Letteratura scientifica selezionata sul tema "Service-Oriented IoT"

From the day communication started and messages being transmitted and received from one endpoint to another, security was always a concern. And nowadays this is not different from the old ages. In the era of IOT and V2X technology, communication protocols must be safe and secured and the traditional communication approaches like using CAN, LIN and Flexray will be hard to be integrated with IOT systems. Modern approaches are introduced for IOT integration through Ethernet, one of the most used approaches nowadays for vehicle communication is Service Oriented Communication which is represented by several protocols. One of protocols designed by AUTOSAR community is Service Oriented Middleware over Internet Protocol known as SOME/IP. After Surveying Service Oriented Communication, we propose a solution that adds security features to vanilla SOME/IP that prevents possible Denial of Service attacks. In this paper, we will survey the current solution used and tested and compare it with our proposal.

In the last decades, the increasing complexity of industrial information technology has led to the emergence of new trends in manufacturing. Factories are using multiple Internet of Things (IoT) platforms to harvest sensor information to improve production. Such a transformation contributes to efficiency growth and reduced production costs. To deal with the heterogeneity of the services within an IoT system, Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) is referred to in the literature as being advantageous for the design and development of software to support IoT-based production processes. The aim of SOA-based design is to provide the leverage to use and reuse loosely coupled IoT services at the middleware layer to minimise system integration problems. We propose a system architecture that follows the SOA architectural pattern and enables developers and business process designers to dynamically add, query or use instances of existing modular software in the IoT context. Furthermore, an analysis of utilization of modular software that presents some challenges and limitations of this approach is also in the scope of this work.

The fourth Industrial Revolution is rapidly growing due to the development of ICT and the need for organic linkage in the industry. The Internet of Things (IoT), in which objects and objects from active relationships such as sensing, networking and mutual cooperation without human intervention is the core technology of the fourth Industrial Revolution, which can be linked to various industrial fields. As the IoT environment spreads, IoT devices are continuously increasing in various industries. IoT devices connected to the Internet are as different as each application environment. Many information is derived from the interaction between an IoT device and a device or between a human and an IoT device, as well as devices that provide simple data such as sensing. This paper proposes a support method to enable extended service search when users search for services using information generated in IoT environment. The existing service discovery method focuses on the method by which the user selects the service based on the simple service information disclosed by the service provider. In order to solve the problem of existing service discovery method, this study proposed a support method that enables users to search service discovery flexibly even when using existing methods in service discovery in IoT environment. The proposed method provides a user-centered service search environment construction through a search method using user IoT information which was not considered in the existing service search. This makes up for the problem of service availability and provider-oriented service discovery through the establishment of a user service discovery environment.

The traditional three-layer Internet of things (IoT) model, which includes physical perception layer, information transferring layer and service application layer, cannot express complexity and diversity in agricultural engineering area completely. It is hard to categorize, organize and manage the agricultural things with these three layers. Based on the above requirements, we propose a new service-oriented grid-based method to set up and build the agricultural IoT. Considering the heterogeneous, limitation, transparency and leveling attributes of agricultural things, we propose an abstract model for all agricultural resources. This model is service-oriented and expressed with Open Grid Services Architecture (OGSA). Information and data of agricultural things were described and encapsulated by using XML in this model. Every agricultural engineering application will provide service by enabling one application node in this service-oriented grid. Description of Web Service Resource Framework (WSRF)-based Agricultural Internet of Things (AIoT) and the encapsulation method were also discussed in this paper for resource management in this model.

With the rapid development of the 5G power Internet of Things (IoT), new power systems have higher requirements for data transmission rates, latency, reliability, and energy efficiency. Specifically, the hybrid service of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) has brought new challenges to the differentiated service of the 5G power IoT. To solve the above problems, this paper first constructs a power IoT model based on NOMA for the mixed service of URLLC and eMBB. Considering the shortage of resource utilization in eMBB and URLLC hybrid power service scenarios, the problem of maximizing system throughput through joint channel selection and power allocation is proposed. The channel selection algorithm based on matching as well as the power allocation algorithm based on water injection are developed to tackle the problem. Both theoretical analysis and experimental simulation verify that our method has superior performance in system throughput and spectrum efficiency.

Albeit several IoT applications have been recently deployed in several fields, including environment and industry monitoring, Smart Home, Smart Hospital and Smart Agriculture, current deployments are mostly host-oriented, which is undoubtedly limiting the attained benefits brought up by IoT. Indeed, future IoT applications shall benefit from service-oriented communications, where the communication establishment between end-points is not dependent on prior knowledge of the host devices in charge of providing the service execution. Rather, an end-user service execution request is mapped into the most suitable resources able to provide the requested service. Furthermore, this model is a key enabler for the design of future services in Smart Cities, e-Health, Intelligent Transportation Systems, among other smart scenarios. Recognized the benefits of this model in future applications, considerable research effort must be devoted for addressing several challenges yet unsolved, such as the ones brought up by the high dynamicity and heterogeneity inherent to these scenarios. In fact, service-oriented communication requires an updated view of available resources, mapping service requests into the most suitable resources taking several constraints and requirements into account, resilience provisioning, QoS-aware service allocation, just to name a few. This thesis aims at proposing and evaluating mechanisms for efficient resource allocation in service-oriented IoT scenarios through the employment of two distinct baseline technologies. In the first approach, the so-called Path Computation Element (PCE), designed to decouple the host-oriented routing function from GMPLS switches in a centralized element, is extended to the service-oriented PCE (S-PCE) architecture, where a service identifier (SID) is used to identify the service required by an end-user. In this approach, the service request is mapped to one or a set of resources by a 2-steps mapping scheme that enables both selection of suitable resources according to request and resources characteristics, and avoidance of service disruption due to possible changes on resources¿ location. In the meantime, the inception of fog computing, as an extension of the cloud computing concept, leveraging idle computing resources at the edge of the network through their organization as highly virtualized micro data centers (MDC) enabled the reduction on the network latency observed by services launched at edge devices, further reducing the traffic at the core network and the energy consumption by network and cloud data center equipment, besides other benefits. Envisioning the benefits of the distributed and coordinated employment of both fog and cloud resources, the Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) architecture has been recently proposed, further empowering the distributed allocation of services into the most suitable resources, be it in cloud, fog or both. Since future IoT applications shall present strict demands that may be satisfied through a combined fog-cloud solution, aligned to the F2C architecture, the second approach for the service-oriented resource allocation, considered in this thesis, aims at providing QoS-aware resource allocation through the deployment of a hierarchical F2C topology, where resource are logically distributed into layers providing distinct characteristics in terms of network latency, disruption probability, IT power, etc. Therefore, distinct strategies for service distribution in F2C architectures, taking into consideration features such as service transmission delay, energy consumption and network load. Concerning the need for failure recovery mechanisms, distinct demands of heterogeneous services are considered in order to assess distinct strategies for allocation of protection resources in the F2C hierarchy. In addition, the impact of the layered control topology on the efficient allocation of resources in F2C is further evaluated. Finally, avenues for future work are presented.
Aunque son ya varias las aplicaciones que se han desarrollado en el área de IoT, especialmente en el campo ambiental, Smart Home o Smart Health, las implementaciones actuales son en su mayoría ¿host-oriented¿, lo que sin duda limita sus potenciales beneficios. Una posible estrategia para reducir esos efectos negativos se centra en que las futuras aplicaciones se beneficien de las comunicaciones orientadas a servicios, ¿service-oriented¿, donde el establecimiento de comunicación entre puntos finales no depende del conocimiento previo de los hosts a cargo de proporcionar la ejecución del servicio. En este escenario, una solicitud de ejecución de servicio se asigna a los recursos más adecuados capaces de proporcionar el servicio solicitado. Este modelo se considera clave para el despliegue de futuros servicios en Smart Cities, e-Health, Intelligent Transportation Systems, etc. Reconocidos los beneficios de este modelo en las aplicaciones futuras, un substancial esfuerzo de investigación es necesario para abordar varios desafíos aún no resueltos, como los surgidos por la alta dinámica y heterogeneidad inherente a estos escenarios. De hecho, la comunicación service-oriented requiere una vista actualizada de los recursos disponibles, así como la asignación de solicitudes de servicio en los recursos más adecuados teniendo en cuenta varias restricciones y requisitos. Esta tesis tiene como objetivo proponer y evaluar mecanismos para la asignación eficiente de recursos en escenarios IoT orientados a servicios a través del empleo de dos tecnologías básicas distintas. En el primer enfoque, el llamado Path Computation Element (PCE), diseñado para desacoplar la función de enrutamiento de los conmutadores GMPLS hacia un elemento centralizado, se extiende generando la arquitectura service-oriented PCE (S-PCE). En S-PCE se utiliza un identificador de servicio (SID) para identificar el servicio requerido por un usuario final, y la solicitud se asigna, bien a uno o bien a un conjunto de recursos, mediante un esquema de asignación de 2 pasos que permite la selección de los recursos adecuados, evitando la interrupción del servicio debido a posibles cambios en la ubicación de los recursos. Mientras tanto, el inicio de Fog computing, como una extensión de Cloud computing, basado conceptualmente en aprovechar la infraestructura y los recursos inactivos en el extremo de la red a través de su organización como micro data centers (MDC), ha supuesto la reducción de la latencia de la red para los servicios lanzados por dispositivos localizados en el extremo de la red, reduciendo el tráfico en el centro de la red (backbone) así como el consumo de energía, además de otros beneficios. Asumiendo las ventajas de la utilización distribuida y coordinada de los recursos fog y cloud, la arquitectura Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) ha sido recientemente propuesta, destinada a potenciar la asignación distribuida de servicios en los recursos más adecuados, sea en cloud, fog o ambos. Dado que las futuras aplicaciones IoT deben presentar demandas que podrían ser satisfechas a través de una solución alineada con la arquitectura F2C, el segundo enfoque para la asignación de recurso orientado a servicio, considerado en esta tesis, tiene como objetivo proporcionar una asignación de recursos mediante el despliegue de una topología F2C, donde los recursos se distribuyen lógicamente en capas que proporcionan características distintas en términos de latencia de red, probabilidad de interrupción, etc. Así, se proponen distintas estrategias para la distribución de servicios, teniendo en cuenta características tales como QoS y consumo de energía. Con respecto a la necesidad de mecanismos de recuperación de fallos, se evalúan distintas estrategias para la asignación de recursos de protección en la jerarquía F2C. Además, se evalúa el impacto de la topología de control en capas sobre la asignación eficiente de recursos en F2C. Finalmente, las sugerencias para trabajos futuros son presentadas.

