Data propagation: a necessity for CSCW in design

The paper proposes a refinement of the concept of 'Common Information Spaces' (CIS), which has been proposed as a conceptual framework for the CWCW field in order to provide analyses of cooperative work. The refinement is developed through an introductory discussion of previous analyses of CIS and on the basis of a thorough description of the CIS of a hospital ward based on ethnographic fieldwork. The initially definition is refined by the introduction of 7 parameters: (i) the degree of distribution of work; (ii) the multiplicity of webs of significance; (iii) the level of required articulation work; (iv) multiplicity and intensity of means of communication; (v) the web of artefacts; (vi) immaterial mechanisms of interaction; (vii) the need for precision and promptness of interpretation. These parameters provide a more detailed conceptual framework and can be applied to characterize the particularity of a given CIS.

Control of production in mechanical engineering is fulfilled on the basis of orders fulfilment plans. Creation of production plans for small-serial and single enterprises is NP a difficult task. The real production environment is a set of technological equipment, tool rigging and measuring facilities. Fulfilment of the production order comprises distribution of technological operations for each part and assembly unit product in the structure of the order. According to the authors, one of the main problems consists in disparity between the real production environment and models of plans creation production. For the solution of this problem in the article, approach of creation of the general corporative balanced plan is proposed, which is based on the use of a common information space and a single core of planning. When creating the information space for placing of a planning core, authors as the main priority considered production process, e.i. process of transformation of raw materials in a finished articles. Therefore the core of management is presented in the form of set of the functions placed in the center space of management with two measurements. The plan of any subdivision of the enterprise connected with production is formed in the form of projections of technological operations to the corresponding coordinates of a common corporative information space of planning. It provides balance and full synchronization of plans of subdivisions of the enterprise.)

The thesis reports of a study into the effect upon organisations of co-operative information systems (CIS) incorporating flexible communications, group support and group working technologies. A review of the literature leads to the development of a model of effect based upon co-operative business tasks. CIS have the potential to change how co-operative business tasks are carried out and their principal effect (or performance) may therefore be evaluated by determining to what extent they are being employed to perform these tasks. A significant feature of CIS use identified is the extent to which they may be designed to fulfil particular tasks, or by contrast, may be applied creatively by users in an emergent fashion to perform tasks. A research instrument is developed using a survey questionnaire to elicit users judgements of the extent to which a CIS is employed to fulfil a range of co-operative tasks. This research instrument is applied to a longitudinal study of Novell GroupWise introduction at Northamptonshire County Council during which qualitative as well as quantitative data were gathered. A method of analysis of questionnaire results using principles from fuzzy mathematics and artificial intelligence is developed and demonstrated. Conclusions from the longitudinal study include the importance of early experiences in setting patterns for use for CIS, the persistence of patterns of use over time and the dominance of designed usage of the technology over emergent use.

Concurrent engineering: Automation, tools, and techniques

The Caspian Sea region is one of the strategically important spaces, attracting the attention of many countries, not only those that border it. The peculiarity of Caspian region is its polyculturalism, social variability, economic versatility. But this region is unique not only geopolitically, but also in its historical unity of states with very different cultures and mentalities. Therefore, achieving cultural security is impossible without the formation of a common mental substratum that is close to all representatives of the Caspian countries. It is impossible to create a common cultural and information space without taking into account the dynamics of peoples' identities and their increased cultural awareness. The effectiveness of Russian policy in the Caspian region, both on Russian territory and on an interstate scale, depends on the resolution of these issues. The difficulties lie in historical civilisational differences: European cultural models coexist here in close unity with traditional economic practices, so the Caspian can be seen as an 'island of juxtaposition of worlds' - 'East and West'. Today the five independent states with access to the sea are the main actors. Nevertheless, powers such as China, Turkey, the United States and leading European countries are fighting for influence in the Caspian basin. For the Russian territory, the Caspian is the concentration of numerous major geopolitical challenges. Today Russia is faced with the need to ensure cultural security in this region. Therefore, cultural security is aimed at maintaining national security through the development of cultural identity, which is very relevant to the task of forming a common mental space in the Caspian region.

Cooperative information system (CIS) is a complex system that involves the cooperation of several stakeholders sharing a common purpose, with different viewpoint on the system. This makes its development more difficult. The successful design of a CIS is then mainly based on the definition of the requirements engineering phase. In software engineering domain, especially in requirements engineering domain, Viewpoint and abstraction level are two important concepts introduced to reduce systems complexity. In this paper, we present an approach oriented viewpoints/abstraction levels which defines the necessary concepts to elicit the requirements of a CIS. In doing so, a model driven method is proposed to develop a CIS modelling tool. In this method, we proposed first a meta-model oriented viewpoints/abstraction levels which decomposes a CIS according to its different viewpoints. We then proposed a modelling tool, viewpoints for cooperative information system (VpCIS) generated from the meta-model.

