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

The aim of this master’s thesis is to examine the virtual reference service Ask the Library [Bibblan svarar] from a postmodern perspective. Ask the Library is a Swedish online reference service that is run by the country’s public libraries. The postmodern theories of Jean-François Lyotard are used to study how information is managed and transmitted within the service. From this point-of-view three aspects of the reference service are studied; how the information is affected by the virtual environment, the librarian’s role within the service and finally how the content of the service is managed. The methods for extracting data are a blend of qualitative interviews and online observations. The data is then analyzed from a theoretical viewpoint. The result shows that there are several postmodern tendencies in Ask the Library. Namely the service shows a number of indications toward plurality. This can be related to Lyotard’s theory of the downfall of the grand narratives since postmodern theories celebrate the idea of plurality and diversity. Ask the Library is complex and dynamic in the sense that it adapts its services to the users. In addition to a multilingual service, Ask the Library also offers the users reference help in the form of social network sites like Facebook and Twitter. This makes the service more varied but also deeply complex. The reference service also emphasizes on the librarian’s individual competence and promotes personal knowledge and expertise. In Lyotard’s postmodern theories there is a rejection of absolute and objective truths and this falls in line with the subjectivity that the reference service celebrates. Ask the Library has two different agendas; providing qualitative reference service to the users and also promoting the librarians and their skills. The information, or content, in the service is still organized and under examination by the librarians. Critique of the sources is an important skill for a librarian within Ask the Library to have. These traditional ideas of objective truth are balanced with the new virtual environment that often promotes collective construction of information and knowledge. This study is a two years master’s thesis in the academic field library and information science.

The development of the digital content industry is the key factor affecting the international competitiveness. However, there are still lots of problems and difficulties, and the most important of them is the cultivation of professional talents. The first purpose of this research is surveying the demand and supply and the gap between domestic digital industry and the cultivation of digital content talents. Second, explore the relative effect between the third party software vendors and the output of whole digital content industry. Through causal analytical method to find out problems and interviewing experts to establish the model of digital content service quality gap. Furthermore, use questionnaires to prove the hypothesis. After doing the research, we found out that digital content industry is different from general industry. There are four players, including the students, training organization of digital learning, factories of tool software develop and digital content service industry. And it truly have some gap between each player. First, the service that training organizations provide is discord from students¡¦ feeling. Second, services that students actually receive is different from they knew in the beginning. Third, students¡¦ cognition of software¡¦s price is disagree with the supplier. The result of research can be put in use of plan and execution. It not only can save the training time and human resources but increase the strength of training talents and is helpful to international development.

This study defines the optimum route planning for Electric Transmission Lines by Multicriteria Decision Analysis which is based on Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Determination of the optimum route is performed by using both the spatial and Euclidean distances between two points located on the Earth&rsquo / s surface. The criteria needed to be taken into account to define the route of the Electrical Transmission Lines were evaluated with help of the experts who are doing this business in the available system and for this study the decision about the usage of needed data such as landuse map, landuse capability map, geology map, road map, zone plan and digital elevation models is also made with their knowledge. A Matlab code, which computes the optimum distance between two transformers by using real distance (spatial distance) method and by considering materials mentioned above is written. The results are compared with the ones found from the Euclidian distance, which is the common distance finding method in the available commercial GIS softwares. The spatial resolution effect in finding the spatial distance is also analyzed. The routes obtained by two different distance computation methods are compared with the existing route. The economical expectations in finding the optimum route are also discussed.

Most of spatial data extraction and updating procedures require digitization of geographical entities from satellite imagery. During digitization, errors are introduced by factors like instrument deficiencies or user errors. In this study positional uncertainty of geographical objects, digitized from high resolution Quickbird satellite imagery, is assessed using Data Uncertainty Engine (DUE). It is a software tool for assessing uncertainties in environmental data / and generating realisations of uncertain data for use in uncertainty propagation analyses. A case study area in Kocaeli, Turkey that mostly includes agricultural land parcels is selected in order to evaluate positional uncertainty and obtain uncertainty boundaries for manually digitized fields. Geostatistical evaluation of discrepancy between reference data and digitized polygons are undertaken to analyse auto and cross correlation structures of errors. This process is utilized in order to estimate error model parameters which are employed in defining an uncertainty model within DUE. Error model parameters obtained from training data, are used to generate simulations for test data. Realisations of data derived via Monte Carlo Simulation using DUE, are evaluated to generate uncertainty boundaries for each object guiding user for further analyses with pre-defined information related to the accuracy of spatial entities. It is also aimed to assess area uncertainties affected by the position of spatial entities. For all different correlation structures and object models, weighted average positional error for this study is between 2.66 to 2.91 meters. At the end of uncertainty analysis, deformable object model produced the smallest uncertainty bandwidth by modelling cross correlation.

