Journal of
Systemics, Cybernetics and Informatics
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 ISSN: 1690-4524 (Online)    DOI: 10.54808/JSCI




SPECIAL ISSUE



TABLE OF CONTENTS





Reviewers of this Issue

Overall Development Management Model: A New Approach for Emerging Countries. Comparative Analysis of Six Countries on Two Continents.
Fabiana Sciarelli, Azzurra Rinaldi
Pages: 1-7
ABSTRACT:
The aim of the paper is to provide the management tools for the strategic planning of economic and social growth in the developing countries.

This is an innovative approach to development that uses different tools from Economics and Management. Thanks to this hybridization, the approach introduces a new model and a new vision which are based, for the first time, on the concept of Macro Management. The fundamental idea is that development can be managed, like any other process.


The Review Function in Organizations and its Implications for Organization Theory, Cybernetics, and Ethnography
Paul D. Nugent, Richard Montague
Pages: 8-12
ABSTRACT:
This paper analyzes the “review function” in organizations and its implications for theory and for ethnographic methods. Whether it is scholars peer-reviewing each other’s work, or a quick informal “bouncing of one’s ideas” to another, or a formal product review with a powerful customer, the review is a function within and across organizations that is so ubiquitous that it has eluded exploration as a distinct structural entity. Yet it is also at the heart of the signaling and feedback features undergirding cybernetic systems. Therefore, this paper looks at the kinds of signals/feedback that review activities reveal as well as drawing on foundational works in ethnography to consider how ethnographic methods can be better attuned to acknowledging the centrality of feedback and signaling in any social system.


Measuring the Value of Enterprise Architecture on IT Projects with CHAOS Research
Eaglan Kurek, James Johnson, Hans Mulder
Pages: 13-18
ABSTRACT:
This paper reports the findings of an explorative quantitative study on the value of Enterprise Architecture (EA) on IT projects. In this study, we contributed to the research on the value of Enterprise Architecture by providing explorative empirical indications for the effects of Enterprise Architecture on 3076 IT projects in 28 organizations. These findings assist an understanding about the various effects of EA. In summation, our study provides strong indications for the value of Enterprise Architecture on IT projects and sets the foundation for further study in the matter.


Student-Lead, Interdisciplinary Project-Based Learning for Continuous Success in Animation Education
Seth Holladay, Brent Adams
Pages: 19-24
ABSTRACT:
In the animation industry, as with many other industries, there is a demand for not only skilled artisans but also creative thinkers, problem solvers, leaders, and communicators. As a very small animation program at Brigham Young University (BYU) competing against large programs at art schools, we have to play to our strengths as a program and university. This incorporates interdisciplinary, collaborative mentored experiences to help students develop both specific skills and well-rounded success. They bring their creativity into a structure where they can not only learn skills but also be empowered in their work and learning. Our students have had major success in winning awards and with high hiring percentages including top studios. This paper outlines some of our methods for helping these mentored experiences thrive.


Increasing the Attractiveness of Study Programs in the Field of Security and Safety
Eva Sventekova, Katarina Holla
Pages: 25-28
ABSTRACT:
The trend resulting from the unfavourable demographic curve from the university applicants point of view in Central Europe can be seen especially in the unfavourable numbers of the technical university applicants in Slovak republic. From the demographic point of view this adverse development should last during the next five years. The necessity to make the university study programmes aimed at the security services more attractive results from the current needs of the society and adverse trends of the security and safety situation development in Europe.

The society needs to face the current threats inevitably and more effectively. Nowadays situation requires university-educated security and safety experts who have mastered the methods of solving the crisis phenomena and who are able to identify, analyse and assess the risks in various environments, to manage preventive activities and the adequate response to the crisis phenomena and to eliminate/reduce their negative consequences on people, material values and the environment. However, in the teaching plans of the secondary schools there are no subjects that would emphasise the need of the security and safety and protection of the society. The secondary school students are insufficiently motivated or informed about the possibilities of the university study in the sector of security and safety. [8]

This article describes the increasing the attractiveness of technical study programs through the case study in the field of security and safety. It describes the results of a pilot project realised at the Faculty of Security Engineering at The University of Zilina aimed at making the university study programmes in the area of security and safety more attractive by using innovative marketing tools. Essentially, results to be presented in article are coming out of two last years when new marketing strategy has been created and adopted on faculties’ departments.

