In recent years emphasis has been placed on opening up governments and empowering and engaging citizens in governmental activities: this view of e-government is referred to as government 2.0. Government 2.0 focuses on governments becoming more transparent, accessible, and responsive, and on governments promoting increased collaboration and participation.  There is also an increasing demand from citizens to interact and gain access to government services through mobile devices. Adopting mobile and wireless technology within the public sector is referred to as mobile government (m-government) and this new phenomenon is expected to become an important part of the development of e-government. By combining government 2.0 and m-government, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the research community envisages benefits and calls for action within this field. This research answers this call, and addresses the research problem of how to design an m-government solution for complaint and problem management that enables government 2.0. Challenges that inhibit Swedish municipalities from adopting and utilizing such a solution are also identified in this research. Citizens in Sweden can submit complaints and problems concerning a community, such as broken streetlights, to municipalities. By enabling complaints and problems to be reported through mobile devices it facilitates reporting at the point and time of discovery of the issue. Complaint and problem reporting is therefore a suitable m-government service. The m-government solution for complaint and problem management was designed and evaluated within a research project. This compilation thesis builds on and communicates research performed within the research project. By following a design science research methodology, the complaint and problem management solution is designed and evaluated. The solution (Munizapp) comprises a mobile application (app) and an integration platform (ePlatform). The app is the front-end that enables citizens to report complaints and problems to municipalities. The ePlatform facilitates seamless two-way communication between the app and back-end case management system in municipalities. A theoretical evaluation shows that the solution has functionalities that enable all aspects of government 2.0. Additional evaluations indicate evidence of citizens finding the solution valuable and easy to use. There is willingness among municipalities to adopt and utilize the designed m-government solution, but there are challenges that inhibit them from realizing the full potential of the solution. The challenges identified in this research are described and related to business process management and to government 2.0. Future research should investigate how to overcome these challenges.

Generative AI is a hot topic as of 2023, with huge financial investments in the industry. The areas of use for it are rapidly expanding. One potential benefit of generative AI could be in the field of UX design.For this master's thesis, a Stable Diffusion model has been fine-tuned to create pictures of login screens based on text prompts written by a user. A set of these pictures have been used in a prototype and the concept has been evaluated through user tests. The prototype and the concept of using generative AI in UX design received a positive reception from testers. It was established that further work on the fine-tuned model and how to use it as a tool is required for it to be effectively integrated into the design process of user interfaces.

When performing predictive data mining, the use of ensembles is claimed to virtually guarantee increased accuracy compared to the use of single models. Unfortunately, the problem of how to maximize ensemble accuracy is far from solved. In particular, the relationship between ensemble diversity and accuracy is not completely understood, making it hard to efficiently utilize diversity for ensemble creation. Furthermore, most high-accuracy predictive models are opaque, i.e. it is not possible for a human to follow and understand the logic behind a prediction. For some domains, this is unacceptable, since models need to be comprehensible. To obtain comprehensibility, accuracy is often sacrificed by using simpler but transparent models; a trade-off termed the accuracy vs. comprehensibility trade-off. With this trade-off in mind, several researchers have suggested rule extraction algorithms, where opaque models are transformed into comprehensible models, keeping an acceptable accuracy.In this thesis, two novel algorithms based on Genetic Programming are suggested. The first algorithm (GEMS) is used for ensemble creation, and the second (G-REX) is used for rule extraction from opaque models. The main property of GEMS is the ability to combine smaller ensembles and individual models in an almost arbitrary way. Moreover, GEMS can use base models of any kind and the optimization function is very flexible, easily permitting inclusion of, for instance, diversity measures. In the experimentation, GEMS obtained accuracies higher than both straightforward design choices and published results for Random Forests and AdaBoost. The key quality of G-REX is the inherent ability to explicitly control the accuracy vs. comprehensibility trade-off. Compared to the standard tree inducers C5.0 and CART, and some well-known rule extraction algorithms, rules extracted by G-REX are significantly more accurate and compact. Most importantly, G-REX is thoroughly evaluated and found to meet all relevant evaluation criteria for rule extraction algorithms, thus establishing G-REX as the algorithm to benchmark against. / <p>Avhandling framlagd 2007-06-01 vid Högskolan i Skövde.</p><p>Opponent: Rögnvaldsson, Thorsteinn, Professor, Sektionen för informationsvetenskap, Data- och Elektroteknik, Högskolan i Halmstad.</p>

