Building The E World Ecosystem

This book constitutes the thoroughly refereed post-conference proceedings of the 11th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services and e-Society, I3E 2011, held in Kaunas, Lithuania, in October 2011. The 25 revised papers presented were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. They are organized in the following topical sections: e-government and e-governance, e-services, digital goods and products, e-business process modeling and re-engineering, innovative e-business models and implementation, e-health and e-education, and innovative e-business models.

This timely book addresses the need for further measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the European Union, arguing that the EU Emissions Trading Scheme does not offer sufficient incentives for the carbon-intensive materials sector. It highlights the challenge that emissions from industries such as iron and steel, cement and aluminium, amongst others, pose to the EU’s commitment to significantly cut emissions by 2030.

This book is about doing innovative research to achieve sustainable and equitable change in people’s health and well-being through improved interactions with the environment. It presents experiences from the field of ecosystem approaches to health (or ecohealth research) and some insights and lessons learned. It builds on previous literature, notably Forget (1997), Forget and Lebel (2001), Lebel (2003), and Waltner-Toews et al. (2008). Through case-studies and other contributions by researchers supported by Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), the book presents evidence of real changes in conditions of people, their health, and the ecosystems that support them. These changes were derived from applications of an ecosystem approach to health in developing regions of the world. The book also illustrates the resulting body of applied, participatory, and action research that improved health and environmental management in developing countries and, in many cases, influenced policies and practices.

Due to market forces and technological evolution, Big Data computing is developing at an increasing rate. A wide variety of novel approaches and tools have emerged to tackle the challenges of Big Data, creating both more opportunities and more challenges for students and professionals in the field of data computation and analysis. Presenting a mix of industry cases and theory, Big Data Computing discusses the technical and practical issues related to Big Data in intelligent information management. Emphasizing the adoption and diffusion of Big Data tools and technologies in industry, the book introduces a broad range of Big Data concepts, tools, and techniques. It covers a wide range of research, and provides comparisons between state-of-the-art approaches. Comprised of five sections, the book focuses on: What Big Data is and why it is important Semantic technologies Tools and methods Business and economic perspectives Big Data applications across industries

This book brings together a broad range of research that interrogates how real estate market analysis, finance, planning, and investment for residential and commercial developments across the African continent are undertaken. In the past two decades, African real estate markets have rapidly matured, creating the conditions for new investment opportunities which has increased the demand for a deeper understanding of the commercial and residential markets across the continent. The chapters consider issues that pertain to formal real estate markets and the critical relationship between formal and informal property markets on the continent. With contributing authors from South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and Tanzania, the book considers the achievements of African real estate markets while also highlighting the complex central themes such as underdeveloped land tenure arrangements, the availability of finance in both the commercial and residential sectors, rapidly growing urban areas, and inadequate professional skills. This book is essential reading for students in real estate, land management, planning, finance, development, and economics programs who need to understand the nuances of markets in the African context. Investors and policy makers will learn a lot reading this book too.

Databases and information systems are the backbone of modern information technology, and are crucial to the IT systems which support all aspects of our everyday life; from government, education and healthcare, to business processes and the storage of our personal photos and archives. This book presents 27 of the best revised papers selected from the 43 papers accepted following stringent peer review for the 2012 International Baltic Biennial Conference on Databases and Information Systems (Baltic DB&IS 2012), held in Vilnius, Lithuania, in July 2012. The conference provided a forum for the exchange of scientific achievements between the research communities of the Baltic countries and the rest of the world in the area of databases and information systems, bringing together researchers, practitioners and Ph.D. students from many countries. The subject areas covered at the conference included databases, data mining and optimization in IS, business modeling, cloud computing, IS engineering tools and techniques, as well as advanced E-learning environments and technologies. The book also includes presentations from two of the invited speakers at the conference: Exponential Growth of ICT: How Long Can It Last, by Prof. Arne Sølvberg and Variable Systems Model in Information Systems Development by Prof. Marite Kirikova.

What are the best practices for leading a workforce in which human employees have merged cognitively and physically with electronic information systems and work alongside social robots, artificial life-forms, and self-aware networks that are ‘colleagues’ rather than simply ‘tools’? How does one manage organizational structures and activities that span actual and virtual worlds? How are the forces of technological posthumanization transforming the theory and practice of management? This volume explores the reality that an organization’s workers, managers, customers, and other stakeholders increasingly comprise a complex network of human agents, artificial agents, and hybrid human-synthetic entities. The first part of the book develops the theoretical foundations of an emerging ‘organizational posthumanism’ and presents frameworks for understanding and managing the evolving workplace relationship between human and synthetic beings. Other chapters investigate topics such as the likelihood that social robots might utilize charismatic authority to lead human workers; potential roles of AIs as managers of cross-cultural virtual teams; the ethics and legality of entrusting organizational decision-making to spatially diffuse robots that have no discernible physical form; quantitative approaches to comparing managerial capabilities of human and artificial agents; the creation of artificial life-forms that function as autonomous enterprises competing against human businesses; neural implants as gateways that allow human users to participate in new forms of organizational life; and the implications of advanced neuroprosthetics for information security and business model design. As the first comprehensive application of posthumanist methodologies to management, this volume will interest management scholars and management practitioners who must understand and guide the forces of technologization that are rapidly reshaping organizations’ form, dynamics, and societal roles.