Repositories for co-operative information systems

International audience

Coordination and collaboration are naturally used by groups for carrying out activities and solving problems that require cooperation. However, getting a set of computer agents to do the same has been a problem-primarily addressed by the AI community and recently by the database community as workflow and process management problems. Not surprisingly, the problem has been addressed at different levels of abstraction by the two communities. It is evident that there is a need for bringing the two approaches together to develop cooperative information systems. This paper argues for the use of active databases as an enabling technology for cooperative information systems, details a novel approach for supporting task sharing (a key cooperation strategy within cooperative information systems) using active capability, and elaborates on a methodology for mapping task-shared protocols expressed in high-level speech acts to event-condition-action rules.

As products become ever more diversified, their life cycles are becoming shorter. To reduce production costs, increased process automation and concurrent design are priorities. Therefore, a collaborative integrated design system is crucial in the mold design and manufacturing process. This research develops a collaborative navigation system for concurrent mold design within the computer-aided design (CAD) browser, using Pro/Web.Link as the core tool. Providing both concurrent engineering and collaborative design functions, the navigation system is capable of assisting designers in accomplishing 3D mold development efficiently and accurately with the help of the standard component library and design decision-making system. The results show significant time savings over other mold design process methodologies.

The dynamic nature of cooperative information systems (CIS) makes considerably more difficult the task of modeling interactions among agents. One of the most difficult problems related to the dynamic of a system is how to model and control simultaneously multiple interactions among agents in a friendly way. So far, traditional approaches deal with the problem of modeling interactions in static conditions and commonly with only two agents participating concurrently in cooperative tasks. Consequently, expressiveness becomes a problem related with the representation of multiple interactions in a satisfactory way, particularly in dynamic environments, such as e-business. The paper illustrates the application of a methodology based on Coloured Petri Nets (CP nets) in order to model the interaction mechanism in a CIS in an expressive way. This reduces the associated complexity in the representation of the dynamic of the system in a contact center environment, which is the start point to customer service, where concurrent interactions among users, technical people, process center and the contact center constitute a dynamic process that needs to be permanently monitored and controlled. The methodology provides us important advantages in the representation and reasoning for the interaction mechanism modeled in CIS. The use of CP nets allows analyzing the behavior of the system in the dynamic model using the individual and structural model.

As cooperative information systems (CIS) grow to cover large-scaled CIS that involves many cooperative sub-systems distributed geographically, management technologies that support them gain in importance. This paper focuses on the underlying technologies that are key to the success of cooperative information system, i.e., service management and network management, which are in the form of middleware, to assure inter-domain cooperation within a big CIS in a flexible, automated and secure way. This flexibility and automation is guaranteed by the use of Policy-based Network Management integrated with Mobile Agent Technology. Extending the mobile agent supporting environment, Grasshopper, to support more secure facilities, largely enhances the security. As a case study, IP Virtual Private Network tunnel between two geographically separated domains within a large-scaled CIS is set up and configured automatically and securely using the service and network management middleware, which shows that service and network management enhanced CIS can operate with more flexibility, automation, security and in a larger information system.KeywordsMobile AgentNetwork ManagementInternet Engineer Task ForcePolicy Decision PointSecure Socket LayerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The purpose of this paper is to show the planning theme of primary schools for teachers considering their duties. We grasped the characteristics of work space usage and the essential space elements to perform the duties. In addition, the contemporary roles of faculty rooms and the total functions of school facilities were searched by analyzing the influence of the functions of faculty rooms on space usage. It is noted that providing the individual and common work spaces according to teaching position is important. Moreover, the further investigation of the exclusive relaxing space and the future faculty room is needed.

ABSTRACTIn recent years, academics, politicians, and international news media have speculated about the influence Russia is capable of wielding, particularly among Russian speaking populations in the near abroad. This paper aims to reassess the unity or division of a common Russian language information space through an analysis of the top daily headlines presented in Yandex. Based on previous historical overviews of Russian political discourses on Europe and analysis of more recent discourses in Russian television, frames for analysis are proposed and compared with actual headlines collected in real from Yandex news concerning Estonia, Latvia, and Russia.

Biological information systems: Evolution as cognition-based information management