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Computer and Information Science

University of Macau / Faculty of Science and Technology / Department of Computer and Information Science

The take-make-waste approach to resource management in human production and consumption systems is contributing to a variety of environmental and social problems worldwide. Additionally, as the world’s population and affluence increase, so do the negative impacts of poor resource management. Lifting the waste management (WM) sector into a new phase of development, which takes its lead from the ideals of Industrial Ecology and circular economy, is seen by many scholars and practitioners as one potential to assist in alleviating these impacts. While there are many studies on how more efficient inter-organizational resource management is (or could be) constructed, there are relatively few business development studies which have explored novel approaches (from roles to tactics) that WM organizations might operationalize toward more efficient resource management. The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the development of knowledge and understanding of how the waste management sector can operationalize more effective and efficient resource management. In approaching this aim, two research questions guided the exploration of: 1) novel roles for WM and 2) support tactics for such roles. Grounded in the broader context of Industrial Ecology (IE) and Business Development, five studies were performed. Two studies, focused on the novel roles of inter-organizational resource management and high value secondary resource extraction, were performed through literature review and interviews, and market driver analysis respectively. In exploring support tactics, two design and proof of concept studies were carried out to investigate data analysis tools for inter-organizational resource management, and one long-term action research engagement project was coordinated to study hands-on inter-organizational collaboration tactics. The studies highlighted that the Swedish WM sector holds some key capacities for operationalizing (and in some cases, is already developing) the novel resource management roles identified: industrial symbiosis facilitator, eco-industrial park manager, holistic facility management, and high value resource extractor. However, depending on the portfolio of services to be performed in such roles, several capacities may need to be developed or strengthened. Main opportunities seen for these roles were – staying ahead of market developments, and aligning activities with organizational goals. The main general risk related to these roles was insufficient returns on investment. Looking forward, the main enablers identified were policy leadership for more balanced market mechanisms, increasing use of external knowledge, developing long term partnerships, lobbying, stockpiling resources, and carefully crafting new business models. The tools developed for strategically applying external information toward the identification of opportunities within new roles showed tactical potential. However, their implementation in broader development processes has yet to be fully validated. The hands-on exploration of change oriented collaboration, highlighted collective system framing and goal setting and face-to-face interaction as key activities for inter-organizational approaches within roles such as industrial symbiosis facilitator. Throughout the studies, several novel roles were investigated. Each of these roles will need to be individually evaluated by directing bodies of WM organizations, and evaluated from the organization’s vision and strategy. If certain roles are chosen to be explored in more detail, they will need to be developed within full business models - addressing issues such as income structure, internal processes and capacities to be developed, and key customers. Through applying IE and business development concepts and findings, WM organizations have possibilities to translate ambitious visions into novel offerings.