[8] SVENTEKOVÁ, E., LUSKOVÁ, M.: Project-based teaching as a tool for better prepared graduates in the area of security and safety. In: ICERI 2017: Seville (Spain) 16-18 November 2017 : conference proceedings. - ISSN 2340-1095.


METEO11 Meteorological Message gained from the METB3, METCM or Abstract of Measured Meteorological Data
Karel Šilinger, Martin Blaha
Pages: 29-34
ABSTRACT:
Artillery of some NATO armies, especially of the former Eastern bloc states, still use the non-standard METEO11 meteorological messages for firing data calculations. If these countries are unable to carry out comprehensive meteorological soundings, the other states in the multinational task forces can distribute them the METB3 and METCM meteorological messages, standardized in NATO. There is a problem that they do not have adapted their fire control systems for using the METB3 or METCM meteorological messages and therefore they cannot be adequate partners for other NATO countries. This long-term incompatibility is caused by different model of tabular atmosphere and non-standard firing tables. In order for these countries to become fully interoperable partners in NATO, it was necessary to carry out a research to compile the METEO11 meteorological message from standardized meteorological products available to all NATO partner states. The paper summarizes the results of this research and analyses the accuracy of developed METEO11 alternative methods. Solving of the problem lies on the ability to compose METEO11 meteorological message according to an abstract of a measured meteorological data and in the ability to carry out conversions of the METB3 or METCM meteorological messages. Authors had derived all needed mathematical models, which they implemented into the new software “METEO11 MAKER” and “METCM & METB3 to METEO11”.


Transdisciplinar Meta-Design for Geomatics Applications
Margarita Paras Fernandez, Fernando Lopez Caloca
Pages: 35-40
ABSTRACT:
Transdisciplinar collaboration is essential to approach the most important socio-environmental problems of our time. The transdisciplinar problem is not only the consensus building over common conceptual principles but also on how our reference frameworks organize and are sustained by the contributions of disciplinary and specialized knowledge built through their integration.

The paper emphasizes the lessons learned through our line of research called Geomatics and Society, enabling us to advance transdisciplinar methodologies by establishing links between research and social claimants (government, private sector, NGOs, and civil society). As a result, complex interactions are represented, organized and geared towards the needs or problems expressed by actors involved in the search for possible solutions. The themes undertaken by our teams include territorial and land management, ecosystem services, environmental risks and vulnerabilities, competitiveness, health, education, public safety, migration, water and energy.

To deal with such complex problems, a meta-design was developed, with a territorial systemic, analytical and transdisciplinar approach, in which not only scientific knowledge (explicit and formal) is considered valuable, but also the profound experience of the society is recognized as a product of creativity and tacit knowledge, acquired and progressively adapted to changes in its environment.

We introduce “the territory” as a key and novel feature of the above framework thus enabling, through Geomatics solutions, the intersection of maps and knowledge from diverse specialists and social plaintiffs. This transdisciplinar meta-design is relevant to the understanding of the way social and natural phenomena auto-organize in a changing world.


Biomonapp’s Sensing & Monitoring of Plants/Fish & Water Quality for Ag Biotech & Bio Monitoring Environments
Christine M. Cunningham Yukech
Pages: 41-47
ABSTRACT:
Advanced Bioscience Sustainable Solution’s biomonapp for bio monitoring environments, especially the aquaponics and hydroponics industry. [4] The app will connect with a sensor or photo spectrometer to show nutrition and crop yield data. We are currently licensing with Biodynamics in Akron to merge a sensor with Biomonapp, and bundle with solar kits, Back to the Roots tanks, and Husky aquatanks. Biomonapp can track and monitor diverse species of plants and fish. The Family Garden in Jamaica will monitor with the app and sensors to show crop and nutritional yield value, and track data in a local zoo. We are consulting with the Lettuce Do Good People who sell lettuce kits. We will conduct a market sampling with 600 clients in the plant and fish industry from IBIS world. Virtual simulations and Pod casts will be developed to teach about the optimal plant and fish variables. The mobile app has a platform for iOS or Android and is published in the Google play store. The company advantage is to provide 24/7 optimized monitoring of plants and fish for crop yield and nutritional value, collect data and send optimized reports via cell phone instantly through email to the client end users.

