Towards a multidimensional view of tourist mobility patterns in cities: A mobile phone data perspective

The last decade has witnessed a wealth of studies on characterizing human mobility patterns using movement datasets. Such efforts have highlighted a few salient dimensions of individual travel behavior relevant to urban planning and policy analysis. Despite the fruitful research outcomes, most of the findings are drawn upon urban residents. The behavioral characteristics of other population groups, such as tourists, remain underexplored. In this study, we introduce an analytical framework to gain insights into tourist mobility patterns. By analyzing mobile phone trajectories of international travelers to three different cities in South Korea, we introduce nine mobility indicators to capture different facets of tourist travel behavior (e.g., duration of stay in a city, spatial extent of activities, location visited and trips conducted, and mobility diversity), and examine their statistical properties across cities. An eigendecomposition approach is then introduced to better understand the interdependency of these mobility indicators and inherent variations among individual travelers. Based on the eigendecomposition results, we further employ a dimension reduction technique to describe the key characteristics of each traveler. Since the mobile phone dataset captures the nationality of tourists, we use such information to quantify the behavioral heterogeneity of travelers across countries and regions. Finally, we select a few traveler groups with distinctive mobility patterns in each city and examine the spatial patterns of their activities. Substantial differences are observed among traveler groups in their spatial preferences. The implications for location recommendation and deployment of tourism services (e.g., transportation) are discussed. We hope the study brings a synergy between classic human mobility analysis and the emerging field of tourism big data. The framework can be applied or extended to compatible datasets to understand travel behavior of tourists, residents, and special population groups in cities.     

Low-cost deployment proposal to urban mobility in smart cities

Rational use of cars in smart cities can represent an economical and cheaper way to decrease the quantity of cars on the roads to better the life quality of the populations. This paper presents a low-cost deployment proposal called “URCa project” to reach these goals and proposes a paradigm change by sharing the cars considering some logistic aspects including car ride mechanism. Technical feasibility to deploy this solution was checked by means of a proof of concept. The concept was proven by passenger counting and license plate that are essential information in this solution were obtained taking photographs, applying two types of recognition algorithms and sending the results to be stored and evaluated by analytic data processes of a transit regulatory agency showing that this project is technically viable. The low-cost solution was justified by a financial analysis based on both costs (URCa solution and a bridge) that has shown a ratio of 1:10,000.

     

Mining spatio-temporal patterns in object mobility databases

With the increasing use of wireless communication devices and the ability to track people and objects cheaply and easily, the amount of spatio-temporal data is growing substantially. Many of these applications cannot easily locate the exact position of objects, but they can determine the region in which each object is contained. Furthermore, the regions are fixed and may vary greatly in size. Examples include mobile/cell phone networks, RFID tag readers and satellite tracking. This demands techniques to mine such data. These techniques must also correct for the bias produced by different sized regions. We provide a comprehensive definition of Spatio-Temporal Association Rules (STARs) that describe how objects move between regions over time. We also present other patterns that are useful for mobility data; stationary regions and high traffic regions. The latter consists of sources, sinks and thoroughfares. These patterns describe important temporal characteristics of regions and we show that they can be considered as special STARs. We define spatial support to effectively deal with the problem of different sized regions. We provide an efficient algorithm—STAR-Miner—to find these patterns by exploiting several pruning properties. Responsible editors: Charles Perng and Tao Li.     

Variability patterns for business processes in BPMN

Many entities, both in academia and the business sector, urge an efficient improvement of business processes. However, when it comes to addressing this point, each slight disparity in the business rules and/or objectives translates into a separate model, which is neither practical nor acceptable as it burdens the host process-aware information system with repetitive and almost verbatim instances. To solve this issue, we propose considering variability. Variability will serve as a business process improvement technique to efficiently design and run a variable business process throughout different business situations that are similar to one another is some ways yet differ in others. First, we define variability within the context of business processes. Second, we present a set of variability patterns and explain how they are used. We validate our approach via the business process improvement patterns known and used by the community. The variability design patterns are a series of business process improvement patterns for building business process with variability and efficiently acting on the improved process performance metrics.     

