Boundary, Purpose, and Values in Work-Domain Models: Models of Naval Command and Control

This paper presents an application of work-domain analysis (WDA) to the domain of the command and control of a multipurpose naval frigate—the Canadian Halifax Class frigate. This represents an application of this approach to a real system and, to the authors' knowledge, is the most extensive WDA of a naval work domain. In particular, and in contrast to other applications of cognitive work analysis, the authors extended the basic WDA framework to handle a multipurpose, loosely bound work domain. In addition, the naval domain is value driven, and this affects naval decision making. Values were incorporated as a social organizational analysis into the work-domain model and were represented as a type of soft constraint. A total of 38 submodels of the work domain were developed, whose primary models are discussed in this paper. From these models, 132 information requirements were extracted, substantiating that WDA is a worthwhile technique for supporting interface design. This paper makes a theoretical contribution by extending the WDA framework and a practical contribution by demonstrating the usefulness of the framework in a real design context. This paper concentrates on presenting WDA as a process, not as a finished product, showing intermediate levels of models and the design requirements that can be extracted from the early stages of the WDA.     

A work domain analysis framework for modelling intensive care unit patients

Work domain analysis (WDA) has been applied to a range of complex work domains, but few WDAs have been undertaken in medical contexts. One pioneering effort suggested that clinical abstraction is not based on means-ends relations, whereas another effort downplayed the role of bio-regulatory mechanisms. In this paper it is argued that bio-regulatory mechanisms that govern physiological behaviour must be part of WDA models of patients as the systems at the core of intensive care units. Furthermore it is argued that because the inner functioning of patients is not completely known, clinical abstraction is based on hypothetico-deductive abstract reasoning. This paper presents an alternative modelling framework that conforms to the broader aspirations of WDA. A modified version of the viable systems model is used to represent the patient system as a nested dissipative structure while aspects of the recognition primed decision model are used to represent the information resources available to clinicians in ways that support if...then conceptual relations. These two frameworks come together to form the recursive diagnostic framework, which may provide a more appropriate foundation for information display design in the intensive care unit.Abbreviations ADS Abstraction decomposition space - DST Dissipative structures theory - HIV/AIDS Human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome - ICU Intensive care unit - RDF Recursive diagnostic framework - RPD Recognition primed decision model - R-VSM Revised viable systems model - VSM Viable systems model - WDA Work domain analysis     

Accounting for memes in sociotechnical systems: extending the abstraction hierarchy to consider cognitive objects

Work domain analysis (WDA) is used to model the functional structure of sociotechnical systems (STS) through the abstraction hierarchy (AH). By identifying objects, processes, functions and measures that support system purposes, WDA reveals constraints within the system. Traditionally, the AH describes system elements at the lowest level of abstraction as physical objects. Multiple analyses of complex systems reveal that many include objects that exist only at a conceptual level. This paper argues that, by extending the AH to include cognitive objects, the analytical power of WDA is extended, and novel areas of application are enabled. Three case studies are used to demonstrate the role that cognitive objects play within STS. It is concluded that cognitive objects are a valid construct that offer a significant enhancement of WDA and enable its application to some of the world’s most pressing problems. Implications for future applications of WDA and the AH are discussed.

Practitioner summary: Some sociotechnical systems include memes as part of their functional structure. Three case studies were used to evaluate the utility of introducing cognitive objects alongside physical ones in work domain analysis, the first phase of cognitive work analysis. Including cognitive objects increases the scope and accuracy of work domain analysis.     

Work domain analysis for enhancing collaborations: a study of the management of microsystems design

Collaboration is an important process that enables organisations to achieve goals or solve problems and, in design processes, is an important factor for accomplishing interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary tasks. An understanding of the functional configuration of organisations could therefore offer a useful insight into collaborations of designers. This study makes use of work domain analysis (WDA) to analyse the management of design by organisations within the microsystems technology (MST) domain. The WDA considers the functional configuration of MST companies in terms of management constraints and boundaries. This study also makes use of the WDA to suggest ways of establishing collaborative design and enhancing collaboration between organisations. Practitioner Summary: The results of this methodical analysis offer useful insights for managing design functions. This study also presents recommendations for enhancing collaboration in organisations. The ability to manage and collaborate in design functions is valuable for improving the productivity, cost-effectiveness and time-to-market systems.     