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Albeit several IoT applications have been recently deployed in several fields, including environment and industry monitoring, Smart Home, Smart Hospital and Smart Agriculture, current deployments are mostly host-oriented, which is undoubtedly limiting the attained benefits brought up by IoT. Indeed, future IoT applications shall benefit from service - oriented communications, where the communication establishment between end-points is not dependent on prior knowledge of the host devices in charge of providing the service execution. Rather, an end-user service execution request is mapped into the most suitable resources able to provide the requested service. Furthermore, this model is a key enabler for the design of future services in Smart Cities, e-Health, Intelligent Transportation Systems, among other smart scenarios. Recognized the benefits of this model in future applications, considerable research effort must be devoted for addressing several challenges yet unsolved, such as the ones brought up by the high dynamicity and heterogeneity inherent to these scenarios. In fact, service-oriented communication requires an updated view of available resources, mapping service requests into the most suitable resources taking several constraints and requirements into account, resilience provisioning, QoS-aware service allocation, just to name a few. This thesis aims at proposing and evaluating mechanisms for efficient resource allocation in service-oriented IoT scenarios through the employment of two distinct baseline technologies. In the first approach, the so-called Path Computation Element (PCE), designed to decouple the host-oriented routing function from GMPLS switches in a centralized element, is extended to the service-oriented PCE (S-PCE) architecture, where a service identifier (SID) is used to identify the service required by an end-user. In this approach, the service request is mapped to one or a set of resources by a 2-steps mapping scheme that enables both selection of suitable resources according to request and resources characteristics, and avoidance of service disruption due to possible changes on resources’ location. In the meantime, the inception of fog computing, as an extension of the cloud computing concept, leveraging idle computing resources at the edge of the network through their organization as highly virtualized micro data centers (MDC) enabled the reduction on the network latency observed by services launched at edge devices, further reducing the traffic at the core network and the energy consumption by network and cloud data center equipment, besides other benefits. Envisioning the benefits of the distributed and coordinated employment of both fog and cloud resources, the Fog-to-Cloud (F2C) architecture has been recently proposed, further empowering the distributed allocation of services into the most suitable resources, be it in cloud, fog or both. Since future IoT applications shall present strict demands that may be satisfied through a combined fog-cloud solution, aligned to the F2C architecture, the second approach for the service-oriented resource allocation, considered in this thesis, aims at providing QoS -aware resource allocation through the deployment of a hierarchical F2C topology, where resource are logically distributed into layers providing distinct characteristics in terms of network latency, disruption probability, IT power, etc. Therefore, distinct strategies for service distribution in F2C architectures, taking into consideration features such as service transmission delay, energy consumption and network load. Concerning the need for failure recovery mechanisms, distinct demands of heterogeneous services are considered in order to assess distinct strategies for allocation of protection resources in the F2C hierarchy. In addition, the impact of the layered control topology on the efficient allocation of resources in F2C is further evaluated. Finally, avenues for future work are presented.
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À la différence de la confiance dans les sciences sociales, où les interactions entre les humains sont mesurées, la confiance dans la sécurité de l'IdO (Internet des Objets) se concentre davantage sur les interactions entre les nœuds (objets) grâce à l'intégration des objets intelligents. En outre, comme les nœuds de l'IdO peuvent en quelque sorte bénéficier d'un "groupe"/d'une "communauté" puisqu'ils sont formés par leurs propres intérêts ou fonctionnalités similaires, l'évaluations de la confiance d'intergroupes, interindividuelle, et celle de groupe-individuel, sont également importantes. Cependant, la gestion des limitations apportées par les menaces potentielles et la vulnérabilité inhérente à l'architecture des MT reste un défi. Cette thèse étudie la confiance sous trois angles dans l'internet des objets orienté services (SO-IoT) : La confiance intergroupe, la confiance groupe-individu et la confiance interindividuelle. Tout d'abord, un modèle dynamique basé sur les rôles est développé pour évaluer la confiance intra- et inter-communauté (groupe), en améliorant les activités orientées services et en abordant les questions de sécurité au sein des communautés et entre elles. Une approche centralisée locale en quatre phases est employée, qui se concentre sur les contre-mesures contre les attaques sur les services au sein de la communauté. En outre, un mécanisme en trois phases est conçu pour mesurer la coopération entre les communautés. Une implémentation basée sur le système ROS 2 a été mise en œuvre pour analyser les performances du modèle proposé sur la base des résultats préliminaires. Deuxièmement, pour traiter le mauvais comportement dans SO-IoT en termes de confiance interindividuelle, un jeu stochastique bayésien (SBG) est introduit, qui prend en compte l'hétérogénéité des nœuds IoT, et des schémas comportementaux complexes des fournisseurs de services sont incorporés, encourageant la coopération et pénalisant les actions stratégiques malveillantes. Enfin, le travail d'évaluation de la confiance des messages V2X dans l'IoV démontre la possibilité de mettre en œuvre la gestion de la confiance dans un environnement de l'IdO concret
Unlike Trust in Social Science, in which interactions between humans are measured, thanks to the integration of numerous smart devices, Trust in IoT security focuses more on interactions between nodes. Moreover, As IoT nodes can somehow benefit from 'Group'/'Community' since they form by similar interests or functionalities, the assessment of Group-Individual and Inter-Individual Trust is also important. However, handling limitations brought by potential threats and inherent vulnerability due to TM architecture remains challenging. This thesis investigates Trust from three perspectives in the Service-Oriented Internet of Things (SO-IoT): Inter-Group Trust, Group-Individual Trust, and Inter-Individual Trust. Firstly, a role-based dynamic model is developed to assess intra- and inter-community(group), enhancing service-oriented activities and addressing security issues within and between communities. A locally centralized four-phase approach is employed, focusing on countermeasures against attacks on services within the community. Additionally, a three-phase mechanism is devised to measure cooperativeness between communities. An implementation based on the ROS 2 system was implemented to analyze the performance of the proposed model based on the preliminary results. Secondly, to address misbehavior in SO-IoT in terms of Inter-Individual trust, a Stochastic Bayesian Game (SBG) is introduced, which considers the heterogeneity of IoT nodes, and complex behavioral schemes of service providers are incorporated, encouraging cooperation and penalizing malicious strategical actions. Lastly, the work of assessing the Trust of V2X messages in IoV demonstrates the possibility of implementing Trust Management in a concrete IoT environment

