data and Process Management: Finally?" and the other by Yves Lesperance (Department of Computer Science and Engineering, York University, Canada) on "A Logic-Based Approach to Business Processes Customization" completed the scientific program. We would like to thank all the Program Committee members for the valuable work in selecting the papers, Andrea Marrella for his valuable work as publication and publicity chair of the workshop, and Carola Aiello and the consulting agency Consulta Umbria for the organization of this successful event.

Tsunami alert : the mobile phone difference

Substantial growth has occurred in the telecommunication sector in Papua New Guinea (PNG) since 2007. Mobile telephony has spread to rural and remote localities, following decades of inadequate telephone services. This paper examines the introduction of mobile telephones into a rural village in PNG, and focuses on information access during emergency situations. It considers three tsunami alerts: one immediately prior to the introduction of mobile phone services in the area, and two which occurred after mobile phone reception became available. The research shows that for people with limited access to information, responses to threats such as tsunamis can be inappropriate and driven by fear and panic. By contrast, when there is reliable, timely information available, measured responses can be adopted. This research demonstrates how the use of newly-introduced communication technologies for handling emergencies may work in practice, benefitting people in poorer, rural communities.

Social support promotes psychological well-being following a natural disaster

Receiving emotional support has consistently been demonstrated as an important factor associated with mental health but sparse research has investigated giving support in addition to receiving it or the types of support that predict well-being. In this paper the relationship between giving and receiving instrumental and emotional social support and psychological well-being during and following a natural disaster is investigated. A survey administered between four and six months after fatal floods was conducted with 200 community members consisting of men (n = 68) and women (n = 132) aged between 17 and 87 years. Social support experiences were assessed using the 2-Way Social Support Scale (2-Way SSS; Shakespeare-Finch & Obst, 2011) and eudemonic well-being was measured using the Psychological Well-Being Scale (PWBS; Ryff & Keyes, 1995). Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine expected relationships and to explore the differential effects of the four factors of the 2-Way SSS. Results indicated that social support shared significant positive associations with domains of psychological well-being, especially with regards to interpersonal relationships. Receiving and giving emotional support were respectively the strongest unique predictors of psychological well-being. However, receiving instrumental support predicted less autonomy. Results highlight the importance of measuring social support as a multidimensional construct and affirm that disaster response policy and practice should focus on emotional as well as instrumental needs in order to promote individual and community psychosocial health following a flooding crisis.

Sharing news, making sense, saying thanks : patterns of talk on twitter during the Queensland floods

This paper examines the discursive aspects of Twitter communication during the floods in the summer of 2010–2011 in Queensland, Australia. Using a representative sample of communication associated with the #qldfloods hashtag on Twitter, we coded and analysed the patterns of communication. We focus on key phenomena in the use of social media in crisis communication: communal sense- making practices, the negotiation of participant roles, and digital convergence around shared events. Social media is used both as a crisis communication and emergency management tool, as well as a space for participants to engage in emotional exchanges and communication of distress.

Exploring information literacy during a natural disaster: The 2011 Brisbane Flood

This chapter presents the preliminary results of a phenomenographic study aimed at exploring people’s experience of information literacy during the 2011 flood in Brisbane, Queensland. Phenomenography is a qualitative, interpretive and descriptive approach to research that explores the different ways in which people experience various phenomena and situations in the world around them. In this study, semi-structured interviews with seven adult residents of Brisbane suggested six categories that depicted different ways people experienced information literacy during this natural disaster. Access to timely, accurate and credible information during a natural disaster can save lives, safeguard property, and reduce fear and anxiety, however very little is currently known about citizens’ information literacy during times of natural disaster. Understanding how people use information to learn during times of crisis is a new terrain for community information literacy research, and one that warrants further attention by the information research community and the emergency management sector.