Ideal patterns of strategic alignment and business performance

Strategic alignment or “fit” is a notion that is deemed crucial in understanding how organizations can translate their deployment of information technology (IT) into actual increases in performance. While previous theoretical and methodological works have provided foundations for identifying the dimensions and performance impacts of the strategic alignment between IT, strategy, and structure, few attempts have been made to test the proposed theory empirically and operationalize fit systemically. Based on a gestalt perspective of fit and theory-based ideal coalignment patterns, an operational model of strategic alignment is proposed and empirically validated through a mail survey of 110 small firms. Using cluster analysis, it was found that low-performance firms exhibited a conflictual coalignment pattern of business strategy, business structure, IT strategy, and IT structure that distinguished them from other firms.     

Factors used in the selection of packaged software in small businesses: Views of owners and managers

Due to their limited human, technical, and financial resources, small firms usually purchase packaged software to meet their organizational needs for IS. The selection is usually made either by the owner or a manager. A key question is whether they use the same set of criteria. This study examines the question, and finds that owners and managers of small businesses have different views of the importance of the factors in their selection decision. Owners tend to take a more strategic view of software package selection, weigh technical factors more heavily, take more factors into consideration, and consider those factors in a more serious manner than managers. Therefore, different frameworks may be needed in the software package selection process by owners and managers of small businesses.     

Exploiting mobility patterns for inter-technology handover in mobile environments

Mobile terminals with multi-radio devices have become increasingly prevalent. This makes it possible for Internet applications to be supported by heterogeneous wireless networks while the terminal is on the move. As the user is constantly moving, it is highly desirable that the terminal connects to the best network and retains high performance of network connections. Handovers can be made within the same type of network (horizontal handover) or different types of networks (vertical handover). This paper focuses on link-layer inter-technology vertical handovers. Vertical handovers present several great challenges, such as user mobility randomness, high handover overhead and optimality requirement. Existing work often focuses only on the current network condition when making handover decisions, ignoring future performance of the terminal. As a result, a handover decision good for the current moment may soon become poor when the user moves to another place. This paper is motivated by the observation that users in a given mobile environment, such as university or enterprise campus, exhibit clear mobility patterns. We propose an approach for making handover decisions, which explicitly exploits user mobility patterns. This approach can produce high-performance handover decisions in the long run. Employing a comprehensive framework for preference customization, the approach supports user customization caring for different user preferences. Extensive real trace driven simulations and comparative study show our algorithm is better than the conventional vertical handover algorithms.     

Effect of government incentives on computerisation in small business

This study examines the impact of a government incentive programme on computerisation in small businesses in Singapore. It compares the computerisation experience of 40 small businesses which have participated in the programme with that of 40 small businesses which have computerised without government assistance. The main finding is that participation in a government computerisation programme does not result in more effective information systems. However, there is evidence to show that government incentives, in the form of subsidies, low-interest loans, seminars and technical expertise, lower the barriers to computerisation and make it more attractive to small businesses that would otherwise lack the financial resources and technical expertise to computerise. Some possible explanations of the findings are provided.     

Greening campus WLANs: Energy-relevant usage and mobility patterns

The past years have witnessed a significant increase in the number of WLANs deployed in most of the enterprises, campuses and public areas to provide high-speed Internet connectivity. These WLANs typically consist of APs densely installed to assure enough capacity to meet users demand during the peak period of activity. At the same time, it translates into a serious energy wastage during low-utilization periods, when capacity is not needed at the APs. To reduce this wastage, many proposed solutions consist of adapting the active capacity to the actual needs, introducing switching strategies able to turn on and off the APs. The effectiveness and potential benefit of these strategies strongly depend on the user behavior and traffic patterns.In this paper, we focus our analysis on the real usage characteristics of a dense WLAN (such as users’ behavior and users’ mobility patterns) in a university campus and evaluate potential energy savings and benefits achievable when introducing AP on/off switching strategies. We discuss different strategies, in which decisions are based either on: (1) historical behavior in the campus, or on (2) current AP utilization. In addition, considering the large overlapping coverage available in dense WLANs, we investigate users’ mobility patterns to derive further improvements to AP switching strategies. The results show that, due to the repetitiveness of users’ patterns and large differences in WLAN usage between days and nights, as well as between weekdays and weekends, large savings of up to 40% can be easily achieved. Moreover, by fine-tuning the strategies in different areas of the campus, additional savings are possible. The deployment of these strategies leads to energy saving and, as a practical consequence, to a remarkable reduction of electricity costs.     