L’Internet des Objets (IoT) est déjà omniprésent aujourd’hui : domotique, bâtiments connectés ou ville intelligente, beaucoup d’initiatives et d’innovations sont en cours et à venir. Le nombre d’objets connectés ne cesse de croître à tel point que des milliards d’objets sont attendus dans un futur proche.L’approche de cette thèse met en place un système de gestion autonomique pour des systèmes à base d’objets connectés, en les combinant avec d’autres services comme par exemple des services météo accessibles sur internet. Les modèles proposés permettent une prise de décision autonome basée sur l’analyse d’évènements et la planification d’actions exécutées automatiquement. Des paramètres comme le temps d’exécution ou l’énergie consommée sont aussi considérés afin d’optimiser les choix d’actions à effectuer et de services utilisés. Un prototype concret a été réalisé dans un scénario de ville intelligente et de bus connectés dans le projet investissement d'avenir S2C2
The Internet of Things (IoT) is already everywhere today: home automation, connected buildings or smart city, many initiatives and innovations are ongoing and yet to come. The number of connected objects continues to grow to the point that billions of objects are expected in the near future.The approach of this thesis sets up an autonomic management architecture for systems based on connected objects, combining them with other services such as weather services accessible on the Internet. The proposed models enable an autonomous decision making based on the analysis of events and the planning of actions executed automatically. Parameters such as execution time or consumed energy are also considered in order to optimize the choices of actions to be performed and of services used. A concrete prototype was realized in a smart city scenario with connected buses in the investment for future project: S2C2

This thesis details the design of a protocol translator between the industrial-automation protocol OPC UA, and HTTP. The design is based on the architecture of the protocol translator of the Arrowhead framework, and is interoperable with all of its associated protocols. The design requirements are defined to comply with a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and RESTful interaction through HTTP, with minimal requirement of the consuming client to be familiar with OPC UA semantics. Effort is put into making translation as transparent as possible, but limits the scope of this work to exclude a complete semantic translation. The solution presented in this thesis satisfies structural- and foundational interoperability, and bridges interaction to be independent of OPC UA services. The resulting translator is capable of accessing the content of any OPC UA server with simple HTTP-requests, where addressing is oriented around OPC UA nodes.

This research provides evidence that standards based Clinical Decision Support (CDS) at the point of care is an essential ingredient of electronic healthcare service delivery. A Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) based solution is explored, that serves as a task management system to coordinate complex distributed and disparate IT systems, processes and resources (human and computer) to provide standards based CDS. This research offers a solution to the challenges in implementing computerised CDS such as integration with heterogeneous legacy systems. Reuse of components and services to reduce costs and save time. The benefits of a sharable CDS service that can be reused by different healthcare practitioners to provide collaborative patient care is demonstrated. This solution provides orchestration among different services by extracting data from sources like patient databases, clinical knowledge bases and evidence-based clinical guidelines (CGs) in order to facilitate multiple CDS requests coming from different healthcare settings. This architecture aims to aid users at different levels of Healthcare Delivery Organizations (HCOs) to maintain a CDS repository, along with monitoring and managing services, thus enabling transparency. The research employs the Design Science research methodology (DSRM) combined with The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), an open source group initiative for Enterprise Architecture Framework (EAF). DSRM's iterative capability addresses the rapidly evolving nature of workflows in healthcare. This SOA based solution uses standards-based open source technologies and platforms, the latest healthcare standards by HL7 and OMG, Decision Support Service (DSS) and Retrieve, Update Locate Service (RLUS) standard. Combining business process management (BPM) technologies, business rules with SOA ensures the HCO's capability to manage its processes. This architectural solution is evaluated by successfully implementing evidence based CGs at the point of care in areas such as; a) Diagnostics (Chronic Obstructive Disease), b) Urgent Referral (Lung Cancer), c) Genome testing and integration with CDS in screening (Lynch's syndrome). In addition to medical care, the CDS solution can benefit organizational processes for collaborative care delivery by connecting patients, physicians and other associated members. This framework facilitates integration of different types of CDS ideal for the different healthcare processes, enabling sharable CDS capabilities within and across organizations.

Commissioning of a machine is still representing a very challenging operation and most steps are still executed manually by commissioning engineers. A future goal is to support the commissioning engineers and further automate the entire integration process of a newly installed system with a minimum of manual effort. This use case is known as plug-and-produce (PnP). In this contribution a concept of the Industrial Internet of Things is presented to improve the commissioning task for a pneumatic handling system. The system is based on a service-oriented architecture. Within this context, information models are developed to meet the requirements of PnP to provide relevant information via virtual representations, e.g. the asset administration shell, of the components to the commissioning process. Finally, a draft of the entire PnP process is shown, providing a general understanding of Industrial Internet of Things fluid power systems.

The forth industrial revolution is here, and with it Industry 4.0, which translates in many changes to the industry. With the introduction of paradigms like Internet of Things, Cyber Physical Systems or Cloud Computing, the so called Smart Factories are becoming a main part of today’s manufacturing systems. The vf-OS Project, where this thesis falls, intends to be an Open Operating System for Virtual Factories where the overall network of a collaborative manufacturing and logistics environment can be managed and thus enabling humans, applications and devices to communicate and interoperate in an interconnected operative environment. This thesis intends to contribute to the vision that any kind of sensor or actuator plugged to the virtual factory network, becomes promptly accessible in the operative environment and the services that it provides can be accessed and used by any API composing the system. Finally, it also aims to prove that an IoT Service Oriented Sys-tem constituted of open software components can be of great assistance and provide numerous contributions to the emerging Industry 4.0 and consequently to the Factories of the Future. With that aim, this thesis will focus on the development of two out of five inter-connected applications that answer not only to different use case scenarios presented in the vf-OS but also provide solutions to answer a practical agriculture scenario, which uses mainly IoT devices and other cutting-edge technologies like cloud compu-ting and FIWARE.

The huge and steady growth in terms of the number of distributed devices con- nected to the Internet, the so-called Internet of Things (IoT), calls for newly developed infrastructure management techniques to deal with the complexity of emerging IoT deployments, especially in light of the growing impact of the sharing economy. In this context, most of the management platforms tackle IoT issues from a high level where IoT data is managed using Cloud oriented solutions. In such a scenario, the approach adopted can be categorized under the data-centric approach where IoT devices are considered as simple mere data generators uploading data towards Cloud platforms that provide, afterwards, processed data to the users. In order to challenge this mainstream consensus on the relationship between the Cloud and IoT, what is interesting to investigate is the adoption of the Cloud "as- a-Service" approach from a low level when dealing with IoT infrastructure. Indeed, the as-a-Service paradigm provides well-investigated mechanisms for infrastructure and service provisioning; thus the challenge then is to adapt this approach to fit the management of a dynamic, possibly virtualized, infrastructure of sensing and actuation resources. Cloud providers can extend then their offerings portfolios by providing access to shareable IoT resources according to the utility model using access at the lowest level where possible. Besides providing access to virtualized IoT nodes, an interesting capability to enable is related to computing at the network edge (even on the IoT nodes themselves) to meet the requirements of typical IoT applications, such low processing delays and data privacy. The thesis presents the design and implementation of a set of mechanisms to integrate IoT within the Cloud wisdom. In particular, the approach enables the capa- bility of offering IoT resources (e.g., sensors and actuators) as virtualized resources. Therefore, the virtual IoT instances can take benefits of the resources (e.g., storage, networking and compute) offered by the Cloud, Fog or the edge-based IoT nodes. The premise then lies in engaging the research from a device-centric perspective using the Stack4Things framework.

