The engineers of the industrial age created the transportation, water, power and other grids that... more The engineers of the industrial age created the transportation, water, power and other grids that provide the infrastructure of the civilized world. On the internet a new kind of grids are being set up ones that are pulling together computing and communication resources to provide infrastructure for the digital economy. Civil engineers too can make use of this new paradigm of computing, not only to crunch through complex simulations but to use it as a collaboration platform for their virtual enterprise (VO) that is involved in the design, construction and management of products. This paper introduces the concept of grid computing, identifies the role grids could play in engineering processes, presents a high level architecture for grids based engineering services and tools, reviews it and defines the research and development issues. It is based on the results of an on-going European Union project InteliGrid Interoperability of Virtual Organizations on a Complex Semantic Grid.
Internet is increasingly important for our economies and societies. This is the reason for a grow... more Internet is increasingly important for our economies and societies. This is the reason for a growing interest in internet regulation. The stakes in network neutrality - that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally - are particularly high. This paper argues that technological, civil-libertarian, legal and economic arguments exist both for- and against net neutrality and that the decision is ultimately political. We therefore frame the issue of net neutrality as an issue of political economy. The main political economy arguments for net neutrality are that a net-neutral internet contributes to the reduction of inequality, preserves its openness and prevents artificial scarcity. With these arguments Slovenia, after Chile and the Netherlands, adopted net neutrality legislation. We present it as a case study for examining how political forces are affecting the choice of economic and technological policies. After a few years we are finding that proper enforcement is just as important as legislation.
The world is going through some profound changes: automation and general improvement of productiv... more The world is going through some profound changes: automation and general improvement of productivity is resulting in the abundance of industrial products, the domination of the West in global economy and politics is challenged by the rise of the BRICS economies, climate change is requiring a reconsideration of the energy system, particularly in Europe demographic changes are resulting in an ageing society, and finally, the electronic communication revolution is changing the ways in which elements in a society are held together influencing all aspects of economy, research, learning, living, media etc. Civil engineers and their forerunners have been shaping the infrastructure of societies for millennia. This paper explores how the listed trends will affect the civil engineering work and where civil engineers will be able to contribute. While the relative contribution of the construction industry to the jobs creation and economic growth will continue to decline, there are substantial opportunities in comparison with some other engineering industries, in particular in the area of climate change and globalization. There are some lessons; in particular with earthquake engineering – the notion of resilience – then can be borrowed by economics and finance.
Abstract. In the global economy an increasingly popular concept of or-ganization is that of a col... more Abstract. In the global economy an increasingly popular concept of or-ganization is that of a collaborative enterprise. An essential ingredient of such an enterprise is the information technology infrastructure that en-able the coordination and the sharing of information and other ...
The international journal of construction management, May 17, 2021
Construction is trailing other industries in the adoption of information and communication techno... more Construction is trailing other industries in the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT). A major European project Digiplace is investigating if this problem could be addressed using digital platform technology. In the context of this project the current state, future goals and barriers in between have been researched through literature studies, surveys, and interviews. Several similar studies have been done in the pasthowever, the barriers are still there. The paper, therefore, introduces a novel framework to study technology transfer. It identifies three key vectors of transfer: standards and regulation, software, and people. Along these vectors, it identifies elements that pull and elements that push technology, but which need to overcome the various frictions and barriers. These are then structured according to the PESTEL approach. This approach encourages the holistic study of factors beyond technology. The paper concludes that there is a need for a better way of deployment, organizing, marketing, and learning about new technologies which would mostly benefit small and medium enterprises which lag most in the use of ICT. This could be implemented in the form of industrial digital platforms as a part of the Industry 4.0 strategy
This paper proposes a definition, scope and topics of construction informaticsa discipline also ... more This paper proposes a definition, scope and topics of construction informaticsa discipline also known as 'construction IT' or 'communication and information technologies in construction'. It presents its ontology that, together with methodology, epistemology and axiology, ...
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, May 1, 2007
This paper presents past and future research themes in construction informatics as perceived most... more This paper presents past and future research themes in construction informatics as perceived mostly by a community of researchers active in European Information Society projects. It is based on a survey that was conducted in the fall of 2003, mostly among the participants of these ...