Making YAWL and SmartPM interoperate : managing highly dynamic processes by exploiting automatic adaptation features

In the last years, the trade-o between exibility and sup- port has become a leading issue in work ow technology. In this paper we show how an imperative modeling approach used to de ne stable and well-understood processes can be complemented by a modeling ap- proach that enables automatic process adaptation and exploits planning techniques to deal with environmental changes and exceptions that may occur during process execution. To this end, we designed and imple- mented a Custom Service that allows the Yawl execution environment to delegate the execution of subprocesses and activities to the SmartPM execution environment, which is able to automatically adapt a process to deal with emerging changes and exceptions. We demonstrate the fea- sibility and validity of the approach by showing the design and execution of an emergency management process de ned for train derailments.

Conceptualising, evaluating and reporting social resilience in vulnerable regional and remote communities facing climate change in tropical Queensland : marine and tropical sciences research facility transition project final report

Regional and remote communities in tropical Queensland are among Australia’s most vulnerable in the face of climate change. At the same time, these socially and economically vulnerable regions house some of Australia’s most significant biodiversity values. Past approaches to terrestrial biodiversity management have focused on tackling biophysical interventions through the use of biophysical knowledge. An equally important focus should be placed on building regional-scale community resilience if some of the worst biodiversity impacts of climate change are to be avoided or mitigated. Despite its critical need, more systemic or holistic approaches to natural resource management have been rarely trialed and tested in a structured way. Currently, most strategic interventions in improving regional community resilience are ad hoc, not theory-based and short term. Past planning approaches have not been durable, nor have they been well informed by clear indicators. Research into indicators for community resilience has been poorly integrated within adaptive planning and management cycles. This project has aimed to resolve this problem by: * Reviewing the community and social resilience and adaptive planning literature to reconceptualise an improved framework for applying community resilience concepts; * Harvesting and extending work undertaken in MTSRF Phase 1 to identifying the learnings emerging from past MTSRF research; * Distilling these findings to identify new theoretical and practical approaches to the application of community resilience in natural resource use and management; * Reconsidering the potential interplay between a region’s biophysical and social planning processes, with a focus on exploring spatial tools to communicate climate change risk and its consequent environmental, economic and social impacts, and; * Trialling new approaches to indicator development and adaptive planning to improve community resilience, using a sub-regional pilot in the Wet Tropics. In doing so, we also looked at ways to improve the use and application of relevant spatial information. Our theoretical review drew upon the community development, psychology and emergency management literature to better frame the concept of community resilience relative to aligned concepts of social resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Firstly, we consider community resilience as a concept that can be considered at a range of scales (e.g. regional, locality, communities of interest, etc.). We also consider that overall resilience at higher scales will be influenced by resilience levels at lesser scales (inclusive of the resilience of constituent institutions, families and individuals). We illustrate that, at any scale, resilience and vulnerability are not necessarily polar opposites, and that some understanding of vulnerability is important in determining resilience. We position social resilience (a concept focused on the social characteristics of communities and individuals) as an important attribute of community resilience, but one that needs to be considered alongside economic, natural resource, capacity-based and governance attributes. The findings from the review of theory and MTSRF Phase 1 projects were synthesized and refined by the wider project team. Five predominant themes were distilled from this literature, research review and an expert analysis. They include the findings that: 1. Indicators have most value within an integrated and adaptive planning context, requiring an active co-research relationship between community resilience planners, managers and researchers if real change is to be secured; 2. Indicators of community resilience form the basis for planning for social assets and the resilience of social assets is directly related the longer term resilience of natural assets. This encourages and indeed requires the explicit development and integration of social planning within a broader natural resource planning and management framework; 3. Past indicator research and application has not provided a broad picture of the key attributes of community resilience and there