Research Context: With the recent maturity of various cutting-edge technologies, many industries have been motivated to adopt digital transformation in their business. In fact, an increasing number of companies that cling to traditional physical business channels, services, and methodologies start to face the real threat of being left behind. Not only these companies struggle to extend their market share, but also they can not retain their current clients and customers. On the other hand, the followers of the digitalization wave manage to survive and grow their business by integrating the opportunities of technology to drive success and innovation. In the retail industry, the famous example of the retail-lead Amazon, which started digital retail innovation two decades ago, can now be easily recognized. Nowadays, there are many successful digital innovations include Airbnb in lodging and housing, Uber and MyTaxi in transportation, Car2go in car sharing, and many more other examples in almost all fields. To this end, we can define service digitalization as the process of reshaping traditional analog/physical form of services with a new digital design that brings added value to both industries and their clients. One of the main reasons why some industries can not cope with the recent service digitalization trend is that they do not put enough effort and management attention into this digital transformation. For example, some companies succeed partially to define concrete regular plans for digitally revolutionizing their products but they rarely do that to the related services. Imagine the modern hospitals, where available medical devices, clinical tools, and healthcare-related products available to physicians have been updated regularly, while the service experience through the various practices and health processes is still the same as it was many years ago. Undoubtedly, the desired comprehensive digital change would be difficult to be applied with a large base of legacy assets optimized for a certain way of working. Despite that, many businesses focus their intention and employ their assets to harness digital technology, redefine service offerings, and improve the customer experience. As a result, they proceed to both lower their costs and gain a competitive advantage in their market. To support overcoming any issues and challenges that hamper a successful and comprehensive digital transformation in industries, we need to carefully consider all the factors that add to its success. Particularly, we aim to understand the evolving service digitalization landscape so that companies can learn to tap the potential for service innovation and seize the digitalization opportunities. To do so, we have discussed the main elements that draw jointly the promising service digitalization innovation as shown in Figure 1. These elements are divided into two main parts: the proposed principles of service innovation to be followed, and the recent evolving technological advents and trends that can be employed to drive the digitalization revolution. As for the first part, the proposed principles are: (i) systematic service innovation process, (ii) simple service delivery paradigm, and (iii) user-driven service design. The second part refers to the recent striking technological trends that are profoundly reshaping the future of service digitalization while being also promoted by the emergence of the fourth industrial revolution (or as referred to by the term "Industry 4.0"). These trends include but are not limited to the Internet of Things (IoT), Mobile and Pervasive Computing, Mobile Internet, Fifth-Generation Wireless Technologies (5G), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), 3D Printing, Robotics, etc. To sum up, exploiting these technological trends while following the indicated principles will eventually lead to the targeted service innovation, and altogether draw the promising service digitalization landscape. The main proposed principles are marked in blue, while the recent evolving technological trends are marked in red. One of the current game-changing technological trends that has a huge impact on the future of service digitalization is IoT, which refers to all the physical hardware devices (referred to as "things") that are employed into a specific space and connected over a network (e.g., Internet) so that they can communicate and interact (and possibly be monitored and controlled remotely). These connected devices, which are distributed through this space, collect data about their surroundings and perform corresponding actions (i.e., sensors and actuators). They can also share their collected and generated data among them in order to perform more complex actions within the whole space, through which this space can derive its smartness and can be interacted with as a unified coherent unit. In other words, connected hardware devices act actively and coherently influencing the whole environment at once, and the results of the actions influence the future computations of the devices themselves. The extension of this approach to every kind of environment is the conceptual base of Pervasive and Ubiquitous Computing Systems. In order to understand the implied significance of IoT, we can imagine a world in which the environment interacts with its inhabitants. The indication here is not just providing a passive interaction, rather it involves the environment itself as an active participant. An environment that learns the inhabitants’ preferences and can help each of them in a personalized way. This environment can be considered a smart or intelligent space that has always had its charm on people’s imagination, as a symbol of technological progress and lifestyle of the future. This concept of smart space can be applied to a huge variety of environments including airports and train stations in transportation, hospitals and clinics in healthcare, schools and universities in education, museums and archaeological sites in tourism, stores and shopping malls in retail, etc. Unfortunately, the world is still far from the full implementation of this kind of scenario, but the scientific community started to put particular attention to the research fields strictly correlated to this topic. After all, IoT is a key ingredient towards a successful and comprehensive realization of smart spaces. As we are approaching the new era of smart spaces, the digitalization of the provided services in such spaces should evolve accordingly. In fact, smart spaces try to help their inhabitants by minimizing the needed physical and cognitive effort while accomplishing tasks, and therefore, providing a more natural interaction within the space. To that extent, the main goal should be developing digital services that exploit the new opportunities of smart spaces in order to support a natural user-oriented interaction in a way that minimizes the end user’s need to interact with computers as computers. In retail, for example, the self-checkout service can be redesigned innovatively in the context of a smart store. In such a store, the shopping cart can be dynamically assigned to its current user possibly by Radio-Frequency IDentification (RFID) card that securely identifies users and their preferred payment method. During the shopping process, the cart automatically identifies shopped items possibly by reading their barcodes. At the end of the shopping journey, the user can smoothly and quickly checkout from the store with only one click at the checkout Point Of Sale (POS) confirming all the shopping items and the final price. Such seamless interaction is the ultimate goal of exploiting smart space’s digital opportunities in the generation of new innovative digital services design in order to achieve satisfying User eXperience (UX). Failing to adhere to the full potential of smart spaces during the engineering process of the digital services will probably lead to a naive service design, which in turn can result in a bad UX. At this point, the provided UX is considered a key indicator of the quality of the interactive technological solution and a dominating factor for the success of any digital service. In general, UX can be referred to as the user’s perception of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) through a specific channel or device. In other words, it describes the user’s experience of using a software system deployed into a device or across a set of devices (i.e., interaction channels or touchpoints). By analyzing this concept in the field of digital services, it can be inferred that this experience will be based not only on the ‘look and feel’ of the developed User Interface (UI) but also on its practical aspects such as usability and efficiency. This means implementing more in-depth UX values while designing the digital service instead of focusing on how to employ advanced technologies and solve UI technical challenges, which in turn considers providing more user-driven functionalities rather than usable UI alone. In the context of smart spaces, providing innovative digital services requires a well-designed UX, which aims at investigating a comprehensive service design to derive a more natural interaction with both the physical and digital world of the space. First of all, this targeted design involves facilitating both direct and indirect users’ interaction with all the connected devices/objects employed into this space, while considering their proximity to the user (physically and psychologically) at the time of interaction. Moreover, the required design should support a consistent experience across all touchpoints in the space, which does not necessarily mean to implement identical interfaces for all interaction channels through the space but rather to ensure that users motivations and goals will be supported accordingly at each interaction channel, and therefore delivering the desired coherent experience in total. Furthermore, the design should follow a user-driven methodology that pays close attention to how the actual user will be using the service in the related defined context. Considering these aspects of a satisfying UX design for digital services in smart spaces will eventually support users in a successful and joyful accomplishment of required goals/tasks in such spaces while driving the related business success. Following this direction, many research work in HCI has been targeting how to customize applied technologies to meet humans’ natural interaction in various applications and contexts. In particular, User-Centered Design (UCD) approaches, which promote UX by putting the actual user at the center of the system’s design, implementation, and evaluation processes, have been studied. These approaches employ users’ cognitive abilities (such as perception, memory, learning, problem- solving, etc.) to steer a successful realization of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) applications and software solutions by anticipating and eliminating all the factors that can lead to a bad UX, and therefore, a possible failure. However, despite all the recent efforts, there is still no common accepted methodology to precisely define, measure, and evaluate UX and its factors in the research literature. This is particularly true in the context of smart spaces, where each connected object, device, or interaction channel that is used by some user in this space create possibly a completely new UX, which can be seen as a momentary, primarily, and evaluative feeling for that interacting user. Given these observations, a promising UX of digital services in smart spaces should shift the attention from all the expected touchpoints (related to each digital service) in the space to the humans and their feelings while interacting with them (the "user" side of the intended digital service). To conclude, in order to capture a positive UX that leads to an innovative digital service delivery in smart spaces, we need to adopt a customized UCD approach tailored to that context and the related defined scenario, which ensures a user-driven methodology throughout the whole system’s realization (i.e., design, implementation, and evaluation) process and iterative prototyping. Research Objectives and Contributions: In this thesis, we aim to investigate and exploit the role of applying UCD methodologies when realizing (i.e., designing, implementing, and evaluating) service digitalization in smart spaces in order to leverage positive UX, so that we can derive the required service innovation and success. In particular, we have chosen three case studies to analyze and validate the effectiveness of this approach. We have formulated our research objectives and the related contributions around the selected case studies as follows: • Localization as a Service: the first case study discusses the digitalization of localization services in smart spaces. More precisely, it targets the retail industry in which a smart retail space helps users (both customers and employees) to localize themselves, the available retail items, and possibly different store’s parts. As a result, an indoor navigation system can be built employing these localization services to guide users effectively while performing related tasks in this smart retail environment. While this proposed system can help customers through their shopping routine, the main purpose is dedicated to retail employees supporting them in the pick-&-pack order fulfillment scenario, and allowing them to easily manage items (e.g., inserting new items, updating current ones, etc.). Based on these details, the first objective of this thesis is to: O1. Define a methodology for a complete development of innovative digital localization services in a smart retail space (e.g., store or warehouse), which should support extant physical localization techniques in the space (e.g., a physical floor plan map, printed shelves numbers, etc.) while delivering a reliable and user-friendly digital indoor navigation system through the space, with a cost-effective added value. The proposed methodology must consider UX foundations while building the digital map of the retail space (knowing the store layout and where the items are located in the store dynamically), localizing persons within this map (calling for the selection of suitable technologies and technology combinations), and providing navigation and routing solution for retail employees mainly (which can be possibly extended later for customers too). Regarding the first objective O1, the following research contributions have been achieved: C1-1 Investigating