Spatial Data Analysis (SDA) is relatively narrower and constitutes one of the areas of Spatial Analysis. Geographic Information System (GIS) offers a potentially valuable platform for supporting SDA techniques. Integration of SDA with GIS helps SDA to benefit from the data input, storage, retrieval, data manipulation and display capabilities of GIS. Also, GIS can benefit from SDA techniques in which the integration of these techniques can increase the analysis capabilities of GIS. This integration serves for disseminating and facilitating improved understanding of spatial phenomena. How SDA techniques should be integrated with GIS arise the coupling problem. The complete integration of SDA techniques in GIS can be applied without the support of GIS vendor when the free/libre and open source software (FLOSS) development methodology is properly followed. This approach causes to interpret the coupling problem in a new way. This thesis aims to develop a fully coupled SDA with GIS in FLOSS environment. A fully coupled SDA in free GIS software as FLOSS system is developed by writing nearly 13,000 line Python code in 2.5 years. Usage of this system has reached to nearly 1600 unique visitors, 3000 visits and 8600 page views in two years. As the current status of development in GIS is considered, it is unlikely in commercial market to have full coupled SDA techniques in GIS software. However, it is expected to have more SDA developments in proprietary GIS software in the near future as there is an increasing trend for requesting more sophisticated SDA tools.

Advances in sensing and positioning technology, fueled by wide deployment of wireless networks, have made many devices location-aware. These emerging technologies have enabled a new class of applications, known as Location-Based Services (LBS), offering both new business opportunities and a wide array of new quality of life enhancing services. One example of such services is spatial alarms, an enabling technology for location-based advertisement, location-based alerts or reminders and a host of other applications. On the other hand, the ability to locate mobile users accurately also opens door for new threats - the intrusion of location privacy. The time series of location data can be linked to personal identity, which leads to unauthorized information exposure about the individual's medical conditions, alternative lifestyles, unpopular political views or location-based spam and stalking. Thus, there are two important challenges for location-based service provisioning. How do we scale LBSs in the presence of client mobility and location dependent constraints for the multitude of new, upcoming location-based applications under a common framework? How do we provide anonymous location- based services with acceptable performance and quantifiable privacy protection in the next generation of mobile networks, systems and applications? This dissertation delivers technical solutions to address these important challenges. First, we introduce spatial alarms as the basic primitive to represent a class of locationbased services that require location-based trigger capability. Similar to time-based alarms, spatial alarms serve as spatial event reminders that enable us to express different location-based information needs supported by a variety of applications ranging from location-based advertisements, location-based personal assistants, to friend locator services like Google Latitude. We develop a generalized framework and a suite of optimization techniques for server-centric scalable processing of spatial alarms. Our architecture and algorithm development provide significant performance enhancement in terms of system scalability compared to naive spatial alarm processing techniques, while maintaining high accuracy for spatial alarm processing on the server side and reduced communication costs and energy consumption on the client side. Concretely, we develop safe period optimizations for alarm processing and introduce spatial alarm grouping techniques to further reduce the unnecessary safe period computation costs. In addition, we introduce a distributed alarm processing architecture that advocates the partitioning of the alarm processing load among the server and the relevant mobile clients to reduce the server load and minimize the client-to-server communication cost through intelligent distribution and parallelization. We also explore a variety of optimization opportunities such as incorporating non-spatial constraints into the location-based information monitoring problem and utilizing efficient indexing methods such as bitmap indexing to further enhance the performance and scalability of spatial alarm processing in the presence of mobility hotspots and skewed spatial alarm distributions. Second, we develop the PrivacyGrid framework for privacy-enhanced location service provisioning, focusing on providing customizable and personalized location privacy solutions while scaling the mobile systems and services to a large number of mobile users and a large number of service requests. The PrivacyGrid approach has three unique characteristics. First, we develop a three-tier architecture for scaling anonymous information delivery in a mobile environment while preserving customizable location privacy. Second, we develop a suite of fast, dynamic location cloaking algorithms. It is known that incorporation of privacy protection measures may lead to an inherent conflict between the level of privacy and the quality of services (QoS) provided by the location-based services. Our location cloaking algorithms can scale to higher levels of location anonymity while achieving a good balance between location privacy and QoS. Last but not the least; we develop two types of location anonymization models under the PrivacyGrid architecture, one provides the random way point mobility model based location cloaking solution, and the other provides a road network-based location privacy model powered by both location k-anonymity and segment s-anonymity. A set of graph-based location cloaking algorithms are developed, under the MobiCloak approach, to provide desired levels of privacy protection for users traveling on a road network through scalable processing of anonymous location services. This dissertation, to the best of our knowledge, is the first one that presents a systematic approach to the design and development of the spatial alarm processing framework and various optimization techniques. The concept of spatial alarms and the scaling techniques developed in this dissertation can serve as building blocks for many existing and emerging location-based and presence based information and computing services and applications. The second unique contribution made in this dissertation is its development of the PrivacyGrid architecture for scaling anonymous location based services under the random waypoint mobility model and its extension of the PrivacyGrid architecture through introducing the MobiCloak road-network based location cloaking algorithms with reciprocity support for spatially constrained network mobility model. Another unique feature of the PrivacyGrid and MobiCloak development is its ability to protect location privacy of mobile users while maintaining the end-to-end QoS for location-based service provisioning in the presence of dynamic and personalized privacy constraints.