Calls for more responsible companies, have led to initiatives and legislations of sustainability reporting, in order to improve corporate transparency and accountability regarding companies economic, environmental and social impact. The aim of the research was to explore records roles in corporate sustainability reporting, which is discussed from an archives and information science perspective. Records are regarded as evidence of business activities and therefore crucial to accountability and decision-making processes. A sustainability report is a record, and records are also used to create a sustainability report. The thesis is based on a qualitative explorative methodology with interviews as data gathering technique. Interviews were carried out with four employees at three different companies who work with sustainability reporting, a sustainability consultant who works with sustainability reporting, and an auditor who assesses the  companies´ annual and sustainability reports. The interviews have addressed records’ role in different aspects of sustainability reporting, exploring how sustainability reports are created, used and pluralized. As well as how the records, generated as an effect of the reporting process, are used, what impact they have on the business and efficiency of the process. The thesis also explore respondents´ perspectives on reliability and credibility of the reports in relation to records qualities. Results from the interviews have been analysed with the lens of Records Continuum Model and the ISO standard for records management, ISO 15489-1:2016. Results show that records are key assets that provide evidential information that enables different functions and benefits –both to companies that report and to stakeholders. Primary benefits of the reporting that have been emphasized are that it enables transparency and accountability, informed decision-making, management of risks, compliance with legislation, ability to demonstrate corporate responsibility and meeting sustainability goals, greater business efficiency, evidence-based analysis and development activities, formation of business culture and identity, and protection of corporate and collective memory about the corporates’ work regarding sustainability. Records are also valuable assets for governance and continuous improvements. It enables to monitor trends and assessment on how the company meets its targets. The thesis gives an increased understanding of records’ role in a socio-economic context. It also suggests some areas for further research and development in order for sustainability reporting to further support a sustainable development. One of the major tasks would be to make pluralization of sustainability-related records more efficient, in order to facilitate further utilization of the information. This may enhance corporate accountability and decision making based on sustainability criteria, and would make the work more efficient for companies. The global records governance environment can be improved further, in order to support  global sustainable development. Important is also to raise awareness about the role of trustworthy records.

How do air traffic controllers, or ATCos, distribute visual attention and can it vary between controllers? In this study, using primarily eye-tracking data and a couple of on-site interviews, these questions are explored. Two ATCos, with the most similar landings, had their eye-movements recorded with Tobii pro glasses 2 and further analysed by categorizing every fixation into different areas of interest during four landings. Two more ATCos were interviewed briefly during an observational visit to the control tower. The results showed that the ATCos distributed their attention fairly equally between the outside of the control tower and the inside. When attending to something outside the runway was the focus and when attention was inside the control tower the radar was usually the focus. The ATCos differed in their attention distribution by the presumably more experienced ATCo distributing their attention more outside the control tower than the presumably less experienced ATCo.  A large number of fixations were not categorized bringing the method of dividing the ATCos eye-tracking view into areas of interest into question.

There is currently little research about how the aesthetics of a game affects the perceived PX. Especially, the aesthetics of the individual 3D game components, such as characters, enemies and environmental objects. This thesis project studies different design principles and approaches to create 3D game components. These are used in practice to create 3D game components for a video game. The 3D game components are evaluated with qualitative and quantitative methods, with the intention to find a method for creating 3D game components that evoke a certain PX. The results show that it is possible to create 3D game components that evoke positive emotions, by using color psychology, animation theory and by designing from the developers own feelings and experiences.

Sharing a large amount of data between many mobile devices can lead to scalability problems. One of these scalability problems is that the data becomes too large to store on mobile devices and that many updates are sent to each device. In this thesis, Couchbase is evaluated as a tool to solve this problem where the data has a geographical position. The scalability problem is solved by partitioning the data with the help of Couchbase channels and Google’s tile-based mapping system. Synchronising and storing only data of interest for each user has been in focus. The result showed that it was effective to use a Couchbase solution together with Google’s tile-based mapping system to reduce the amount of data that was required to be stored for each user. It was shown to be more effective to store objects encoded as base64 data instead of their binary data representation for the data set used in this study. The reason for this is because Couchbase stores Binary Large Objects (BLOBs) as separate files and the BLOBs in the data set had much smaller file size than what the disk sector size was. A test to find how the synchronisation time was affected by the number of channels was conducted. It showed that the synchronisation time increased linearly with an increasing number of channels when the objects were stored in separate files. When the objects were encoded as base64 data, the number of channels used had a minor effect on the synchronisation time. The conclusion is that the approach presented in this study has been effective. However, the results are data dependent and therefore it is recommended to rerun similar tests in order to decide the number of channels to use when partitioning the data.