UCD techniques to realize the proposed system while considering a real use case in the retail industry. C1-2 Performing a complete analysis of the requirements (both functional and non- functional) of the related retail partner. C1-3 Building task flow diagrams based on the expected positive UX flows through all possible encountered channels in the space while following the analyzed requirements. C1-4 Implementing a running prototype of the system that deploys the required digital localization service. C1-5 Validating the acquired UX through a robust evaluation user study considering main quantitative and qualitative measures related to the defined retail scenario. This research part was conducted in the context of an EU-research project called "FIRST": virtual Factories: Interoperation suppoRting buSiness innovaTion (EU-project number: 734599) within the programs RISE (Research and Innovation Staff Exchange) and MSCA (Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions) and "Horizon 2020" [9]. The FIRST project includes different work packages in different areas related to automation and business innovation in the industry. In detail, the work was conducted in collaboration with a german retail-lead industry partner of this EU project called GK Software SE (EU-registration number: 918734628). While working on this project, a one-year secondment to this company office in Germany was arranged for better collaboration on the aforementioned topics. Besides this concrete research topic, the secondment included attending many seminars and presentations for different speakers from both academy and industry in various innovation topics regarding the retail industry. • Clinical Guidelines as a Service: Healthcare is considered one of the most important fields for human development, and a revolutionary industry with a significant business segment. Recent efforts try to ensure more efficient and personalized delivery of care procedures by enabling flexible access to medical and patient-related information empowered by advanced distributed clinical mobile technologies among healthcare practitioners. To that extent, this case study targets the healthcare industry and is directed towards providing the required clinical guidelines as a digital service to doctors while delivering the needed care to patients. In a smart healthcare space, this digital service can be deployed on mobile devices, and their execution and mobile orchestration among clinical staff can be further supported by the connected medical objects and devices employed in the space. In order to achieve the required structured implementation of the proposed service framework, the second objective of this thesis is: O2. Define a generic development methodology for realizing innovative digital services facilitating clinical guidelines enactment and fulfillment in a smart healthcare space (e.g., hospital or clinic). This methodology should provide a system that employs advanced technologies in such a space, with the main focus on utilizing clinical mobile technologies, to support doctors in a personalized and patient-centered delivery of healthcare operations. Besides, this methodology should promote positive UX practices of working doctors ensuring a patient-centered clinical operation in such a challenging environment by eliminating overwhelming cognitive and physical demands while allowing a non-invasive interaction with the system, which in total alleviates expected medical errors. Regarding the second objective O2, the following research contributions have been achieved: C2-1 Investigating UCD techniques to realize a digital clinical system that provides the required clinical guidelines as a digital service while addressing the chest pain clinical guideline as it is considered a common clinical case study in emergency healthcare. C2-2 Analyzing the general nature of healthcare processes and their related clinical tasks in chronological order, from patient registration until patient discharge, in order to correctly identify and collect the related clinical characteristics of the selected clinical guideline and derive corresponding patient-specific care pathways that can be digitally implemented. C2-3 Introducing a reasonable digital representation of the generated care pathways by utilizing the Process-Aware-Information-System (PAIS) model and exploiting concepts from Business Process Management (BPM) in order to ensure process-driven automa- tion and execution of clinical tasks following a proper enactment of the whole clinical guideline. C2-4 Harnessing the required positive UX by adopting a multimodal graphical user interface (GUI) with both vocal and touch interaction features coupled well with the process- driven execution of the clinical tasks. This multimodal interaction supports doctors to flexibly execute clinical guidelines, switching dynamically between the touch and hands-free (i.e., vocal) modes as required for the proper fulfillment of care procedures. C2-5 Implementing a running prototype of the system that deploys the required digital service, and validating the acquired UX through a robust user evaluation performed in a real hospital with the actual users (i.e., doctors) by analyzing the usability and effectiveness of the system. This research part was partially supported by the Sapienza grants TESTMED and SUPER and performed also in the context of the Centro Interdipartimentale "Information-Based Technology Innovation Center for Health” (STITCH). • Power Saving as a Service: in this case study, we aim to provide digital services for power saving in smart spaces. Such services include controlling lighting, ventilation, air conditioning, heating, etc., based on an auto-detection strategy of the inhabitants’ presence and their current location in such a smart space. This application tends to provide a power-saving solution with an added value in huge spaces with many changing inhabitants (i.e., too many inhabitants that dynamically enters/leaves/changes location within the space). Furthermore, it can be extended to many contexts like smart home, smart store, smart hospital, smart museum, etc. Considering UX measures of such application in smart spaces will be a dominant factor for its widespread and innovation success. Based on these details, the third objective of this thesis is to: O3. Introduce a user-oriented development methodology for digitalizing automated power- saving services in smart spaces (e.g., smart home), while focusing on lighting control as the main use case that can be extended to other use cases. This methodology should skillfully employ available advanced technologies that can be integrated into such a space in order to support its inhabitants while performing ongoing activities and related tasks. Additionally, positive UX practices should be considered carefully (e.g., how fast/smooth should light be turned on/off, handling multiple users at different zones at the same time, etc.) by observing the nature of the inhabitants’ navigation pattern influenced by their usual related tasks while being in the space. Such UX considerations should alleviate overwhelming cognitive and physical demands needed to simultaneously control many different power-consuming services and devices in the space, while effectively delivering the required power-saving feature. Regarding the third objective O3, the following research contributions have been achieved: C3-1 Investigating UCD techniques to realize a digital system that provides automated power-saving services for helping users to reduce and control power consumption while navigating the space based on the current location of the navigating user (i.e., using location-based services). C3-2 Analyzing the required technologies and related technical structure for implementing such digital services, while promoting simplicity and usability. C3-3 Implementing a running prototype of the system that deploys the required digital services while considering positive UX flows that space’s inhabitants would naturally adopt. This research part was conducted in collaboration with the "Service Computing Department" at Stuttgart University. Other Contributions: Since the start of the Ph.D. program, the conducted research activities related to applied HCI and UCD are distributed in various topics around service digitalization and targeted innovation to enrich the research perspectives and skills, and therefore, to guide the core outcome of this program which is presented in this Ph.D. thesis. Besides this final main outcome, other research activities are conducted targeting the evolution and application of UCD approaches. • Evaluating Humans Collaboration Attitude towards Service Robots in Symbiotic Autonomy Settings: given the aforementioned research objectives and the related selected case studies discussing the important role of applying service-oriented computing in localization, clinical guidelines, and power-saving while adopting UCD approaches to achieve the required service digitalization innovation, this part is directed towards the context of Robotics-as-a- service (RaaS) which has a significant trend in the future of digitalization and smart spaces. These RaaS units are considered part of Autonomous decentralized systems (ADSs), whose components are designed to operate in a loosely coupled manner and data are shared through a content-oriented protocol, which can be easily integrated with other IoT and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) [236, 302, 274]. In particular, this research is one of the initial efforts focusing on understanding the opportunities and challenges of integrating autonomous robots in future smart spaces, where the humans need to collaborate efficiently with them in performing tasks. To that extent, in order to operate in human-populated environments, robots need to show reasonable behaviors and human-compatible abilities. In the so-called Symbiotic Autonomy, robots and humans help each other to overcome mutual limitations and complete their tasks. When the robot takes the initiative and asks the human for help, there is a change of perspective in the interaction, which has not yet been specifically addressed by HRI studies. Based on these details, the fourth objective of this thesis is to: O4. investigate the novel scenario brought about by Symbiotic Autonomy in HRI, by addressing the factors that may influence the interaction. Regarding the fourth objective O4, the following research contributions have been achieved: C4-1 Introducing the term of “Collaboration Attitude” to evaluate how the response of users being asked by the robot for help is influenced by the context of the interaction and by what they are doing (i.e., ongoing activity). C4-2 Performing a first user study and presenting its results which confirms the influence of conventional factors (i.e., proxemics) on the Collaboration Attitude, while it suggests that the context (i.e., relaxing vs. working) may not be much relevant. C4-3 Performing a second user study to better assess the influence of the activity performed by the humans in our population, when (s)he is approached by the robot, as an additional and more compelling characterization of context (i.e., standing vs. sitting). While the experimental scenario takes into account a population with distinctive characteristics (i.e., academic staff and students), the overall findings of our studies suggest that the attitude of users towards robots in the setting of Symbiotic Autonomy is influenced by factors already known to influence robot acceptance while it is not significantly affected by the context of the interaction and by the human ongoing activity. Such findings can help to reshape innovative future RaaS design by anticipating such UX factors and addressing them skillfully in the service design. Chapter 5 discusses this research work related to UX validation via controlled user studies in the context of Symbiotic Autonomy, where humans’ collaboration attitude towards service robots was quantitatively and qualitatively measured and analyzed. This research part was conducted in collaboration with the Ro.Co.Co. Laboratory of the Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering "Antonio Ruberti" at Sapienza University of Rome. • Evolving User-Centered Design towards Participatory Design in Service Digitalization: another research has been conducted discussing the promising evolution of UCD towards PD (Participatory Design) and the related role in delivering service digitalization innovation and success. Such evolution is directly related to the arising of new technologies ranging from smartphones to social networks which are constantly increasing interactions between people. In the ICT community, adapting technology to human nature is the key concern of UCD. However, UCD tends to neglect the emerging social dimension of technology: users are consulted in the design process, but they do not have any direct involvement or cre- ative control over the developed technological solutions. On the other hand, the collaborative and social nature of the design process is getting increasingly explicit in the Product Design community, where PD approaches are applied to involve stakeholders, designers, and end-users in the creative process of new products. Based on these details, the fifth objective of this thesis is to: O5. investigate how the integration of the unique features of PD into UCD can lead to innovation in the design process. We advocate that such innovation can be obtained by giving the right voice not only to the users who reach consensus in the design process but also to the marginals. Regarding the fifth objective O5, the following research contributions have been achieved: C5-1 Providing a deep analysis of the state of the art of Participatory Design in both ICT and Product Design communities. C5-2 Providing an exploratory model with some experiments to create innovation in the design process. C5-3 Introducing a Visual Analytics system to support the user interaction in the participative process. This research is detailed in Chapter 6 that discusses how to push forward UX of digital services by evolving UCD towards PD in which actual users participate actively in the whole design and prototyping process of the software (similarly to the product design process). This research part was conducted in collaboration with the HCI Laboratory of the Department of Computer, Control and Management Engineering "Antonio Ruberti" and the Department of Planning, Design, and Technology of Architecture at Sapienza University of Rome.

