PhD (Business Information Systems) / Department of Business Information Systems / Collaborative Decision Making (CDM) is a never-ending challenge in complex-problem situations where multiple actors are involved. Complex-problem situations involve problems that are ill-defined, ill-structured and wicked such as terrorism. Problems of this nature usually warrant a collaborative effort between actors (organizations) with multiple skill-sets and expertise that at times might be at variance with each other. In order to address this gap, three sub-objectives were postulated from the main research objective, “To determine how optimal/effective CDM can be realized amongst counter-terrorism organizations through context-aware technologies.” Using the theory of synergetics and following deductive thematic analysis, the socio-technical nature of the terrorism problem was depicted by postulating a Digital Terrorism Ecology that consists of Open Digital Infrastructure (ODI), Digital Information Ecosystem (DIE), Digital Terrorism Enactment (DTE), Digital Capability and Digital Enslavement. Based on institutional theory and using PLS-SEM technique, Group/departmental relationships, Organizational co-operation, Organizational form, Technical infrastructure and interoperability, Information and knowledge sharing were identified as the factors influencing attainment of Optimal/effective CDM amongst counter-terrorism organizations. In order to explicate the role of context-aware technologies in enhancing CDM amongst counter-terrorism organizations, a context-aware CDM framework was developed following Design Science Research (DSR) methodology. In this study it was evident from the findings that attainment of OCDM in counter-terrorism contexts is challenging even though it is essential. Among the factors considered as possible influencers of attainment of OCDM, Organizational form (OF) was found to influence Organizational cooperation (OC) and Technical infrastructure and inter-operability (TI). Group/departmental relationships (GDR) were found to influence OF and OC. TI was found to influence OC and GDR and further, Information and knowledge sharing (IKS) was found to influence Optimal/effective CDM (OCDM). Of the three pillars of institutional theory, the regulative pillar offered more insights on issues related to rules, discourse and practice and hence the challenges of OCDM attainment. Practically, this study aims to re-orient the thinking of counter-terrorism organizations by presenting the socio-technical nature of the terrorism problem as well as explicating the role of digital technologies in terrorism. / NRF

On considère ici deux sujets différents, en utilisant des idées issues de la théorie de l'information : 1) Context Tree Weighting est un algorithme de compression de texte qui calcule exactement une prédiction Bayésienne qui considère tous les modèles markoviens visibles : on construit un "arbre de contextes", dont les nœuds profonds correspondent aux modèles complexes, et la prédiction est calculée récursivement à partir des feuilles. On étend cette idée à un contexte plus général qui comprend également l'estimation de densité et la régression, puis on montre qu'il est intéressant de remplacer les mixtures Bayésiennes par du "switch", ce qui revient à considérer a priori des suites de modèles plutôt que de simples modèles. 2) Information Geometric Optimization (IGO) est un cadre général permettant de décrire plusieurs algorithmes d'optimisation boîte noire, par exemple CMA-ES et xNES. On transforme le problème initial en un problème d'optimisation d'une fonction lisse sur une variété Riemannienne, ce qui permet d'obtenir une équation différentielle du premier ordre invariante par reparamétrage. En pratique, il faut discrétiser cette équation, et l'invariance n'est plus valable qu'au premier ordre. On définit l'algorithme IGO géodésique (GIGO), qui utilise la structure de variété Riemannienne mentionnée ci-dessus pour obtenir un algorithme totalement invariant par reparamétrage. Grâce au théorème de Noether, on obtient facilement une équation différentielle du premier ordre satisfaite par les géodésiques de la variété statistique des gaussiennes, ce qui permet d'implémenter GIGO. On montre enfin que xNES et GIGO sont différents dans le cas général, mais qu'il est possible de définir un nouvel algorithme presque invariant par reparamétrage, GIGO par blocs, qui correspond exactement à xNES dans le cas Gaussien. / We study two different topics, using insight from information theory in both cases: 1) Context Tree Weighting is a text compression algorithm that efficiently computes the Bayesian combination of all visible Markov models: we build a "context tree", with deeper nodes corresponding to more complex models, and the mixture is computed recursively, starting with the leaves. We extend this idea to a more general context, also encompassing density estimation and regression; and we investigate the benefits of replacing regular Bayesian inference with switch distributions, which put a prior on sequences of models instead of models. 2) Information Geometric Optimization (IGO) is a general framework for black box optimization that recovers several state of the art algorithms, such as CMA-ES and xNES. The initial problem is transferred to a Riemannian manifold, yielding parametrization-invariant first order differential equation. However, since in practice, time is discretized, this invariance only holds up to first order. We introduce the Geodesic IGO (GIGO) update, which uses this Riemannian manifold structure to define a fully parametrization invariant algorithm. Thanks to Noether's theorem, we obtain a first order differential equation satisfied by the geodesics of the statistical manifold of Gaussians, thus allowing to compute the corresponding GIGO update. Finally, we show that while GIGO and xNES are different in general, it is possible to define a new "almost parametrization-invariant" algorithm, Blockwise GIGO, that recovers xNES from abstract principles.

