Esta pesquisa investiga as possibilidades metodológicas do campo do design que possam lidar eficientemente com sistemas complexos que servem de contexto a vários problemas contemporâneos. Entendemos que os problemas propostos à área projetual estão se tornando progressivamente mais complexos, sem que tenha havido uma contrapartida na sofisticação da reflexão dos métodos projetuais. Partimos então de uma pesquisa das correntes metodológicas de projeto -- especificamente da corrente Design Methods anglo-americana, que desde sua criação nos anos 1960 colocou a necessidade de novos métodos para o design contemporâneo -- que pudessem dar conta de novos níveis de complexidade. Num segundo momento, procuramos fundamentação na teoria dos sistemas, a respeito dos fenômenos típicos dos sistemas complexos -- emergência, robustez, grandes eventos --, suas características e desdobramentos para o mapeamento das soluções dos problemas de design. A partir desta fundamentação identificamos estratégias para o tratamento de problemas complexos. Também procuramos analisar e inferir, das várias iniciativas da web colaborativa, os elementos que geram soluções para problemas de grande complexidade. No decorrer da pesquisa foi possível perceber que as iniciativas existentes na web que tratam de problemas complexos se utilizam de certas estratégias que possibilitam abordagens de projeto mais efetivas. Ao final do estudo, procuramos elaborar uma síntese dessas estratégias e lançar sugestões de abordagem que possam ajudar projetistas no enfrentamento dos problemas complexos típicos de nossos tempos. / This research investigates the possibilities of a design methodology that can deal with complex systems that serve as the backdrop to many contemporary problems. We think that the problems posed to design field are becoming increasingly complex, without any correspondent counterpart in the sophistication in design methods. Therefore, we started with a survey in design methodological theories -- specifically the Anglo-American Design Methods movement, which since its creation in the 1960s put the need for new methods to contemporary design -- that could deal with new levels of complexity. As a second step, we seek grounding in systems theory, about the typical complex systems phenomena -- emergence, robustness, major events -- its features and developments for the mapping of solutions of design problems. From this foundation we identified different strategies to solve complex problems. We also seek to analyze and infer, based on the various collaborative web initiatives, the elements that generate solutions to problems of great complexity. During the research it was revealed that existing web initiatives that address complex problems make use of some strategies that enable more effective design approaches. At the end of this work, we sought to develop an overview of these strategies and proposed suggested approaches that can help designers in addressing the complex problems typical of our times.

This Thesis presents ethnographic data collected through multi-sector, multi-level purposive sampling in a longitudinal qualitative case study between 2008 and 2010. A pilot study had discovered the changing role of government in building capacity for responses to civil emergencies, against a context of changing risks and resources for UK Emergency Management. The Thesis explored the increasing involvement of non-statutory agencies by focussing on the ‘Third Sector’: voluntary, charitable, faith, or community organisations and communities. The Thesis reports (1) the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and resilience, (2) the role of Third Sector organisations in implementing resilience, and (3) the role of the Third Sector in community resilience. (1) The data suggested that the process of implementing resilience involved operationalising the resilience concept as a philosophy for Integrated Emergency Management [IEM], and consequent changes to the governance and organisation of Scottish and UK emergency management. The research linked the role of the Third Sector in resilience and community resilience to the dynamic between preparedness and response. It explored (2) the impact of implementing resilience on organising and organisations in the Third Sector, and (3) policy development and capacity-building for an emergent role in community resilience. The Thesis makes a distinctive contribution to the discipline of Public Management. Firstly, the findings represent a novel empirical and theoretical contribution regarding the role of the Third Sector in community resilience and in the resilience paradigm of emergency management. This data is used to extend existing theory about the proactive role of Third Sector organisations in collaborative emergency management. Secondly, the Thesis argues that the meso-level of analysis is neglected in the emerging field of resilience studies. Network and collaboration theory in Public Management are used to make a novel theoretical contribution, describing the relationship between multi-organisational arrangements and the operationalisation of ‘resilient’ emergency management. Thirdly, the Thesis contributes to the study of collaborative emergency management from this longitudinal perspective. This data is used to extend our understanding of (a) the applicability of Public Management theory to this context and (b) the relevance of data from this context to theories of collaborative public management.