In the monograph, the use of the civilizational paradigm of the analysis of economic processes and phenomena allows us to consider the specifics of the functioning of the hospitality industry in the conditions of the formation of the information economy. The features of the client-oriented approach in its institutional and dynamic dimensions are revealed. Special attention is paid to inclusive technologies in the field of hospitality. The result of the analysis of the features of the formation of the institutional model of the hotel business in the Nizhny Novgorod region is presented. On the basis of a systematic approach, the entire process of functioning of a hospitality enterprise is considered from the standpoint of structural and functional dynamics. Special attention is paid to the analysis of the formation of the corporate culture of hotel and restaurant complexes in modern conditions. It is intended for researchers, teachers, students studying in the areas of higher education 43.03.01 "Service", 43.03.02 "Tourism" and 43.03.03 "Hotel business", as well as for anyone interested in the problems of the development of the service sector in the conditions of the formation of information and cybernetic civilization.

The monograph reveals the provisions of a value-oriented approach to the management of logistics systems of public urban passenger transport, relevant to the conditions of a client-centered economy and aimed at increasing the sustainability of the functioning of the passenger transport complex of the city in the context of the development of alternative forms of urban mobility. The ideological basis of the author's concept of a value—oriented approach is the understanding of the duality of the recipient of the services of the logistics system of urban public passenger transport - passengers and the city, which makes it possible to justify strategic decisions on the development of the logistics system of public urban passenger transport by balancing the parameters of service and passenger flows, achieved by meeting the needs of recipients while observing restrictions on their financing. It is intended for researchers, representatives of executive bodies of state administration of the subjects of the Russian Federation and local self-government, providing the organization of transport services to the population in cities and urban agglomerations, designers of urban logistics systems, developers of transport and related services in urban mobility systems, as well as for teachers and university students. It can be useful for a wide range of people interested in the management of logistics systems, the development of urban public passenger transport, modern urbanism.

SUMMARY Current monograph represents and reviews key approaches to creating an effective internal quality and safety control system for an organization, based on patient-oriented approach, process approach, risk management, continuous process improvement and other methods including definition of all applied terms, a number of examples and step by step manuals on executing key measures and events to create and develop a quality control system and local documentation samples. Target audience for this monograph: hospital leadership, including CMO, deputy CMO on quality, head of quality control committee or designated quality control specialist, other medical workers. ABOUT «THE BASICS OF MEDICAL CARE QUALITY AND SAFETY PROVISION» All changes and reforms in healthcare should provide for medical care quality improvement, preservation of life and health of all citizens. Once an abstract word “quality” has its’ own specific meaning today, acquired by means of legislative validation of the term “medical care quality and safety”. Providing healthcare quality and safety is one of the key priorities within the confines of Russian Federation national policy for citizens’ health protection. Current issue represents actual knowledge and practical experience in terms of medical care quality and safety control, continuous medical organization efficiency improvement. Current issue addresses the matters of theoretical and practical aspects of introducing management and internal quality and safety control system in medical care. It also contains the methodological description of Proposals (practical recommendations) of Federal Service for Supervision in the Sphere of Healthcare, developed based on global experience generalization, adapted to Russian specificity, aimed at quality and safety provision. Current issue represents a large number of samples, examples, templates and check-list tables. Data, accumulated in the monograph, allows the reader create a proper system of measures in a medical organization to comply with the order № 381-н of Ministry of Health of Russian Federation «On approving Requirements towards organizing and executing medical care internal quality and safety control». TARGET AUDIENCE Current issue is intended for a wide range of readers, interested in management: for healthcare organization leaders, CMOs and deputy CMOs, deputy CMOs on quality, quality control committee leaders or designated quality control specialists, physicians, nurses, medical academicians and students, and all specialists, interested in medical organizations’ stable development and improvement.