A quantitative correlation coefficient mining method for business intelligence in small and medium enterprises of trading business

Business intelligence based on data mining has been one of the popular and indispensable tools for identifying business opportunity in sales and marketing of new products. The traditional data mining methods based on association rules may be inadequate in completely uncovering the hidden patterns of sales based on transaction records. This paper presents a qualitative correlation coefficient mining method which is capable of uncovering hidden patterns of sales and market. Hence, a prototype business intelligence system (BIS) named correlation coefficient sales data mining system (CCSDMS) has been developed and successfully trial implemented in a selected reference site. A series of experiments have been conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed system. The results generated by the BIS are compared with a well known market available data mining system. The proposed quantitative correlation coefficient mining method is found to possess higher accuracy, better computational effectiveness and higher predictive power. With the new approach, associations for product relations and customer periodic demands are revealed and this can help to leverage organizational marketing capital to enhance quality and speed of promotions as well as awareness of product relations.     

Formalizing and appling compliance patterns for business process compliance

Today’s enterprises demand a high degree of compliance of business processes to meet diverse regulations and legislations. Several industrial studies have shown that compliance management is a daunting task, and organizations are still struggling and spending billions of dollars annually to ensure and prove their compliance. In this paper, we introduce a comprehensive compliance management framework with a main focus on design-time compliance management as a first step towards a preventive lifetime compliance support. The framework enables the automation of compliance-related activities that are amenable to automation, and therefore can significantly reduce the expenditures spent on compliance. It can help experts to carry out their work more efficiently, cut the time spent on tedious manual activities, and reduce potential human errors. An evident candidate compliance activity for automation is the compliance checking, which can be achieved by utilizing formal reasoning and verification techniques. However, formal languages are well known of their complexity as only versed users in mathematical theories and formal logics are able to use and understand them. However, this is generally not the case with business and compliance practitioners. Therefore, in the heart of the compliance management framework, we introduce the Compliance Request Language (CRL), which is formally grounded on temporal logic and enables the abstract pattern-based specification of compliance requirements. CRL constitutes a series of compliance patterns that spans three structural facets of business processes; control flow, employed resources and temporal perspectives. Furthermore, CRL supports the specification of compensations and non-monotonic requirements, which permit the relaxation of some compliance requirements to handle exceptional situations. An integrated tool suite has been developed as an instantiation artefact, and the validation of the approach is undertaken in several directions, which includes internal validity, controlled experiments, and functional testing.     

A pragmatic analysis of user mobility patterns in macrocellular wireless networks

Due to multifaceted human behavior, synthetic models are inept at realistically modeling long term mobility characteristics of users. The diversity in mobility character adds yet another dimension to this complex problem. Empirical studies are essential and are capable of providing realistic user models. This paper examines the real-time mobility traces of users and identifies key mobility parameters, which are used to classify users and create homogenized groups. Based on mobility and degree of predictability, a mobile user classification is attempted. As per-user mobility management schemes proposed in the literature are difficult to implement, it is essential to adopt a class or group based approach to facilitate implementation of dynamic schemes. Further, this paper characterizes in-session and out-of-session Cell Residence Time (CRT), the feature that critically influences several management tasks. The out-of-session CRT distribution has been represented using a heavy tail distribution. The applicability of the model for various classes of users has been studied. The results of this study can be used to spawn a more realistic user model, for simulation studies.     

Advances in portable sensing for urban environments: Understanding cities from a mobility perspective

Portable sensing, in which lightweight mobile sensors are used to measure stimuli, events, and human behavior, is a new and disruptive data collection paradigm. It has several methodological advantages compared to traditional methods and is suitable for investigating the dynamism of increasingly mobile and urban societies. In this article, we discuss the motivations behind the use of portable sensing and reflect upon the advances, limitations, and future of the field. Although portable sensing is still in its infancy, we foresee that its utilization will grow in the coming years. For portable sensing to become a prevalent and legitimate methodological approach, it is essential to have conceptually strong study designs that are grounded in suitable ethical procedures and comply with data protection regulations.     