Cooperative work in mission operations: Analysis and implications for computer support

This paper describes cooperative work in real-time flight operations in the SAMPEX Mission Operations Room at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. This domain is an example of distributed supervisory control, where a team of human operators supervises a dynamic, complex, highly automated system. Such operational environments differ in important ways from artifact-centered collaboration (e.g., collaborative drawing, writing, design). This paper explores those differences and also articulates the need for activity management tools for dynamic control environments. Candidate models from the human-machine systems engineering literature are proposed to provide the underlying structure for such tools.     

Process-mining enabled feedback: “Tell me what I did wrong” vs. “tell me how to do it right”

Fast advancement of technology has led to an increased interest for using information technology to provide feedback based on learning behavior observations. This work outlines a novel approach for analyzing behavioral learner data through the application of process mining techniques specifically targeting a complex problem solving process. We realize this in the context of one particular learning case, namely, domain modeling. This work extends our previous research on process-mining analysis of domain modeling behavior of novices by elaborating with new insights from a replication study enhanced with an extra observation on how novices verify/validate models. The findings include a set of typical modeling and validation patterns that can be used to improve teaching guidance for domain modeling courses. From a scientific viewpoint, the results contribute to improving our knowledge on the cognitive aspects of problem-solving behavior of novices in the area of domain modeling, specifically regarding process-oriented feedback as opposed to traditional outcome feedback (is a solution correct? Why (not)?) usually applied in this type of courses. Ultimately, the outcomes of the work can be inspirational outside of the area of domain modeling as learning event data is becoming readily available through virtual learning environments and other information systems.     

Ubiquitous recommender systems

Ubiquitous recommender systems combine characteristics from ubiquitous systems and recommender systems in order to provide personalized recommendations to users in ubiquitous environments. Although not a new research area, ubiquitous recommender systems research has not yet been reviewed and classified in terms of ubiquitous research and recommender systems research, in order to deeply comprehend its nature, characteristics, relevant issues and challenges. It is our belief that ubiquitous recommenders can nowadays take advantage of the progress mobile phone technology has made in identifying items around, as well as utilize the faster wireless connections and the endless capabilities of modern mobile devices in order to provide users with more personalized and context-aware recommendations on location to aid them with their task at hand. This work focuses on ubiquitous recommender systems, while a brief analysis of the two fundamental areas from which they emerged, ubiquitous computing and recommender systems research is also conducted. Related work is provided, followed by a classification schema and a discussion about the correlation of ubiquitous recommenders with classic ubiquitous systems and recommender systems: similarities inevitably exist, however their fundamental differences are crucial. The paper concludes by proposing UbiCARS: a new class of ubiquitous recommender systems that will combine characteristics from ubiquitous systems and context-aware recommender systems in order to utilize multidimensional context modeling techniques not previously met in ubiquitous recommender systems.     

Modeling pedestrians’ interest in locations: A concept to improve simulations of pedestrian destination choice

Large environments that are designed for travel, leisure, and for everyday life – such as transport hubs, amusement parks, and shopping centers – feature different locations that are frequently visited by pedestrians. Each visit is evoked by one’s motivation to engage in some kind of activity at a certain location. By means of modeling the pedestrians’ interests in locations with the aid of computer simulations, it is possible to forecast the occupancy at locations by utilizing sophisticated pedestrian destination choice models. In the field of pedestrian dynamics research, location preference modeling is not common, but it is all the more rare to include a psychological grounding into such choice models. Here we show that our psychologically inspired and mathematically defined model to describe pedestrians’ interests in locations is able to improve the exactness of pedestrian destination choice models. The interest function model is based on the psychological concept of goal-related memory accessibility and on fundamental coherences found in pedestrian-related data that is measurable at locations. We validated the interest function model and our results provide evidence that our approach improves the simulation fidelity regarding occupancy forecasting. Because the interest concept is designed as a framework that can be coupled to existing microscopic pedestrian simulators, it can be used in most pedestrian destination choice models to describe pedestrian visiting preferences. Consequently, the reliability of the occupancy predictions of pedestrian simulations can be enhanced by integrating the interest function model into choices models.     