Civil service consists of civil servants and their activity when implementing the assigned functions and decisions made by politicians. In other words, it is a system of civil servants who perform the assigned functions of public administration. The corpus of civil servants consists of people who work in central and local public administration institutions. The concept and scope of civil service in a particular country depends on the legal framework that defines the areas of public and private sectors and their relationship. In many countries, civil service consists of an upper level, a mid-level, and civil servants who work for coordinating, independent, and auxiliary institutions. However, the scope of civil service in different countries varies. When analyzing/comparing civil service systems of different countries, researchers often categorize them as Western European, continental European, Anglo-American, Anglo-Saxon, Eastern European, Scandinavian, Mediterranean, Asian, or African.All European Union member states can be classified into two groups: the career system—dominant in continental Europe, with the prevalence of traditional-hierarchical public administration, rational bureaucracy, and formalized operational rules—and the position system—dominant in Anglo-Saxon countries, with the prevalence of managerial principles, pragmatic administration, and charismatic leadership. Neither of the two models exists in pure form. If features of the career model dominate in the civil service of a country, it is identified as a country with the career CS model; if elements of the position model dominate the country is identified as a country with the position civil service model. An intermediate version of this model, characteristic of a number of countries, is the mixed/hybrid model.Many civil service researchers claim that in the case of two competing systems of civil service—closed (the career model) and open (the position model)—reforms of the open civil service system win. It has been argued that the organizing principles of the open, result-oriented civil service system (the position model), which is under the influence of “new public management,” will permanently “drive out” the closed, vertically integrated and formal procedure-oriented career model. Scholars argue that civil servants of the future will have to be at ease with more complexity and flexibility. They will have to be comfortable with change, often rapid change. At the same time, they will make more autonomous decisions and be more responsible, accountable, performance-oriented, and subject to new competency and skill requirements.

In this book, an entrepreneur and CEO of a major technology company shares original service concepts that will enable any company to keep customers coming back. What distinguishes America's Service Meltdown: Restoring Service Excellence in the Age of the Customer is its striking originality and applicability to businesses of nearly every type and size. Based on the author's extensive personal and professional experience, the book offers a straightforward, no nonsense model that clearly explains how to organize the modern enterprise for the delivery of service excellence. Customer-oriented companies can operate more effectively, Raul Pupo argues, by focusing on the critical success factors of service: leadership that unequivocally believes they are in business to serve the customer; a business-planning process centered around the customer; an organizational ethic of service up and down the ranks; and an empowered, motivated, and competent frontline organization. Readers will discover what it takes to serve customers superbly, how excellent customer service profoundly improves profitability, and how to identify the biggest obstacles to good service. Most importantly, they will be rewarded with concrete instructions that will enable them to deliver topnotch customer service every step of the way.

This policy note explores the characteristics of community-based armed groups (CBAGs) unique to the Kenyan context through a comparison of local CBAGs with other nonstate armed groups, particularly violent extremist organizations (VEOs). In doing so, it introduces the concept of territoriality—the degree to which government and security agents are able to monopolize political, social, and security control of spaces—and suggests that both CBAGs and VEOs are most likely to thrive in Kenya under conditions of semi-territoriality, where state authority sometimes shifts fluidly from strong to weak depending on capacity or interest. To combat the rise of VEOs it recommends community-oriented policing as a devolved security strategy, strengthening relations between civil society and the police through the Police Reforms Working Group Kenya (PRWGK), helping to monitor and evaluate the police service. Additionally, mapping CBAGs and VEOs through clan structures is a community-oriented strategy that helps strengthen territoriality and counter semi-territoriality.

This report, undertaken by the University of NSW’s Wales’s Public Service Research Group and funded by ANZSOG in partnership with the ACTPS, examines the impact of flexible working on productivity, wellbeing and effectiveness, and identifies factors that can lead to more effective flexible working. The report contains detailed insights for any agency trying to develop optimal ways of managing a flexible workforce. It finds there are four essential elements needed for effective flexible working: an outcomes-oriented approach to working, a purposeful approach to working from the office, a team-based approach to working, and improved managerial support and development.

The development of the information society and technological progress are significantly influenced by the learning tools. Therefore, to the variety of tools that could be used to support the study of any discipline new ones emerging lately are continuously being added. Along with the great deal of systems of computer mathematics (SCM), web-oriented versions of SCM mathematical applications and other math learning tools the cloud-based versions of mathematical software such as MapleNet, MATLAB web-server, WebMathematica and others are now being used. These tools accomplishment becomes the essential part of training mathematics teachers. Domestic and foreign experiences of using cloud services for forming professional competences of mathematics teachers are analyzed. The place of the CoCalc within the system of mathematical disciplines learning tools is investigated. The task of improving the math teachers’ ICT competence by means of cloud services use in the process of training is considered. Among the new forms of learning rising along with the cloud services dissemination are such as collaborative learning, inquiry-based learning, person-oriented learning. At the same time, the use of the appropriate cloud service in the study of some mathematical discipline improves the assimilation of the learning material and improves the knowledge acquisition process on most topics. The analysis of current research of Ukrainian scientists on the problem in question shows that the progress is underway as for further elaboration and implementation of new learning methods and techniques of using cloud services in the higher education institutions.

Approximation is a new inference service in Description Logics first mentioned by Baader, Küsters, and Molitor. Approximating a concept, defined in one Description Logic, means to translate this concept to another concept, defined in a second typically less expressive Description Logic, such that both concepts are as closely related as possible with respect to subsumption. The present paper provides the first in-depth investigation of this inference task. We prove that approximations from the Description Logic ALC to ALE always exist and propose an algorithm computing them. As a measure for the accuracy of the approximation, we introduce a syntax-oriented difference operator, which yields a concept description that contains all aspects of the approximated concept that are not present in the approximation. It is also argued that a purely semantical difference operator, as introduced by Teege, is less suited for this purpose. Finally, for the logics under consideration, we propose an algorithm computing the difference.

Adoption of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has been slow in Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries and is not widespread. There is a digital divide between and within countries, including a digital gap in firms' adoption of ICTs. Large and medium-sized enterprises generally have access to the Internet, but adoption of advanced ICTs is low for all firms in these economies, and small and micro enterprises lag way behind. The backwardness in ICT adoption is exacerbated when only a small fraction of society has high connectivity broadband. Thus the digital infrastructure remains weak despite regional governments' promotion of a digital agenda. Bolder programs are needed. The success of public initiatives requires a competitive environment for internet and telecom service providers as well strong participation of the private sector and public-private partnerships. In particular, the engagement of large firms is necessary to increase ICTs diffusion in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that are part of their production chains. Additionally, coordination among different government agencies is critical for improving ICT policies design and implementation. The relevance of well-designed ICT policies is apparent in empirical and qualitative evidence from Chile, Colombia and Uruguay, where ICT investment indicates a positive impact on firm innovation and productivity. As part of what some call the digital ecosystem, the IT industry plays an important role, but we observe large heterogeneity in the LAC region. Brazil and Mexico are two big players with relatively well-developed software and hardware industries oriented to the domestic market, while Costa Rica and Uruguay emerge as IT producers and exporters. In between, medium-sized countries like Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador are looking for a position in either their internal or external markets. To increase performance in the IT industry and complement the existing ecosystem, ICT policies must be accompanied by industrial programs that go beyond the usual horizontal industrial policies.

So much of our daily business can be done with a swipe or a mouse click. Citizens have come to expect and rely on a certain amount of convenience in their daily lives as technology evolves to suit real-time individualized experiences of the marketplace. Those same expectations of ease of use and customized experience transfer to the citizen experience of government. In general, government is not moving as quickly as the private sector to embrace technology trends. Yet, there are promising examples of digital government where the citizen is at the center of the process. Embracing these emerging technologies helps us move toward a more digital government, forging a new relationship between government and citizen. This paper describes the successes and challenges of governments in organizing systems around citizen needs, with the goal of achieving a "single view of the citizen." It focuses on public-facing systems and those that handle transactions in the service of citizen needs, rather than internal sharing of information for transactional purposes. Implementation recommendations draw on successful case examples. While there is much room for improvement, this paper makes the case that creating citizen-oriented systems in government is a worthwhile and achievable aspiration.