Annotation: The diploma thesis analyzes level of quality of gallery educating systems in educational institutions. It focuses on city of Kutná Hora and Gallery of the Central Bohemia Region. In its theoretical part it focuses on characterization of gallery educating systém and shows that musems and galleries can offer educative activities of great value. It describes its origins and tradition in the Czech Republic. It describes its methods and goals, characters of educators, their role in educating programs. It focuses on how it works as part of curricular documents and describes how space can affect quality of educational process. The second part introduces Gallery of the Central Bohemia Region Kutná Hora and its center for education LC GASK, its goals and visions of. It describes what activities LC GASK offers and not only for schools. The third part describes experience from three points of view. The first point of view is of child participating in the educational programs, the child was actually the author of the diploma thesis. The second is a teacher who tries to offer educational programs to students and it also shows difficulties which exist in this process and trying to deal with these difficulties. The last one is new and unexperienced gallery educator. The last chapter completes all hypothesis...

We present an algorithm for deciding whether an arbitrary proper probabilistic context-free grammar is consistent, i.e., whether the probability that a derivation terminates is one. Our procedure has time complexity $\\\\mathcal O(n^3)$ in the unit-cost model of computation. Moreover, we develop a novel characterization of consistent probabilistic context-free grammars. A simple corollary of our result is that training methods for probabilistic context-free grammars that are based on maximum-likelihood estimation always yield consistent grammars.

Recommender systems are helpful tools employed abundantly in online applications to help users find what they want. This thesis re-purposes a collaborative filtering recommender built for incorporating social media (hash)tags to be used as a context-aware recommender, using time of day and activity as contextual factors. The recommender uses a matrix factorization approach for implicit feedback, in a music streaming setting. Contextual data is collected from users' mobile phones while they are listening to music. It is shown in an offline test that this approach improves recall when compared to a recommender that does not account for the context the user was in. Future work should explore the qualities of this model further, as well as investigate how this model's recommendations can be surfaced in an application.

