2626702
A Particle Swarm Model of Organizational Adaptation
This study introduces the particle swarm metaphor to the domain of organizational adaptation. A simulation model (OrgSwarm) is constructed to examine the impact of strategic inertia, in the presence of errorful assessments of future payoffs to potential strategies, on the adaptation of the strategic fitness of a population of organizations. The results indicate that agent (organization) uncertainty as to the payoffs of potential strategies has the affect of lowering average payoffs obtained by a population of organizations. The results also indicate that a degree of strategic inertia, in the presence of an election mechanism, assists rather than hampers adaptive efforts in static and slowly changing strategic environments.
6828563
A Particle Swarm Data Miner
This paper describes the implementation of Data Mining tasks using Particle Swarm Optimisers. The object of our research has been to apply such algorithms to classification rule discovery. Results, concerning accuracy and speed performance, were empirically compared with another evolutionary algorithm, namely a Genetic Algorithm and with J48 – a Java implementation of C4.5. The data sets used for experimental testing have already been widely used and proven reliable for testing other Data Mining algorithms. The obtained results seem to indicate that Particle Swarm Optimisers are competitive with other evolutionary techniques, and could come to be successfully applied to more demanding problem domains.
191535
Polymorphy and Hybridization in Genetically Programmed Networks
In this paper we discuss the polymorphic abilities of a new distributed representation for genetic programming, called Genetically Programmed Networks. These are inspired in a common structure in natural complex adaptive systems, where system functionality frequently emerges from the combined functionality of simple computational entities, densely interconnected for information exchange. A Genetically Programmed Network can be evolved into a distributed program, a rule based system or a neural network with simple adjustments to the evolutionary algorithm. The space of possible network topologies can also be easily controlled. This allows the fast exploration of various search spaces thus increasing the possibility of finding a (or a better) solution. Experimental results are presented to support our claims.
10782860
OrgSwarm - A Particle Swarm Model of Organizational Adaptation
This study extends the particle swarm metaphor to include the domain of organizational adaptation. A simulation model, OrgSwarm, is constructed in order to examine the impact of strategic inertia on the adaptive potential of a population of organizations. The key finding is that a degree of strategic inertia, in the presence of an election mechanism, can assist rather than hamper adaption of the population.
5929323
Agent-based modelling of product invention
This study describes a novel simulation model of the process of product invention. Invention is conceptualized as a process of directed evolutionary adaptation, on a landscape of product design possibilities, by a population of profit-seeking agents (inventors). The simulation experiments examine the sensitivity of the rate of advance in product fitness to the choice of search heuristics employed by inventors. The key finding of the experiments is that if search heuristics are confined to those which are rooted in past experience, or to heuristics which merely generate variety, limited product advance occurs. Notable product fitness advance only occurs when inventor's expectations as to the relative fitness of potential product inventions are incorporated into the model of invention. The results demonstrate the importance of human direction and expectations in invention. They also support the importance of formal product / project evaluation procedures in organizations, and the importance of market information when inventing new products.
11562802
A Decision Support System for IST Academic Information
This article describes the Decision Support System (DSS) for Academic Information being developed at Instituto Superior Tecnico, the Engineering School of the Technical University of Lisbon. In Portuguese, this project has been given the acronym SADIA (Sistema de Apoio a Decisao da Informacao Academica). This paper focuses on the early phases of the DSS development process, i.e., the business requirements definition and the dimensional modelling. First, we show how the business requirements of the School drive the definition of the DSS dimensional model. Second, we detail the logical dimensional model for a selected business process, the IST Student Admission process. Third, the corresponding physical design decisions are reported. The results obtained from the three phases were successfully validated by business users.
9321144
Using separation and composition of concerns to build multiuser virtual environments
Developing multiuser virtual environments (MUVE) is a very complex task since it involves several engineering domain aspects such as virtual reality, cooperative work and distributed systems. Furthermore, existing technologies like graphics capabilities, processing power and network bandwidth, are permanently evolving. For MUVE systems to be successfully developed, they must not only deal with all the different aspects that are inherent to these systems but also have the ability to deal with the continuous technology and requirements evolution. To cope with these problems, a software engineering separation of concerns approach is proposed. Concerns are identified for each of the different aspects of MUVEs. To obtain the necessary flexibility, each one of the concerns should abstract its possible variations in order to support the future system evolution. Moreover it is shown how concerns composition has the necessary expressive power to build multiuser virtual environments.
203567
Separating replication from distributed communication: problems and solutions
Replication and distributed communication are usually tightly coupled. This code tangling forbids their independent reuse and adaptation. In this position paper, the problems resulting from coupling replication with distributed communication are discussed. In addition, a solution based on separation of concerns is proposed. The abstractions for each concern are presented, as well as their composition.
19002308
Planning Brazilian Urban Traffic with a Geographic Application Software
Planning and optimizing urban traff ic is a diff icult problem, with considerable economic and social impacts. The development of suitable software tools to aid municipal governments to control and to improve the traff ic flow is urgent due to the increasing number of vehicles in urban areas. However, the development of this kind of software represents a great challenge since the problems to be dealt with in this domain are both computationally and mathematically complex. This article presents a geographic application software as a feasible solution for this problem. The solution is geared towards Brazilian medium to large cities and is based on a mathematical model of the urban traff ic. This model is stored in a geographic database and allows the user of the software (typicall y a traff ic engineer) to search for alternative solutions for traff ic problems. The software can provide optimal solutions for an important family of traff ic problems, namely the Traff ic Equili brium Problem (TEP). This family involves the common hashing problems (e.g. traff ic bottlenecks) as well as more sophisticated problems li ke vehicles’ pollution minimization. We have developed a prototype of the software and its solutions for the TEP were empiricall y validated against real traff ic data from Goiânia, capital of the Brazilian state of Goiás.
8450178
Information Retrieval Aware Web Site Modelling and Generation
Design and maintenance of large corporate Web sites have become a challenging problem due to the continuing increase in their size and complexity. One particular feature present in the majority of this sort of Web sites is searching for information. However the solutions provided so far, which is based on the same techniques used for search in the open Web, have not provided a satisfactory performance to specific Web sites, often resulting in too much irrelevant content in a query answer. This paper proposes an approach to Web site modelling and generation of intrasite search engines, combining application modelling and information retrieval techniques. Our assumption is that giving search engines access to the information provided by conceptual representations of the Web site improves their performance and accuracy. We demonstrate our proposal by describing a Web site modelling language that represent both traditional modelling features and information retrieval aspects, as well as presenting experiments to evaluate the resulting intrasite search engine generated by our method.