Solid modeling

Solid modeling deals with the representation, design, visualization. and analysis of models of 3D parts. While the embodiment of solid modeling technology in contemporary commercial CAD systems is finally beginning to fulfil the old promise of providing major improvements in the productivity of the manufacturing industry, solid modeling research remains in its infancy. Recent developments focus on advanced design paradigms, topological and geometric extensions of the domain and the performance and reliability of the fundamental algorithms. The current trend follows two paths: capitalizing on the concepts of features, constraints, and model parameterization, which provide a more intuitive and suitable design vocabulary than the traditional edges, faces, or Boolean operations; and incorporating information about the tolerances, assembly relations, and mechanical properties of parts and assemblies, which provides a suitable product database for the development of analysis and planning applications. We selected the articles in the special issue carefully, choosing from among the papers presented at the 1993 ACM/IEEE Second Symposium on Solid Modeling and Applications     

Support for managing design-time decisions

The desirability of maintaining multiple stakeholders' interests during the software design process argues for leaving choices undecided as long as possible. Yet, any form of underspecification, either missing information or undecided choices, must be resolved before automated analysis tools can be used. This paper demonstrates how constraint satisfaction problem solution techniques (CSTs) can be used to automatically reduce the space of choices for ambiguities by incorporating the local effects of constraints, ultimately with more global consequences. As constraints typical of those encountered during the software design process, we use UML consistency and well-formedness rules. It is somewhat surprising that CSTs are suitable for the software modeling domain since the constraints may relate many ambiguities during their evaluation, encountering a well-known problem with CSTs called the k-consistency problem. This paper demonstrates that our CST-based approach is computationally scalable and effective-as evidenced by empirical experiments based on dozens of industrial models.     

Mathematical modeling of decision making: a soft and fuzzy approach to capturing hard decisions

This research focuses on a modeling approach and set of mathematical tools that were derived from research on intelligence systems, namely fuzzy system modeling. This study systematically evaluates these tools as an approach for modeling human decision making, contrasting the approach with more traditional methods based on regression. The research was conducted using experts and a simulated task environment related to allocating rewards in the form of merit pay. The results indicate that fuzzy system models generally perform as well as or better than both linear and nonlinear regression methods in terms of model fit. These results are discussed in terms of issues regarding modeling precision versus parsimony, the value of adaptive modeling techniques, empirical versus subjective approaches to model building, and individual differences in judgment strategies. Potential applications of this research include using the modeling approach studied to build higher-fidelity models that yield new insights and a better understanding of decision-making strategies and environments.     

数字化陆用武器系统中的建模、优化与控制

从复杂一体化武器系统的体系结构设计与优化、一体化指挥控制中的优化与决策、 高速多维度运动体的参数辨识与状态估计、多智能平台的协同控制、 非线性随动系统建模与控制五个方面阐述了数字化陆用武器系统中涉及的的建模、优化与控制问题, 涵盖了陆用武器系统中的指挥控制、 火力控制和武器平台的控制. 在对五个方面的国内外研究现状进行论述与分析的基础上, 指出需要进一步研究的问题和未来研究展望.     

Toward formalizing domain modeling semantics in language syntax

Information systems are situated in and are representations of some business or organizational domain. Hence, understanding the application domain is critical to the success of information systems development. To support domain understanding, the application domain is represented in conceptual models. The correctness of conceptual models can affect the development outcome and prevent costly rework during later development stages. This paper proposes a method to restrict the syntax of a modeling language to ensure that only possible configurations of a domain can be modeled, thus increasing the likelihood of creating correct domain models. The proposed method, based on domain ontologies, captures relationships among domain elements via constraints on the language metamodel, thus restricting the set of statements about the domain that can be generated with the language. In effect, this method creates domain specific modeling languages from more generic ones. The method is demonstrated using the Unified Modeling Language (UML). Specifically, it is applied to the subset of UML dealing with object behavior and its applicability is demonstrated on a specific modeling example.     

A data/knowledge paradigm for the modeling and design of operationssupport systems

The paper develops the Smart Object paradigm and its instantiation, which provide a new conceptualization for the modeling, design, and development of an important but little researched class of information systems, operations support systems (OSS). OSS is the authors' term for systems which provide interactive support for the management of large, complex operations environments, such as manufacturing plants, military operations, and large power generation facilities. The most salient feature of an OSS is its dynamic nature. The number and kind of elements composing the system as well as the mode of control of those elements change frequently in response to the environment. The abstraction of control and the ease with which complex dynamic control behavior can be modeled and simulated is one of the important aspects of the paradigm. The framework for the Smart Object paradigm is the fusion of object-oriented design models with declarative knowledge representation and active inferencing from AI models. Additional defining concepts from data/knowledge models, semantic data models, active databases, and frame based systems, are added to the synthesis as justified by their contribution to the ability to naturally model OSS at a high level of abstraction. The model assists in declaratively representing domain data/knowledge and its structure, and task or process knowledge, in addition to modeling multilevel control and interobject coordination     