[4] Advanced Bioscience Sustainable Solutions LLC. http://Biomonapp.com/



Fire Control Application for Technical Control of Artillery Fire – Data Binding
Martin Blaha, Karel Šilinger
Pages: 48-52
ABSTRACT:
The Czech Republic, as a member of international organizations (NATO, EU, UNO), with respect to current global security neighborhood, employs the units of the army both at its own state territory and outside the Czech Republic, in multinational forces operations. The article focuses on Data Binding Issue of future Automated Command, Control, and Information system (C2I) in conditions of the Army of the Czech Republic.

The issue of automated command, control, and information systems is of high importance in the solving of asymmetrical operations tasks today and in the upcoming future. The authors define ground for designing a new and by the Army of the Czech Republic required, sophisticated Automated Fire Support Control System of Artillery meeting NATO standards in Network Enabled Capabilities (NEC) conditions. Final assessment of the particular issues is determined by analysis. The software model contains derivation, definition and reasoning of data which are essential for the effective artillery fire in condition of modern software tool - Data Binding.

The Czech Artillery units need to have intuitive system for mathematical computations which assures prediction capabilities for adequate fire support provision - PVNPG-14M. This software should be the best choice in current conditions. The article represents section of a huge defensive research project of Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic and the Army of the Czech Republic solved by leading scientists of the University of Defence in Brno.


Explaining the AMST Model: Using Arts, Maths, Science, and Technology in an Upgraded Problem-Based Learning Approach
Georgia Daleure
Pages: 53-56
ABSTRACT:
Recent literature has touted the importance of the Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) curriculum model as the best way to develop a problem-based inquiry in the technology-rich, globally-connected 21st century learning environment. While this approach provides an interesting and valuable approach, not all students are excited, stimulated, and motivated by scenarios centered around engineering concepts; therefore, the model falls short of addressing important competencies that have little or no acknowledgement in the STEM curriculum model. The missing elements include the purpose and the consequences and developing the 21st century skills needed in knowledge economy jobs. By adding modules in which an arts discipline serves as the central point of the instructional scenario, students can be exposed to a broader range of interest provoking experiences. For lack of a better acronym, AMST is used representing the components of Arts, Math, Science, and Technology, to refer to a problem-based curriculum using arts-based central scenario components serving to support integrated sub-modules of maths, science (which may include engineering), information literacy, and computing technology.


Challenges for Using IT in Mexico’s Health Care Industry (Aguascalientes México Case)
Jesús Salvador Vivanco, Martha González
Pages: 57-61
ABSTRACT:
For Mexico it exists a huge number of challenges for to use IT in the Health sector, like what [6], say, about the use of information and communication technology (ICT), or eHealth, that could be developed in the home health care of premature infants through the use of video conferencing or a web application improves parents’ satisfaction in taking care of a premature infant at home and decreases the need of home visits. The families readily embraced the use of ICT, whereas motivating some of the nurses to accept and use ICT was a major challenge. Or like the experience in India about the [15], in which their research observes that electronic healthcare has various advantages, such as easy recording, retrieval, and sharing of patient data anytime and anywhere while providing data privacy. On the other hand, many developing countries still rely on traditional paper-based healthcare systems that are quite vulnerable to data loss, loss of patients'' privacy due to non-secured data sharing, and mandatory consumption of physical space to store patients, so for Mexico this will be a good strategy for improve the health sector administration with more efficiency and in this paper is presented based on the literature revision the principal challenges and the more significant health services through the use of e-health and the opportunities for e-health use in Aguascalientes State Mexico, due to the water contamination of Rio San Pedro, the aquifer of the Aguascalientes valley.


