Strategy taxonomy and classification system development : study of two state governments

There is limited understanding about business strategies related to parliamentary government's departments. This study focuses on the strategies of departments of two state governments in Australia. The strategies are derived from department strategic plans available in public domain and collected from respective websites. The results of this research indicate that strategies fall into seven categories: internal, development, political, partnership, environment, reorientation and status quo. The strategies of the departments are mainly internal or development where development strategy is mainly the focus of departments such as transport, and infrastructure. Political strategy is prevalent for departments related to communities, and education and training. Further three layers of strategies are identified as kernel, cluster and individual, which are mapped to the developed taxonomy.

Policy evaluations for U.S. federal timber sale accounting system development.

XVIII IUFRO World Congress, Ljubljana 1986.

Selecting a multi-agent system development tool for industrial applications: A case study of self-serving aircraft assets

Industrialists have few example processes they can benchmark against in order to choose a multi-agent development kit. In this paper we present a review of commercial and academic agent tools with the aim of selecting one for developing an intelligent, self-serving asset architecture. In doing so, we map and enhance relevant assessment criteria found in literature. After a preliminary review of 20 multiagent platforms, we examine in further detail those of JADE, JACK and Cougaar. Our findings indicate that Cougaar is well suited for our requirements, showing excellent support for criteria such as scalability, persistence, mobility and lightweightness. © 2010 IEEE.

Stakeholder engagement in early stage product-service system development for healthcare informatics

This paper presents the findings from four case studies on stakeholder engagement in new health information and communication technology (ICT) product-service system (PSS) development. The degree of connectivity between the new health ICT PSS and its intended operating environment has emerged to be an important contextual factor that may impact the decision of stakeholder engagement in the early stage development process. Along with the proposition of a four-level framework to guide stakeholder identification for new PSS development, three stakeholder engagement propositions that are based on the degree of connectivity are developed. Analysis has shown that there can be two types of connectivity: data and process. Moreover, each connectivity type can be characterized by how much the new PSS is connected with its environment: independent if there is no linkage, linked if it interfaces with, or incorporated if it is embedded into. Furthermore, depending upon whether and to what extent the PSS has data and process connectivity with its intended operating environment, the stakeholder engagement needs in early stage development vary. The propositions presented in this paper provide important directions for future work exploring PSS characterization and stakeholder engagement decision in early stage new PSS development in the healthcare industry. © 2013 PICMET.

A Survey of Search Methodologies and Automated System Development for Examination Timetabling

Exam timetabling is one of the most important administrative activities that takes place in academic institutions. In this paper we present a critical discussion of the research on exam timetabling in the last decade or so. This last ten years has seen an increased level of attention on this important topic. There has been a range of significant contributions to the scientific literature both in terms of theoretical andpractical aspects. The main aim of this survey is to highlight the new trends and key research achievements that have been carried out in the last decade.We also aim to outline a range of relevant important research issues and challenges that have been generated by this body of work.

We first define the problem and review previous survey papers. Algorithmic approaches are then classified and discussed. These include early techniques (e.g. graph heuristics) and state-of-the-art approaches including meta-heuristics, constraint based methods, multi-criteria techniques, hybridisations, and recent new trends concerning neighbourhood structures, which are motivated by raising the generality of the approaches. Summarising tables are presented to provide an overall view of these techniques. We discuss some issues on decomposition techniques, system tools and languages, models and complexity. We also present and discuss some important issues which have come to light concerning the public benchmark exam timetabling data. Different versions of problem datasetswith the same name have been circulating in the scientific community in the last ten years which has generated a significant amount of confusion. We clarify the situation and present a re-naming of the widely studied datasets to avoid future confusion. We also highlight which research papershave dealt with which dataset. Finally, we draw upon our discussion of the literature to present a (non-exhaustive) range of potential future research directions and open issues in exam timetabling research.

Involving users in expert system development

The ultimate criterion of success for interactive expert systems is that they will be used, and used to effect, by individuals other than the system developers. A key ingredient of success in most systems is involving users in the specification and development of systems as they are being built. However, until recently, system designers have paid little attention to ascertaining user needs and to developing systems with corresponding functionality and appropriate interfaces to match those requirements. Although the situation is beginning to change, many developers do not know how to go about involving users, or else tackle the problem in an inadequate way. This paper discusses the need for user involvement and considers why many developers are still not involving users in an optimal way. It looks at the different ways in which users can be involved in the development process and describes how to select appropriate techniques and methods for studying users. Finally, it discusses some of the problems inherent in involving users in expert system development, and recommends an approach which incorporates both ethnographic analysis and formal user testing.

The integrated WRF/urban modelling system: development, evaluation, and applications to urban environmental problems

To bridge the gaps between traditional mesoscale modelling and microscale modelling, the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in collaboration with other agencies and research groups, has developed an integrated urban modelling system coupled to the weather research and forecasting (WRF) model as a community tool to address urban environmental issues. The core of this WRF/urban modelling system consists of the following: (1) three methods with different degrees of freedom to parameterize urban surface processes, ranging from a simple bulk parameterization to a sophisticated multi-layer urban canopy model with an indoor–outdoor exchange sub-model that directly interacts with the atmospheric boundary layer, (2) coupling to fine-scale computational fluid dynamic Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes and Large-Eddy simulation models for transport and dispersion (T&D) applications, (3) procedures to incorporate high-resolution urban land use, building morphology, and anthropogenic heating data using the National Urban Database and Access Portal Tool (NUDAPT), and (4) an urbanized high-resolution land data assimilation system. This paper provides an overview of this modelling system; addresses the daunting challenges of initializing the coupled WRF/urban model and of specifying the potentially vast number of parameters required to execute the WRF/urban model; explores the model sensitivity to these urban parameters; and evaluates the ability of WRF/urban to capture urban heat islands, complex boundary-layer structures aloft, and urban plume T&D for several major metropolitan regions. Recent applications of this modelling system illustrate its promising utility, as a regional climate-modelling tool, to investigate impacts of future urbanization on regional meteorological conditions and on air quality under future climate change scenarios. Copyright © 2010 Royal Meteorological Society

Student and teacher response system : development of an interactive anonymous real-timeformative feedback system

This paper is focusing IT-supported real-time formative feedback in a classroom context. The development of a Student and Teacher Response System (STRS) is described. Since there are a number of obstacles for effective interaction in large classes IT can be used to support the teachers aim to find out if students understand the lecture and accordingly adjust the content and design of the lecture. The system can be used for formative assessment before, during, and after a lecture. It is also possible for students to initiate interaction during lectures by posing questions anonymously. The main contributions of the paper are a) the description of the interactive real-time system and b) the development process behind it.

Information system development for demolition material management

Proceedings of 12th International Conference on Information Systems and Development, held in Melbourne, Australia, August 29-31, 2003