具有时限性和区域性特征的基于角色转授权模型

对分布式系统基于角色转授权模型（Role based Delegation Model,RDM）进行深入研究。RDM更适合于分布式系统的授权管理,但当前的几种RDM都不支持时限性和区域性。根据分布式系统的特点,首先提出了转授权的区域性特征;基于转授权的时限性特征和区域性特征对RDM2000模型进行扩充,提出了完备的具有时限性和区域性特征的基于角色的转授权模型（Temporary and Domain Role based Delegation Model,TDRDM）;并给出了基于TDRDM的转授权（delegation）和转授权撤销（delegation revocation）机制;最后通过分布式系统实例对TDRDM模型的转授权进行描述。     

Applying software engineering techniques in the development and management of linear and integer programming applications

This work addresses characteristics of software environments for mathematical modeling and proposes a system for developing and managing models of linear and integer programming (IP) problems. The main features of this modeling environment are: version control of models and data; client‐server architecture, which allows the interaction among modelers and decision makers; the use of a database to store information about the models and data scenarios; and the use of remote servers of optimization, which allows the optimization problems to be solved on different machines. The modeling environment proposed in this work was validated using mathematical programming models that exploit different characteristics, such as the treatment of conditions for generating variables and constraints, the use of calculated parameters derived from other parameters, and the use of integer and continuous variables in mixed IP models among others. This validation showed that the proposed environment is able to treat models found in various application areas of operations research and to solve problems with tens of thousands of variables and constraints.     

High Reliability and the Management of Critical Infrastructures

Organisation theorists and practitioners alike have become greatly interested in high reliability in the management of large hazardous technical systems and society's critical service infrastructures. But much of the reliability analysis is centred in particular organisations that have command and control over their technical cores. Many technical systems, including electricity generation, water, telecommunications and other “critical infrastructures,” are not the exclusive domain of single organisations. Our essay is organised around the following research question: How do organisations, many with competing, if not conflicting goals and interests, provide highly reliable service in the absence of ongoing command and control and in the presence of rapidly changing task environments with highly consequential hazards? We analyse electricity restructuring in California as a specific case. Our conclusions have surprising and important implications both for high reliability theory and for the future management of critical infrastructures organised around large technical systems.     

Constrained mechanical systems modeling and control: A free-floating space manipulator case as a multi-constrained system

The paper presents a development of a modeling framework for constrained multibody systems, for which constraints may arise either as kinematic, task-based, design, control or origin from conservation laws. The framework is control oriented since its dynamic modules yield nonlinear system dynamics in reduced state forms, i.e., ready to employ control algorithms. It encompasses systems subjected to any equality first order constraints and in this regard it unifies modeling for control applications. The framework properties support numerical computation and simulation studies for nonlinear system models due to the dynamic modeling unification and the reduction procedure built into it. The framework application is illustrated by an example of dynamics modeling and designing a tracking controller for a free-floating space manipulator, which is underactuated, subjected to conservation laws and task-based constraints.     

Process time patterns: A formal foundation

Companies increasingly adopt process-aware information systems (PAISs) to model, execute, monitor, and evolve their business processes. Though the handling of temporal constraints (e.g., deadlines or time lags between activities) is crucial for the proper support of business processes, existing PAISs vary significantly regarding the support of the temporal perspective. Both the formal specification and the operational support of temporal constraints constitute fundamental challenges in this context. In previous work, we introduced process time patterns, which facilitate the comparison and evaluation of PAISs in respect to their support of the temporal perspective. Furthermore, we provided empirical evidence for these time patterns. To avoid ambiguities and to ease the use as well as the implementation of the time patterns, this paper formally defines their semantics. To additionally foster the use of the patterns for a wide range of process modeling languages and to enable pattern integration with existing PAISs, the proposed semantics are expressed independently of a particular process meta model. Altogether, the presented pattern formalization will be fundamental for introducing the temporal perspective in PAISs.     

Composing domain-specific design environments

Domain-specific integrated development environments can help capture specifications in the form of domain models. These tools support the design process by automating analysis and simulating essential system behavior. In addition, they can automatically generate, configure, and integrate target application components. The high cost of developing domain-specific, integrated modeling, analysis, and application-generation environments prevents their penetration into narrower engineering fields that have limited user bases. Model-integrated computing (MIC), an approach to model-based engineering that helps compose domain-specific design environments rapidly and cost effectively, is particularly relevant for specialized computer-based systems domains-perhaps even single projects. The authors describe how MIC provides a way to compose such environments cost effectively and rapidly by using a metalevel architecture to specify the domain-specific modeling language and integrity constraints. They also discuss the toolset that implements MIC and describe a practical application in which using the technology in a tool environment for the process industry led to significant reductions in development and maintenance costs