For users away from the office or home, there is an increasing demand for mobile solutions that offer effective collaborative facilities on the move. The mobile cellular device, or “smart phone”, can offer a ubiquitous platform to deliver such services, provided that its many physical and technological constraints can be overcome. In an effort to better support mobile collaboration, this thesis presents a contributing Mobile Exchange Architecture (MEA) designed to improve upon the capabilities provided by mobile devices to enable synchronous exchange of digital media during a phone conversation using wireless networks and cellular devices. This research includes the design and development of one such MEA in the form of a fully functional Photo-conferencing service, supporting shared remote interaction techniques, simultaneous voice communication and seamless digital media exchange between remote and collocated mobile users. Furthermore, through systematic design, experimental evaluations and field studies we evaluate the effects of different shared remote interaction techniques – 'pointing', 'scaling', 'mixed' and 'hybrid' – assessing the task effort required by users when interacting around shared images across resource constrained mobile devices. This thesis presents a direction for the future development of technologies and methods to enable a new era of scalable always-to-hand mobile collaborative environments.

No description available.

Globalization, rapid technological change, shorter product life cycles, changing customerpreferences, and hyper competition are just some characteristics of today’s businessenvironment. As a result, organizations have become aware of the fact that working alone isalmost impossible. Therefore, they began to understand that building relationships are keys toa successful business. In fact, as the business processes become more specialized,organizations prefer to focus on their core competencies and outsourcing becomes a relevantstrategy. Consequently parts of the value adding processes are displaced outside the four wallsof the firm which in turn, need a closer partnership (collaboration) between the partners.In today’s world logistics which includes transportation, inventory, order processing,purchasing, warehousing, materials handling, packaging, and much more, must continuouslybe developed to meet those described challenges. In fact, an effective logistics system is amust in order to meet and satisfy the customer demand. These developments require aconsiderable effort and significant capital. Accordingly, outsourcing the logistics activitiesbecome common and many companies leave these tasks to those who have availableresources and are competent to perform them. However, as mentioned, outsourcing withoutcooperation is inefficient.The objective of this research project is to introduce and describe collaborative logisticsmanagement and investigate its consequence on the supply chain. This purpose necessitates aframework to support the collaboration between the entities in the chain especially in terms oflogistics activities. Besides, the potential benefits (in terms of cost and services) in logisticscollaboration are supported by a lot of literatures. Despite the identified needs and potentialbenefits, there are still barriers through which is not started or not successful enough.Therefore, while those barriers must be identified, possible enablers should be designed andimplemented to attain desired benefits. This has been done through both a theoretical reviewand also a case study.

The current classroom environment is filled with expectations for both teacher and student but is often lacking in time. Skolverket (2011) outlines ambitious goals such as developing students’ critical thinking abilities, adapting teaching to each student’s individual needs, and encouraging students to actively take part in the development of their own educational process, to name just a few. It is crucial to develop and use techniques that aid in attaining these objectives. Peer response could be such a tool. There is an abundance of research which demonstrates how effective it is, but there is also a great reluctance on the part of teachers and students alike to employ it in the classroom. This could be due in part to the idea that learners lack the necessary knowledge to correct and give feedback. However, this and other criticisms directed against peer feedback could be alleviated through deliberate formal peerresponse training. Most of today’s research on this topic seems to focus on English as a Second or Foreign Language (ESL/EFL) classrooms in the U.S.A and Asia, with little work having been done in the Swedish context. Also lacking are investigations regarding peer response in grammar testing, since most of the research emphasizes essay writing. This paper aims to add to the body of existing research on prompted peer response by examining its application in English classrooms in Sweden. To do so, two secondary school English classes in Sweden are tested by means of an abbreviated version of Gan’s (2011) prompted peer response model. More specifically, this paper’s objective is to explore if prompted peer response leads to improvements in grammar (operationalized in this case as reducing grammatical errors in a grammar test) when compared to unprompted peer response. In addition, this paper intends to explore whether peer response can possibly produce any additional rewards and what those could be. The results for this study seem promising. The primary results of this paper support the existing research in this area that prompted peer response leads to a reduction in student’s grammatical errors. Perhaps more importantly, the results suggest that it also aids students in developing a progressive approach to peer response which ultimately can lead to students developing learning strategies and self-reflection over their own learning process.