Effective application of process improvement patterns to business processes

Improving the operational effectiveness and efficiency of processes is a fundamental task of business process management (BPM). There exist many proposals of process improvement patterns (PIPs) as practices that aim at supporting this goal. Selecting and implementing relevant PIPs are therefore an important prerequisite for establishing process-aware information systems in enterprises. Nevertheless, there is still a gap regarding the validation of PIPs with respect to their actual business value for a specific application scenario before implementation investments are incurred. Based on empirical research as well as experiences from BPM projects, this paper proposes a method to tackle this challenge. Our approach toward the assessment of process improvement patterns considers real-world constraints such as the role of senior stakeholders or the cost of adapting available IT systems. In addition, it outlines process improvement potentials that arise from the information technology infrastructure available to organizations, particularly regarding the combination of enterprise resource planning with business process intelligence. Our approach is illustrated along a real-world business process from human resource management. The latter covers a transactional volume of about 29,000 process instances over a period of 1 year. Overall, our approach enables both practitioners and researchers to reasonably assess PIPs before taking any process implementation decision.     

Fraternities and ITexts: Composing in the post-industrial turn

Web sites are a ubiquitous Internet genre employed by student organizations. This article investigates the role of a web site in an Interfraternity Council at a large midwestern university in the United States. The web site is examined through the work of Anthony Giddens, specifically his structuration theory, and the recent research on ITexts. In turn, the composing process required for such IText creation and maintenance is considered in light of the complicated network of forces and restraints surrounding the Interfraternity Council and the web site. By positioning the web site as an IText, the article revisits the field's understanding of genre as well as the knowledge creation surrounding such genres. Ultimately, the article contends that it may be in everyday (I)texts, such as organization web sites, where the intertwined shifts to post-industrialism and an emphasis on multiliteracies are most recognizable and accessible for teachers of writing.     

A multi-agent system for web-based risk management in small and medium business

Business Intelligence has gained relevance during the last years to improve business decision making. However, there is still a growing need of developing innovative tools that can help small to medium sized enterprises to predict risky situations and manage inefficient activities. This article present a multi-agent system especially created to detect risky situations and provide recommendations to the internal auditors of SMEs. The core of the multi-agent system is a type of agent with advanced capacities for reasoning to make predictions based on previous experiences. This agent type is used to implement a evaluator agent specialized in detect risky situations and an advisor agent aimed at providing decision support facilities. Both agents incorporate innovative techniques in the stages of the CBR system. An initial prototype was developed and the results obtained related to small and medium enterprises in a real scenario are presented.     

Towards a framework for business process re-engineering in small and medium-sized enterprises

Business process re-engineering (BPR) is the vogue, although somewhat discredited, change management method. It is as an information technology (IT)-based and customer-driven approach to organizational change, undertaken to enable superior performance, such as cost reduction, shorter cycle time, higher product quality and increased customer satisfaction. Although the literature on re-engineering principles and prospects is large, there is little empirical research evaluating the success or failure of BPR initiatives. This is especially so in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in which the potential for BPR benefits may differ significantly from that in their larger counterparts. SMEs are the fastest growing segment of most economies and are perceived to be more flexible and adaptable in terms of structure and speed of response than larger organizations. The literature speculates that SMEs have as good a chance of re-engineering successfully as their larger counterparts, although this is untested. Yet, with limited resources, such as IT and BPR expertise, and financial constraints, SMEs may find it difficult to re-engineer. This paper addresses the role of BPR in SMEs and develops a framework to assess its implementation potential. Factors that facilitate and inhibit BPR performance are identified and analysed as the basis for empirical testing. A set of propositions is developed that allows operationalization of the framework. The ultimate goal is to develop a process and tool set to assist SMEs wishing to undertake business process re-engineering.     

An exploratory study of small business Internet commerce issues

Internet adoption by small business is important to the generation of critical mass for Internet commerce – governments in the G8 countries are setting up initiatives to ensure that small businesses adopt Internet commerce. This paper reports of a qualitative study into why small businesses are online. The study found that the small business Internet commerce (SBIC) phenomenon is still in its infancy, although small businesses are finding e-mail useful for business communication and document transfer; the perception of long-term benefits and potential business opportunities is what is driving SBIC; at present, the uptake of Internet-based financial transactions is still slow; there is almost no integration between the Internet and internal applications; and, finally, that SBIC seems likely to continue to expand in this sector of market only if small firms actually experience tangible benefits in the future.