Denna uppsats har undersökt båtbottenfärgsproducenters, båtklubbars och Kemikalieinspektionens arbete med och ansvarstagande gällande biocidinnehållande båtbottenfärg. Sedermera har kunskapen om alternativa metoder till båtbottenfärg undersökts hos enskilda båtägare i Stockholms län och hur denna insikt påverkat deras användning av biocidinnehållande båtbottenfärger. Två teoretiska ramverk baserade på Sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility och Attitude-Behavior-Context applicerades på empirin av undersökningens aktörer. Via tio stycken semi-strukturerade intervjuer har olika ansvarstagande och ståndpunkter kring båtbottenfärg framkommit hos båtbottenfärgsproducenterna, båtklubbarna och Kemikalieinspektionen. Producenterna menar att biocidbåtbottenfärg kan förhindra negativ miljöpåverkan medan båtklubbarna valt att helt fasa ut dem till följd av Stockholms miljöförvaltnings förbud av biocidbaserade skrovfärger i Mälaren efter 2020. Istället har epoxifärg rekommenderats till medlemmarna, vilket är problematiskt då Kemikalieinspektionen inte utreder miljöeffekter av denna färgtyp. Myndigheten har överfört det huvudsakliga tillsynsansvaret till Sveriges kommuner, hos vilka det råder bristfällig kunskap om båtbottenfärger och ofullkomlig kommunikation gentemot båtklubbar och båtägare. Båtägare känner osäkerhet över hur de ska förhålla sig till båtbottenfärg och saknar tilltro till alternativa metoder där de istället valt att lita på båtklubbars rekommendationer gällande epoxifärg, trots kostsamma påbud. / This paper has examined how producers of antifouling paint, boat clubs and the Swedish Chemicals Agency address biocidal antifouling paint and the responsibility they are subject to. Subsequently, the knowledge of alternative methods to antifouling paint among individual boat owners in Stockholm County has been investigated and how this insight has affected their use of biocidal antifouling paint. Two theoretical frameworks based on Sustainable Corporate Social Responsibility and Attitude-Behavior-Context were applied to the empirics obtained from the stakeholders of the study. From ten semi-structured interviews it has been brought to the surface that the liabilities and attitudes surrounding antifouling paint differ among the producers of antifouling paint, the boat clubs and the Swedish Chemicals Agency. While the producers claim that biocidal antifouling paint in fact can prevent adverse environmental effects, the boat clubs have taken a different path and chosen to completely phase them out, as a result of Stockholm environmental administration agency’s prohibition of biocidal hull paints in Lake Mälaren after 2020. Epoxy paint has instead been recommended to their members, which is problematic since the Swedish Chemicals Agency does not investigate environmental consequences associated with this type of paint. The agency has commissioned the principal responsibility of supervision to the municipalities of Sweden, which possess defective knowledge about antifouling paints and moreover demonstrate deficient communication vis-à-vis boat clubs and boat owners. The latter express uncertainty as to which stance to take on antifouling paint and convey a lack of trust to alternative methods where they instead have chosen to confide in the recommendations of the boat clubs regarding epoxy paint, despite expensive decrees.

This master’s thesis project “A Presence Server for Context-aware Applications” was carried out at KTH Center for Wireless Systems (Wireless@KTH). The overall goal of this thesis project is to implement a context aware infrastructure to serve as middleware for different kinds of context aware applications, such as a context-aware printing application, location based notifier application, etc. This thesis examines different types of context aware architectures and considers different forms of context modeling. Additionally the thesis also explores some of the related technology, in order to provide the reader with suitable background information to understand the rest of the thesis. By using the SIP Express Router (SER) and its presence module (pa) a context server has been designed, implemented, and evaluated. Evaluation reveals that the critical bottleneck is the increasing service time as the number of Publish messages for different events in the SER database increases, i.e. the time required for handling and sending the Notify messages when a new Publish message is received increases as a function of the number of earlier Publish messages. The evaluation also shows that the dependence of SER upon the MySQL database as incorrect database queries can cause SER to crash. Additionally the performance of the database limits the performance of the context server. A number of future improvements are necessary to address security issues (in particular the authentication of Watchers) and adding policy based control in order to send Notify messages only to the Watchers authorized to receive information for a specific event. / Examensarbetet "A Presence Server for Context-aware Applications" genomfördes på Kungliga Tekniska Högskolan, KTH Center for Wireless Systems (Wireless@KTH). Det övergripande målet med detta examensarbetsprojekt är att implementera en kontextmedveten infrastruktur som fungerar som "middleware" för olika typer av kontextmedvetna applikationer. Exempel på dessa är kontextmedveten utskriftsapplikation och platsberoende meddelarapplikation osv. Rapporten undersöker olika typer av kontextmedvetna arkitekturer och betraktar olika former av kontextmodellering. Rapporten utforskar även vissa besläktade teknologier för att kunna tillhandahålla läsaren med en passande bakgrundsinformation och därmed öka förståelsen för resten av examensarbetet. Genom att använda Sip Express Routern (SER) och dess närvaromodul (presence module, PA) har en kontextserver designats, implementerats och utvärderats. Utvärderingen visar att den kritiska flaskhalsen är tiden det tar för SER servern att svara på nya Publish meddelanden, för olika händelser, i SER databasen. Svarstiden ökar allteftersom databasen fylls med mer data. Detta påverkar hantering och sänding av Notify meddelande när en ny Publish meddelande är mottagen. Uvärderingen visar också att en viktig fråga är relationen mellan SER servern och MySQL databasen, eftersom felaktiga förfrågningar till databasen kan krascha SER servern. De viktigaste framtida förbättringarna är säkerhetsaspekter (mer specifikt autenticering av Watchers) och tillägg av policybaserad sändning av Notify meddelanden endast till auktoriserade Watchers för specifika händelser.