have been many attempts to elicit lists of “perfect” indicators that may never be useful within the time and resource limitations of real world regional planning and management. We consider that modeling resilience for proactive planning and prediction purposes requires the consideration of simple but integrated clusters of attributes; 4. Depending on time and resources available for planning and management, the combined use of well suited indicators and/or other lesser “lines of evidence” is more flexible than the pursuit of perfect indicators, and that; 5. Index-based, collaborative and participatory approaches need to be applied to the development, refinement and reporting of indicators over longer time frames. We trialed the practical application of these concepts via the establishment of a collaborative regional alliance of planners and managers involved in the development of climate change adaptation strategies across tropical Queensland (the Gulf, Wet Tropics, Cape York and Torres Strait sub-regions). A focus on the Wet Tropics as a pilot sub-region enabled other Far North Queensland sub-region’s to participate and explore the potential extension of this approach. The pilot activities included: * Further exploring ways to innovatively communicate the region’s likely climate change scenarios and possible environmental, economic and social impacts. We particularly looked at using spatial tools to overlay climate change risks to geographic communities and social vulnerabilities within those communities; * Developing a cohesive first pass of a State of the Region-style approach to reporting community resilience, inclusive of regional economic viability, community vitality, capacitybased and governance attributes. This framework integrated a literature review, expert (academic and community) and alliance-based contributions; and * Early consideration of critical strategies that need to be included in unfolding regional planning activities with Far North Queensland. The pilot assessment finds that rural, indigenous and some urban populations in the Wet Tropics are highly vulnerable and sensitive to climate change and may require substantial support to adapt and become more resilient. This assessment finds that under current conditions (i.e. if significant adaptation actions are not taken) the Wet Tropics as a whole may be seriously impacted by the most significant features of climate change and extreme climatic events. Without early and substantive action, this could result in declining social and economic wellbeing and natural resource health. Of the four attributes we consider important to understanding community resilience, the Wet Tropics region is particularly vulnerable in two areas; specifically its economic vitality and knowledge, aspirations and capacity. The third and fourth attributes, community vitality and institutional governance are relatively resilient but are vulnerable in some key respects. In regard to all four of these attributes, however, there is some emerging capacity to manage the possible shocks that may be associated with the impacts of climate change and extreme climatic events. This capacity needs to be carefully fostered and further developed to achieve broader community resilience outcomes. There is an immediate need to build individual, household, community and sectoral resilience across all four attribute groups to enable populations and communities in the Wet Tropics region to adapt in the face of climate change. Preliminary strategies of importance to improve regional community resilience have been identified. These emerging strategies also have been integrated into the emerging Regional Development Australia Roadmap, and this will ensure that effective implementation will be progressed and coordinated. They will also inform emerging strategy development to secure implementation of the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan. Of most significance in our view, this project has taken a co-research approach from the outset with explicit and direct importance and influence within the region’s formal planning and management arrangements. As such, the research: * Now forms the foundations of the first attempt at “Social Asset” planning within the Wet Tropics Regional NRM Plan review; * Is assisting Local government at regional scale to consider aspects of climate change adaptation in emerging planning scheme/community planning processes; * Has partnered the State government (via the Department of Infrastructure and Planning and Regional Managers Coordination Network Chair) in progressing the Climate Change adaptation agenda set down within the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan; * Is informing new approaches to report on community resilience within the GBRMPA Outlook reporting framework; and * Now forms the foundation for the region’s wider climate change adaptation priorities in the Regional Roadmap developed by Regional Development Australia. Through the auspices of Regional Development Australia, the outcomes of the research will now inform emerging negotiations concerning a wider package of climate change adaptation priorities with State and Federal governments. Next stage research priorities are also being developed to enable an ongoing alliance between researchers and the region’s climate change response.