Dialectal Atlas of the Arab World - between Intention and Reality
Oleg Redkin, Olga Bernikova
Pages: 62-65
ABSTRACT:
Arabic dialectology has a long history and achieved significant progress in collecting and analyzing linguistic data and its classification. The present paper analyses modern trends in the linguistic situation in the Arab world and defines the topics essential for the Arabic dialectology, which require an urgent solution. During the last century, several attempts have been undertaken to create dialectal atlases of different regions of the Arab world. Besides this, considerable work also has been done on synchronous descriptions of modern and ancient Arabic dialects.

Meanwhile these researches do not always reflect fully and adequately the current state of the dialectal continuum, which underwent significant transformations as a result of social and economic changes in the region, development of new technologies. Globalization and leveling of dialectal differences, spread of languages of international communication will lead to disappearance of small dialectal groups and vernaculars, among them those that are not sufficiently described or are little known at all, which presupposes their urgent investigation.

In recent years digital methods of research open new horizons for scholars and put on the agenda the task of building of the dialectal atlas of the Arab world basing on the previous experience and data collected as well as application of ICT.


Integrating Architectural Approaches in Communication Design Education to Improve Awareness in Affordance Design
Simge Esin Orhun
Pages: 66-71
ABSTRACT:
The expansion of the range for the design of products in the field of Communication Design (CoD) calls for new teaching strategies to be sought by educational scholars due to the intense experience of digital natives with the digital tools and technology. To equip CoD students with better understanding of the importance of affordance design for developing new tools and applications, this paper proposes an educational model that is based on the concepts of the discipline of architecture. By making use of analogical thinking, the form-based aspects of architectural design are adapted to the virtual aspects of communication design and have been applied in the studio design course that focuses on spatial communication between the years of 2009-2012 with 3 different versions of the design brief. Having based the research on a real-life problem, the outcomes of the course reflect the benefits integrating the architectural knowledge with CoD. This approach can be applied to all design disciplines that require solutions for varying educational needs.


Ethical Implications in the Way Some Marketing Activities is Using Big Data
Adriana da Glória Prado, Joice Chiareto, Fábio Lotti Oliva, Celso Cláudio de Hildebrand e Grisi
Pages: 72-76
ABSTRACT:
Big Data has been used by managers to expand their ability to measure results and make decisions (Brynjolfsson & McFeem, 2012). In Brazil, companies still operate in a certain lack of regulations. Although existence of specific laws is not considered always sufficient to deal with all potential abuse of Big Data, (King & Richards, 2014). In this context, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the ethical implications of using Big Data tools in marketing activities. This work is a case study conducted in a Brazilian company of the loyalty program market. The data were obtained through an interview with a marketing manager working with Big Data and also through documents provided by the company. Data were analyzed using content analysis. The organization internally adopts specific rules to avoid abuse of Big Data. One of them would be to not use data that the customer is unaware of having made available, such as those related to certain consumer interactions on platforms such as Facebook. Despite these practices, the organization still does not have a comprehensive and official policy regarding the ethical implications of using Big Data.


Evidence-Based Education: Case Study of Educational Data Acquisition and Reuse
Katashi Nagao, Naoya Morita, Shigeki Ohira
Pages: 77-84
ABSTRACT:
There must be as many concrete indicators as possible in education, which will become signposts. People will not be confident about their learning and will become confused with tenuous instruction. It is necessary to clarify what they can do and what kinds of abilities they can improve. This paper describes a case of evidence-based education that acquires educational data from students’ study activities and not only uses the data to enable instructors to check the students’ levels of understanding but also improve their levels of performance. Our previous research called discussion mining was specifically used to collect various data on meetings (statements and their relationships, presentation materials such as slides, audio and video, and participants’ evaluations of statements). This paper focuses on student presentations and discussions in laboratory seminars that are closely related to their research activities in writing their theses. We propose a system that supports tasks to be achieved in research activities and a machine-learning method to make the system sustainable for long-term operation by automatically extracting essential tasks. We conducted participant-based experiments that involved students and computer-simulation-based experiments to evaluate how efficiently our proposed machine-learning method updated the task extraction model. We confirmed from the participant-based experiments that informing responsible students of tasks that were automatically extracted on the system we developed improved their awareness of the tasks. Here, we also explain improvements in extraction accuracy and reductions in labeling costs with our method and how we confirmed its effectiveness through computer simulations.