This thesis presents an investigation into the experience of ESL Higher Education young writers when composing three online genres: academic text, diary texts, and blog texts. Central to this investigation is the authenticity of audience and directing texts to ‘real’ readers. Hence, technological tools are utilised in order to approximate such experience of writing for real readers. A qualitative case study was employed over three months of an academic semester at an Omani Higher Education College. Two cases participated in the study of overall 17 students across both cases: 5 males and 12 females and 10 students in case 1 and 7 students in case 2. To attain an in-depth understanding of the cases; different tools of data collection were deployed, including: interviews, classroom observation, reflective diary for recording student perceptions and experiences, and three forms of written texts were collected from the participating students: academic essay, diary, and blog. Thus the reflective diary was both a genre of writing and a data collection method. The study findings highlight that having only a teacher as an ‘audience’ restricted students’ attempts to focus on content, and most of this focus was given to shaping texts in accordance with student perceptions of teacher approved organisation and representation of text. Whereas blogging provided an opportunity to think of a wider range of readers and therefore a greater tendency to author personally selected texts. Also, diary was mostly associated with teacher-audience; though some writers enjoyed writing diary for personal use, the fact that these diary texts vary in accordance with these different understandings of audience offers further credence to claims about the role of real and assumed readers in shaping texts. The significance of the current study is that it offers practical and pedagogical thinking for teaching writing in ESL exploiting the affordances of technology in teaching process writing. It suggests that varying both audience and genres in relation to classroom writing tasks can have benefits for student writers in terms of their understanding of audience, their shaping of text for an audience and increased investment in the content of what they write. It offers insights into problems and issues felt by young writers that are usually unknown to the teachers. Based on those insights, differing issues such as collaboration, process writing and grading are re-evaluated.

Situational awareness is often understood as the perception of environmental elements and comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of future status. The advancements in cyberspace technology have fuelled new business and opportunities, but also brought an element of risk to valued assets. Today, the growing gap between different types of cyber-attacks threatens governments and organisations, from individuals to highly organized sponsored teams capable of breaching the most sophisticated systems and the inability to cope with these emerging threats. There is a strong case to be made for effective Collaborative Cyber-Security Situational Awareness (CCSA) that is designed to protect valuable assets, making them more resilient to cybersecurity threats. Cybersecurity experts today must rethink the nature of security, and shift from a conventional approach that stresses protecting vulnerable assets to a larger, more effective framework with the aim of strengthening cyber assets, making them more resilient and part of a cybersecurity process that delivers greater value against cyber threats. This study introduces a new approach to understanding situational awareness of information sharing and collaboration using knowledge from existing situational awareness models. However, current situational awareness models lack resilience in supporting information systems infrastructure, addressing various vulnerabilities, identifying high priority threats and selecting mitigation techniques for cyber threats. The use of exploratory and explanatory analysis techniques executed by Structure Equation Modelling (SEM) allowed the examination of CCSA, in this study. Data from 377 cyber security practitioners affiliated to cybersecurity expert groups including computer emergency response team (CERT) and computer security incident response team (CSIRT) was gathered in the form of an electronic survey and analysed to discover insights and understand the mental model of those cybersecurity experts. Also, a finding from the SEM was the CSSA model aligned perfectly with the second-order Cybernetics model to test the theory in practice, confirming the possibility of using the proposed model in a practical application for this research. Furthermore, the SEM informed the design of the CCSA Environment where an empirical study was employed to verify and validate the CCSA theory in practice. In addition, the SEM informed the design of a behavioural anchor rating scale to measure participant situational awareness performance. The experiment results proved that when using the CCSA model and replicating real-world cyber-attack scenarios that the outcome of situational awareness performance was 61% more than those who did not employ the use of the CCSA model and associated dashboard tool. Further, it was found that both timeliness and accuracy are important in influencing the outcome of information sharing and collaboration in enhancing cyber situational awareness and decision-making. This thesis for the first time presents a novel CCSA theory which has been confirmed in practice. Firstly, this research work improves the outcome of effectiveness in cyber SA by identifying important variables related with the CCSA model. Second, it provides a new technique to measure operators' cyber SA performance. Secondly, it provides the necessary steps to employ information sharing in order to improve cyber security incorporated in the CCSA model. Finally, cybersecurity experts should collaborate to identify and close the gap between cybersecurity threats and execution capacity. The novel CCSA model validated in this research can be considered an effective solution in fighting and preventing cyber-attacks. Attainment of cyber security is driven by how information is both secured and presented between members to encourage the use of information sharing and collaboration to resolve cyber security threats in a timely and accurate manner. This research helps researchers and practitioners alike gain an understanding of key aspects of information sharing and collaboration in CSSA which is informed by the CCSA theory and new capability that the implementation of this theory has shown to deliver in practice.