Promoting posttraumatic growth in police recruits : preliminary results of a randomised controlled resilience intervention trial

Recent research has demonstrated that the same experiences that may elicit symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in emergency service personnel can also provide a catalyst for positive personal changes such as posttraumatic growth (PTG). In this research newly recruited police officers (N = 412) participated in a randomised control trial of a program specifically designed to promote mental health. On entry to the academy, new recruits were randomly allocated, by classrooms, to either a treatment as usual condition (i.e., existing psychoeducation program) or to the intervention group. The Promoting Resilient Officers (PRO) program is a resilience building intervention adapted from an earlier resilience building program in collaboration with the police service. The PRO program also includes additional components on trauma and PTG. The current research included the participants who had experienced trauma prior to or during the research period (N = 246). It was hypothesised that participation in the PRO program would increase levels of PTG and lower levels of PTSD when compared to recruits in the control condition. Using multilevel modelling and post-hoc analyses, results indicated there were significantly higher levels of PTG across multiple dimensions when compared to the control group. There was no effect on PTSD symptoms with both conditions showing a floor effect. The research indicated the potential value of developing interventions that elicit reflections on the potential for positive as well as negative outcomes of experiencing traumatic and other highly challenging events.

Vulnerability : an issue for law and policy in pandemic planning?

The 2009 H!Nl 'swine flu' pandemic was the first influenza pandemic of the twenty-first centmy. Unlike the first influenza pandemic of the twentieth century, the so-called 'Spanish flu' which killed millions of people worldwide, the 2009 pandemic was relatively mild. While the mildness of the 2009 pandemic meant that the 'Yorld was spared from the impact of a high-mortality event that would cause widespread social and economic disruption, the 2009 pandemic did provide an opportunity to road-test pandemic readiness. In other work we have assessed Australia's pandemic plans and emergency management legislation, finding that both provide flexible and adaptive forms of regulation that are capable of adapting to the scale and severity of a pandemic or other public health emergency. 1 In this chapter we consider whether pandemic planning adequately addresses the needs of vulnerable individuals and groups, both within countries and between them. Central to this is the question of whether vulnerability is itself a useful concept for both law and policy, and if so, the implications of expressly incorporating the concept of vulnerability into pandemic planning.

Proposing and developing the definition and conceptual framework for healthcare resilience to cope with disasters

Building healthcare resilience is an important step towards creating more resilient communities to better cope with future disasters. To date, however, there appears to be little literature on how the concept of healthcare resilience should be defined and operationalized with a conceptual framework. This article aims to build a comprehensive healthcare disaster management approach guided by the concept of resilience. Methods: Google and major health electronic databases were searched to retrieve critical relevant publications. A total of 61 related publications were included, to provide a comprehensive overview of theories and definitions relevant to disaster resilience. Results and Discussions: Resilience is an inherent and adaptive capacity to cope with future uncertainty, through multiple strategies with all hazards approaches, in an attempt to achieve a positive outcome with linkage and cooperation. Healthcare resilience can be defined as the capability of healthcare organisations to resist, absorb, and respond to the shock of disasters while maintaining the most essential functions, then recover to their original state or adapt to a new state. It can be assessed by criteria, namely: robustness, redundancy, resourcefulness; and a complex of key dimensions, namely: vulnerability and safety, disaster resources and preparedness, continuity of essential health services, recovery and adaptation. Conclusions: This new concept places healthcare organisations’ disaster capabilities, management tasks, activities and disaster outcomes together into a comprehensive whole view, using an integrated approach and establishing achievable goals.

Legal mechanisms for maximising community engagement with formal evacuation messaging: How well are these understood?

Study/Objective This program of research examines the effectiveness of legal mechanisms as motivators to maximise engagement and compliance with evacuation messages. This study is based on the understanding that the presence of legislative requirements, as well as sanctions and incentives encapsulated in law, can have a positive impact in achieving compliance. Our objective is to examine whether the current Australian legal frameworks, which incorporate evacuation during disasters, are an effective structure that is properly understood by those who enforce and those who are required to comply. Background In Australia, most jurisdictions have enacted legislation that encapsulates the power to evacuate and the ability to enforce compliance, either by the use of force or imposition of penalty. However, citizens still choose to not evacuate. Methods This program of research incorporates theoretical and doctrinal methodologies for reviewing literature and legislation in the Australia context. The aim of the research is to determine whether further clarity is required to create an understanding of the powers to evacuate, as well as greater public awareness of these powers. Results & Conclusion Legislators suggest that powers of evacuation can be ineffective if they are impractical to enforce. In Australia, there may also be confusion about from which legislative instrument the power to evacuate derives, and therefore whether there is a corresponding ability to enforce compliance through the use of force or imposition of a penalty. Equally, communities may lack awareness and understanding of the powers of agencies to enforce compliance. We seek to investigate whether this is the case, and whether even if greater awareness existed, it would act as an incentive to comply.