This is an era of globalization due to which the world has become a Global Village and organizations are transforming into multicultural firms while increasingly building diverse teams. However, due to the organizations’ tendency towards becoming international, individuals worldwide travel and migrate from one society to another. This cross-culturalism is fabricating challenges for the countries of higher immigrant rates because individuals bring the complex nature of mixed cultures with them. The context of cross-culturalism is based on various different elements e.g. cultural specific values, norms, behaviors, lifestyles, ethics and beliefs which promote diversity in multicultural organizations. Thus the diversity of people creates intercultural barriers for managers/leaders to manage multicultural teams as well as challenges have increased for employees/followers who work in those teams. However, it has become crucial for both leaders and followers to learn cultural competencies so that they can manage cultural barriers and perform effectively as well as efficiently in multicultural teams.Due to the rising demand to learn intercultural competencies, this research was initiated to help future leaders and followers to better understand and manage ICC barriers. This study is an addition to existing research and will guide multicultural organizations and their participants (leaders & followers). However two questions were developed around which this study has been executed 1) How do participants from High context and Low context cultures experience intercultural communication barriers while working in multicultural settings? and 2) How can intercultural communication barriers/challenges effectively be managed among participants? In order to answer these questions, interviews on students were conducted at four universities of Sweden for the purpose of collecting empirical data which later on analyzed with the existing literature relevant to ICC.The findings of this study conclude that both High-context (HC) cultures and Low-context (LC) cultures have differences among each other which create barriers/challenges for the individuals working in multicultural settings. The results represent that when an individual from HC moves to LC, he/she comes across challenges or even if an HC moves to HC he/she faces some sort of challenges in any way possible too and, same goes for LC. The empirical data after analysis with existing literature proved that every culture whether it’s LC or HC wants to interact with HC or LC, it always creates challenges and conflicts. But at the same time there are some possible steps which can be taken to manage these barriers e.g. observation of cultures, active listening, comparison with own culture, have a dialogue around the problem as well as understanding of others’ behaviors and giving them space.

This paper aimed to discover how player satisfaction is affected by context-aware elements based on physical, real-world factors in an action role-playing game. The possibility of utilizing player modelling to counteract the reduction in player empowerment in a game heavily influenced by external factors was also explored. This was accomplished by creating an ARPG heavily integrated with various weather, and daytime, context data obtained from web-based APIs. Followed by conducting qualitative tests with help of eleven participants during a time period of a week. The evaluated results were presented in a manner of relevance for both context-driven applications as a whole, and for further exploration within game developments utilization of state of the art technology.

The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) has led to significant changes in the business environment and academic discussions. AI boosts productivity and positively impacts the competitive advantage of organisations. However, it also has its dark sides, such as prejudice, non-transparent processes, and people's fears that AI will be able to take their jobs in the future. The successful implementation of AI in organisations depends on several factors, including geopolitical, cultural, ecosystem, organisational, and individual factors. Geopolitical context and cultural differences can play an important role in the adoption and implementation of AI in organisations. This study examines the influence of geopolitical and cultural contexts on the decision-making process for the adoption and implementation of AI by managers from the fashion retail industry in Sweden and India. Given the extensive scope of these contexts, the authors narrowed their focus on specific factors. In the cultural context, the authors consider selected dimensions of the GLOBE project that reflect national culture. Within the Geopolitical context, particular attention is given to aspects such as data access and control, as well as the regulatory framework. In the course of this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted, and additional secondary data was studied. The study showed that the specifics of data access and control, as well as governmental legislative regulation, directly affect the decision-making process regarding the adoption and implementation of AI. As for the cultural context, here the degree of influence is heterogeneous, and decision-making on the implementation of AI is not always subject to the direct influence of the national cultural factors.