The goal of fire service training is to prepare students for the conditions and challenges that they face on the fireground. Among the challenges that firefighters routinely face on the fireground are ventilation-controlled fires. The hazard of these fires has been highlighted by several line-of-duty deaths and injuries in which a failure to understand the fire dynamics produced by these fires has been a contributing factor. The synthetic fuels that commonly fill contemporary homes tend to result in ventilation-controlled conditions. While synthetic fuels are common on the residential fireground, the fuels that firefighters use for fire training are more often representative of natural, wood-based fuels. In order to better understand the fire dynamics of these training fires, a series of experiments was conducted in a concrete live fire training building in an effort to evaluate the fidelity and safety of two training fuels, pallets and OSB, and compare the fire dynamics created by these fuels to those created by a fuel load representative of a living room set with furniture items with a synthetic components. Additionally, the effects of the concrete live fire training building on the fire dynamics were examined. The two training fuel loads were composed of wooden pallets and straw, and pallets, straw, and oriented strand board (OSB). The results indicated that the high leakage area of the concrete live fire training building relative to the fuel load prevented the training fuel packages from becoming ventilation-controlled and prevented the furniture package from entering a state of oxygen-depleted decay. The furniture experiments progressed to flashover once ventilation was provided. Under the conditions tested, the wood based fuels, combined with the construction features of this concrete live fire training building, limited the ability to teach ventilation-controlled fire behavior and the associated firefighting techniques. Additionally, it was shown that the potential for thermal injury to firefighters participating in a training evolution existed well below thresholds where firefighter PPE would be damaged.

In the early 1970's, the Pipeline Research Council International, Inc.(PRCI) developed a failure criterion for pipes that had a predominately empirical basis. This criterion was based on flaw sixes that existed prior to pressurization and did not address possible growth due to the pressure in service or in a hydrostatic test or during the hold time at pressure in a hydrotest. So long as that criterion was used within the scope of the underlying database and empirical calibration, the results of its predictions were reasonably accurate. However, with the advent of newer steels and the related increased toughness that supported significant stable flaw growth, it became evident that this criterion should be updated. This updating led to the PRCI ductile flaw growth model (DFGM) that specifically accounted for the stable growth observed at flaws controlled by the steel's toughness and a limit-states analysis that addressed plastic-collapse at the flaw. This capability provided an accurate basis to assess flaw criticality in pipelines and also the means to develop hydrotest plans on a pipeline specific basis. Unfortunately, this enhanced capability came at the expense of increased complexity that made this new capability difficult to use on a day-today basis. To counter this complexity, this capability has been recast in the form of a PC computer program. Benefit: This topical report contains the computer program and technical manual for a failure criterion that will predict the behavior of an axially oriented, partially through the wall flaw in a pipeline. The model has been given the acronym PAFFC which stands for Pipe Axial Flaw Failure Criteria. PAFFC is an extension of a previously developed ductile flaw growth model, L51543, and can account for both a flaw's time dependent growth under pressure as well as its unstable growth leading to failure. As part of the output, the user is presented with a graphical depiction of the flaw sizes in terms of combinations of flaw length and depth, that will fail (or survive) a given operating or test pressure. As compared to existing criteria, this model provides a more accurate prediction of flaw behavior for a broad range of pipeline conditions.

A vegetation classi?cation and map for Guadalupe Mountains National Park (NP) is presented as part of the National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring - Vegetation Inventory Program to classify, describe, and map vegetation communities in more than 280 national park units across the United States. Guadalupe Mountains NP lies in far west Texas and contains the highest point in the state, Guadalupe Peak (8,751 ft; 2,667 m). The mountain escarpments descend some 5,000 ft (1,500 m) to the desert basins below forming a complex geologic landscape that supports vegetation communities ranging from montane coniferous forests down to desert grasslands and scrub. Following the US National Vegetation Classi?cation (USNVC) standard, we identi?ed 129 plant associations hierarchically tiered under 29 groups and 17 macrogroups, making it one of the most ecologically diverse National Park Service units in the southwestern United States. An aspect that adds to this diversity is that the park supports communities that extend southward from the Rocky Mountains (?ve macrogroups) and Great Plains (one macrogroup) and northward from the Chihuahuan Desert (two macrogroups) and Sierra Madre Orientale of Mexico (three macrogroups). The remaining six macrogroups are found in the Great Basin (one macrogroup), and throughout the southwestern United States (remaining ?ve macrogroups). Embedded in this matrix are gypsum dunelands and riparian zones and wetlands that add further complexity. We describe in detail this vegetation classi?cation, which is based on 540 vegetation plots collected between 2006 and 2010. Full descriptions and diagnostic keys to the plant associations along with an overall plant species list are provided as appendices. Based on the vegetation classi?cation and associated plot data, the vegetation map was developed using a combined strategy of automated digital object-oriented image classi?cation and direct-analog image interpretation of four-band National Agricultural Imagery Program (NAIP) aerial photography from 2004 and 2008 and Landsat Thematic Mapper satellite imagery. The map is designed to facilitate ecologically-based natural resource management at a 1:24,000 scale with 0.5-ha minimum map unit size. The map legend is hierarchically structured: the upper Level 1 consists of 16 map units corresponding in most cases to the USNVC group level, and an additional map unit describing built-up land and agriculture; Level 2 is composed of 48 nested map units re?ecting various combinations of plant associations. A ?eld-based accuracy assessment using 341 vegetation plots revealed a Level 1 overall accuracy of 79% with 90% CI of 74?84% and 68% with 90% CI of 59?76% at Level 2. An annotated legend with summary descriptions of the units, distribution maps, aerial photo examples of map unit polygons, and representative photos are provided in Appendix D. Large wall-size poster maps at 1:35,000 scale were also produced following NPS cartographic standards. The report, plot data, and spatial layers are available at National Park Service Vegetation Mapping Program https://www.nps.gov/im/vegetation-inventory.htm). Outcomes from this project provide the most detailed vegetation classi?cation and highest resolution mapping for Guadalupe Mountains NP to date to support many uses including ?re, recreation, vegetation, and wildlife management, among others. The upper Level 1 map is particularly suited to landscape-scale, park-wide planning and linkages to its sister park, Carlsbad Caverns NP. The Level 2 mapping provides added detail for use at a more localized project scale. The overall accuracy of the maps was good, but because Guadalupe Mountains NP is primarily wilderness park, there were logistical challenges to map development and testing in remote areas that should be considered in planning management actions. In this context, some map units would bene?t from further development and accuracy assessment. In particular, a higher resolution mapping of McKittrick Creek riparian habitat at 1:6,000 scale or ?ner is recommended for this important habitat in the park. In addition, developing a structural canopy height model from LiDAR imagery would be useful to more accurately quantify woody canopy density and height to support ?re management and other habitat management issues. With respect to understanding vegetation dynamics in this time of rapid environmental change, the 540 vegetation plots themselves are su?ciently georeferenced and have the data resolution to be useful in detecting change at the decadal scales across much of the park. To this end, an additional recommendation would be to install more plots to ?ll the gaps among the main vegetation units of the park, both spatially and thematically. Overall, the Vegetation and Classi?cation Map for Guadalupe Mountains NP will support the park?s management e?orts and enhance regional understanding of vegetation and ecology of ecosystems of the southwestern United States.

The Government of Egypt launched its national family planning (FP) program in 1966. The early phase was mainly supply oriented and aimed at ensuring wide distribution of contraceptives primarily through pharmacies to meet rising demand. Between 1988 and 1992 a number of additional sources of FP services appeared, with an increase in clinic-based services through both the private and public sectors. In 1992 about one-fourth of users relied on pharmacies to get their FP supplies compared to about one-half in 1988. This change evolved through the influence of two forces: the initiation of a number of FP projects, and expanded and improved FP services in Ministry of Health facilities. Because of these changes in the service delivery systems, senior program managers required information on current market segmentation to identify any overlap among activities of various service delivery systems. As noted in this report, this study assessed the complementary/competitive roles of these systems. It probes into factors that influence clients movements from one type of service provision to another, and their experience with services received. Six governorates were selected and sampled.