Effective communication during disasters

This paper describes a program of research examining emergency messaging during the response and early recovery phases of natural disasters. The objective of this suite of studies is to develop message construction frameworks and channels that maximise community compliance with instructional messaging. The research has adopted a multi-hazard approach and considers the impact of formal emergency messages, as well as informal messages (e.g., social media posts), on community compliance. In recent years, media reports have consistently demonstrated highly variable community compliance to instructional messaging during natural disasters. Footage of individuals watching a tsunami approaching from the beach or being over-run by floodwaters are disturbing and indicate the need for a clearer understanding of decision making under stress. This project’s multi-hazard approach considers the time lag between knowledge of the event and desired action, as well as how factors such as message fatigue, message ambiguity, and the interplay of messaging from multiple media sources are likely to play a role in an individual’s compliance with an emergency instruction. To examine effective messaging strategy, we conduct a critical analysis of the literature to develop a framework for community consultation and design experiments to test the potential for compliance improvement. Preliminary results indicate that there is, as yet, little published evidence on which to base decisions about emergency instructional messages to threatened communities. The research described here will contribute improvements in emergency instructional message compliance by generating an evidence-based framework that takes into account behavioural compliance theory, the psychology of decision making under stress, and multiple channels of communication including social media.

Stress during the rebuilding phase influenced mental health following two Queensland flood disasters more than the event itself

It has long been known that disasters can have mental health consequences such as increased rates of PTSD, depression and anxiety. While some research has shown that secondary stressors during the aftermath of a disaster can influence psychological outcomes, this aspect of the disaster experience has not been widely studied. This paper reports on two studies that investigated which aspects of the experience of being flooded were most predictive of mental health outcomes. The first study was a qualitative study of adults whose homes had been inundated in the Mackay flood of 2008 (n=16). Thematic analysis of interviews conducted 18-20 months post-flood found that stressors during the flood aftermath such as difficulties and delays during the rebuilding process and a difficult experience with an insurance company were nominated as the most stressful aspect of the flood by the majority of participants. The second study surveyed Mackay flood survivors three and a half years post-flood, and Brisbane 2011 flood survivors 7-9 months post-flood (n=158). Findings indicated aftermath stress contributed to mental health outcomes over and above the contribution of perceived trauma, objective flood severity, prior mental health, self-efficacy and demographic factors. The implications of these results for the provision of community recovery services following natural disasters are discussed, including the need to provide effective targeting of support services throughout the lengthy rebuilding phase; a possible role for co-ordinating tradespeople; and training for insurance company staff aimed at minimising the incidence of insurance company staff inadvertently adding to disaster victims’ stress.

Moving from theory to praxis on the fly: Introducing a salutogenic method to expedite mental health care provision in disaster situations

Not a lot is known about most mental illness. Its triggers can rarely be established and nor can its aetiological dynamics, so it is hardly surprising that the accepted treatments for most mental illnesses are really strategies to manage the most overt symptoms. But with such a dearth of knowledge, how can worthy decisions be made about psychiatric interventions, especially given time and budgetary restrictions? This paper introduces a method, extrapolated from Salutogenics; the psycho-social theory of health introduced by Antonovsky in 1987. This method takes a normative stance (that psychiatric health care is for the betterment of psychiatric patients), and applies it to any context where there is a dearth of workable knowledge. In lieu of guiding evidence, the method identifies reasonable alternatives on the fly, enabling rational decisions to be made quickly with limited resources.