Today’s society is characterised by the production of massive amounts of information— freely transferred—and instant access to knowledge. This current overproduction of data is translated into complex diagrams to enhance the clarity. Nevertheless, it is commonplace in information design practice to find diagrams that are not communicating the intended messages. The act of conceiving the diagram takes place during conceptual design. This can be where misleading analysis and superfluous information organisation actions may lead to ill-conceived conceptual design, and therefore to ill-conceived diagrams, i.e. overloaded, unintelligible and disorganised. Existing tools for conceptual design of diagram creation do not properly meet design practitioners’ needs in that they tend to be excessively time-consuming to implement. This indicates a need for the exploration of new design methods focused specifically on the conceptual design stage of the process of designing diagrams. This practice-led thesis presents one such possible design method, i.e. MapCI Cards, aimed at guiding experienced graphic and information design practitioners in the preparation of complex diagrams. MapCI Cards presents a collection of guidelines that make use of prompts and questions, in order to assist the conceptual design stage of diagram creation. The use of the proposed design method does not guarantee the production of outstanding outputs. The purpose of MapCI Cards is not to create aesthetic design; rather, it is to increase an understanding through guided content analysis and organisation of the information to be conveyed. Lists, draft diagrams, mind-maps and sketches are some of the possible resulting outputs of using the MapCI Cards. In short, the cards assist the development of the conceptual idea of the potential final diagram that will be developed in the prototype design stage. The first stage of this research investigates how complex diagrams organise information, using the London Underground diagram as a case study. Analytical relational surveys are used to explore diagram creators’ decision-making processes. Sets of studies of diagram structures (Walker, 1979a; Tufte, 1983), design processes (Wurman, 1989; Jones, 1992) and information organisation (Wurman, 2001; Shedroff, 2003; Roam, 2008) are examined and combined. After this, the data collected are analysed using qualitative visual methods, and rearranged to develop the content in MapCI Cards. Two pilot workshops are designed as the revising and optimising methods. Then, five self-documentation cases drawn from practising information designers in the UK are conducted to test MapCI Cards within professional practice. The performance of the proposed guided approach to conceptual design is measured through an interpretation model, and key informants’ insights are used to delimit its conditions and limitations.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / Information Systems (IS) capability can be viewed as a firm's valuable resources, and if controlled well, can contribute towards competitive and efficient business value. For the purpose of this study, IS capability is thus defined as the firm's ability to continuously derive business value from Information technology (IT) investments, and this includes the firm's IT personnel skills and competencies. The research argument driving the study was that IS capability is an outcome of good IS management and IT governance. However, to date, IS capability has not been defined beyond an expression of the firm to derive and leverage business value through IS continuously. Consequently, this dissertation conceptualizes a framework towards IS capability in a South African firm. In the study, IS capability is seen as achieved through a sound IT governance, IT management, and corporate governance. That is, the study was about how governance and management of IS happens in a typical firm. IS capability was studied by looking at how the firm makes IT decisions, prioritizes IT investments, business and IT collaborating to create the vision, IT leadership, and the management of information systems resources.

M. Tech. Business Information Systems / In today's Information Society, organizations have to ensure clean and secure data in order to make informed decisions. However, maintaining secure data need systematic Information Security Management. It is important to note that much as Information Security Management is considered the pillar of Enterprise Information Systems, its challenges are numerous. These challenges may include; loss of cooperate information, compromise of sensitive data and continuous cracking into the organization network systems. Academic institutions like many other information based organizations go through a wave of these challenges. Such challenges if not effectively handled could lead to serious security breaches. This study sought to identify metrics needed for Information Security Management in Universities of Technology.