L’apprentissage mobile est devenu un sujet d’intérêt car il implique de nombreux domaines de recherche concernant les contextes d’usages et de technologie complexes. En effet, ce type de formation a été reconnu pour sa capacité à motiver les apprenants car ils peuvent construire leurs propres connaissances en collaborant avec les autres. Dans ce contexte, l’orchestration des scénarios d'apprentissage mobile permet la gestion en temps réel et la contextualisation des activités à réaliser mais ceci engendre des coûts importants d’organisation. En outre, cette organisation réalisée par l'instructeur est peu adaptée aux méthodes d’apprentissage employées pendant la sortie pédagogique car l’apprenant doit pouvoir garder une certaine maîtrise de ses choix et de son parcours. Dans cette thèse, nous présentons un nouveau style de recommandation pour faire une orchestration dynamique des activités d’apprentissage en fonction de la localisation des apprenants et de l’historique de la visite. Cette technique s’appuie sur un filtrage collaboratif exploitant l’activité antérieure des apprenants mais en prenant en compte les contraintes pédagogiques et la localisation. Notre approche s’inspire du mode de fonctionnement de l’intelligence en essaim (algorithme ACO) pour l’implémentation de notre système de recommandation des POIs. Outre les simulations qui ont permis de comparer les différentes variantes de recommandations, la validation de notre système SAMSSP passe par l’expérimentation de nos deux prototypes de visite de campus. / Mobile learning has become a topic of interest because it involves many areas of research concerning usage contexts and complex technology. Indeed, mobile learning is has been recognized for its ability to motivate learners because they can construct their own knowledge by collaborating with others. In this context, the orchestration of mobile learning allows real-time management and contextualization of activities to do but this results in significant costs of organization. In addition, centralized orchestration is not adapted to the context of our mobile scenario because the learner must be able to keep some control over their choices of learning.In this thesis, we present a new style of recommendation for a dynamic orchestration of learning activities based on the location of the learners and the history of the visit. This technique is based on a collaborative filtering that exploits prior activity of the learners and that respects the educational and location constraints. Our approach is based on the mode of operation of the Swarm Intelligence (ACO algorithm) for the implementation of our system of recommendation. Besides the simulations that are used to compare the different variants of recommendations, the validation of the SAMSSP system goes through the experimentation of the two prototypes of campus visit.

The conservation of built heritage is increasingly recognised as promoting cultural sustainability and encouraging the inclusion of culture in the sustainable development of the built environment. Reflecting this recognition is the advocacy of a dynamic integrated conservation approach that considers built heritage within its historic, physical, social, and cultural contexts. Yet, the cultural context of built heritage remains one of the most challenging and neglected aspects in conservation practice. In the specific case of Sudan's historic port town of Suakin, a number of recurrent obstacles to the site's conservation, in addition to a number of potential enablers to address these challenges, have been recognised throughout previous research. However, previous investigations have lacked an essential local socio-cultural perspective. Furthermore, a lack of strategy or framework for Suakin's conservation has so far prevented the coordination of its stakeholders, and the consequential implementation of potential enablers to address its conservation challenges. This thesis is the conclusion of a four-year EngD research that has developed a protocol for the conservation of the built heritage of Suakin. It begins with an introduction to the context, justification and scope of the research, and the research aim and objectives. A review of previous literature is then presented concerning a number of issues related to the research subject and the methodology employed to meet the research aim and objectives. The research methods conducted, including literature review, a mixed-method case study, questionnaire surveys, and a series of participatory action research focus groups, are then explained and the results achieved are discussed. The research findings result in the development of a protocol for Suakin's conservation consisting of five themes emanating from the research stages. These are: ownership; finances and planning; stakeholder inclusion and collaboration; conservation knowledge and awareness; response to the local context. Each theme is comprised of a challenge, or number of challenges, and corresponding solution(s). Furthermore, the research findings define a protocol implementation strategy, consisting of Suakin's stakeholders' suggested implementation and responsibility of the protocol solutions. The collaborative stakeholder process established by the research, and the resulting protocol and its implementation strategy, are a new development in the approach towards Suakin's conservation. The potential long-term impact of the research on Suakin's conservation has so far been indicated by the adoption of the resulting protocol implementation strategy as a formal approach to Suakin's conservation by NCAM. The thesis concludes with a critical review of the research throughout the research stages and key recommendations for the research sponsor, for Suakin's stakeholders, for the built heritage conservation industry and for further research. The findings of this research were published in four peer-reviewed papers.