Lecture notes in business information processing, 2016
This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Web Infor... more This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, WEBIST 2015, held in Lisbon, Portugal, May 20-22, 2015, organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC), and technically sponsored by the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). The purpose of the WEBIST series of conferences is to bring together researches, engineers and practitioners interested in technological advances and business applications of web-based information systems. The 17 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected originally 115 paper submissions. They were organized in topical sections names: web interfaces and applications; internet technology; society, e-business and e-government; web intelligence; and mobile information systems.
The engineers of the industrial age created the transportation, water, power and other grids that... more The engineers of the industrial age created the transportation, water, power and other grids that provide the infrastructure of the civilized world. On the internet a new kind of grids are being set up ones that are pulling together computing and communication resources to provide infrastructure for the digital economy. Civil engineers too can make use of this new paradigm of computing, not only to crunch through complex simulations but to use it as a collaboration platform for their virtual enterprise (VO) that is involved in the design, construction and management of products. This paper introduces the concept of grid computing, identifies the role grids could play in engineering processes, presents a high level architecture for grids based engineering services and tools, reviews it and defines the research and development issues. It is based on the results of an on-going European Union project InteliGrid Interoperability of Virtual Organizations on a Complex Semantic Grid.
Internet is increasingly important for our economies and societies. This is the reason for a grow... more Internet is increasingly important for our economies and societies. This is the reason for a growing interest in internet regulation. The stakes in network neutrality - that all traffic on the internet should be treated equally - are particularly high. This paper argues that technological, civil-libertarian, legal and economic arguments exist both for- and against net neutrality and that the decision is ultimately political. We therefore frame the issue of net neutrality as an issue of political economy. The main political economy arguments for net neutrality are that a net-neutral internet contributes to the reduction of inequality, preserves its openness and prevents artificial scarcity. With these arguments Slovenia, after Chile and the Netherlands, adopted net neutrality legislation. We present it as a case study for examining how political forces are affecting the choice of economic and technological policies. After a few years we are finding that proper enforcement is just as important as legislation.
The world is going through some profound changes: automation and general improvement of productiv... more The world is going through some profound changes: automation and general improvement of productivity is resulting in the abundance of industrial products, the domination of the West in global economy and politics is challenged by the rise of the BRICS economies, climate change is requiring a reconsideration of the energy system, particularly in Europe demographic changes are resulting in an ageing society, and finally, the electronic communication revolution is changing the ways in which elements in a society are held together influencing all aspects of economy, research, learning, living, media etc. Civil engineers and their forerunners have been shaping the infrastructure of societies for millennia. This paper explores how the listed trends will affect the civil engineering work and where civil engineers will be able to contribute. While the relative contribution of the construction industry to the jobs creation and economic growth will continue to decline, there are substantial opportunities in comparison with some other engineering industries, in particular in the area of climate change and globalization. There are some lessons; in particular with earthquake engineering – the notion of resilience – then can be borrowed by economics and finance.
Abstract. In the global economy an increasingly popular concept of or-ganization is that of a col... more Abstract. In the global economy an increasingly popular concept of or-ganization is that of a collaborative enterprise. An essential ingredient of such an enterprise is the information technology infrastructure that en-able the coordination and the sharing of information and other ...
The international journal of construction management, May 17, 2021
Construction is trailing other industries in the adoption of information and communication techno... more Construction is trailing other industries in the adoption of information and communication technology (ICT). A major European project Digiplace is investigating if this problem could be addressed using digital platform technology. In the context of this project the current state, future goals and barriers in between have been researched through literature studies, surveys, and interviews. Several similar studies have been done in the pasthowever, the barriers are still there. The paper, therefore, introduces a novel framework to study technology transfer. It identifies three key vectors of transfer: standards and regulation, software, and people. Along these vectors, it identifies elements that pull and elements that push technology, but which need to overcome the various frictions and barriers. These are then structured according to the PESTEL approach. This approach encourages the holistic study of factors beyond technology. The paper concludes that there is a need for a better way of deployment, organizing, marketing, and learning about new technologies which would mostly benefit small and medium enterprises which lag most in the use of ICT. This could be implemented in the form of industrial digital platforms as a part of the Industry 4.0 strategy
This paper proposes a definition, scope and topics of construction informaticsa discipline also ... more This paper proposes a definition, scope and topics of construction informaticsa discipline also known as 'construction IT' or 'communication and information technologies in construction'. It presents its ontology that, together with methodology, epistemology and axiology, ...
Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering, May 1, 2007
This paper presents past and future research themes in construction informatics as perceived most... more This paper presents past and future research themes in construction informatics as perceived mostly by a community of researchers active in European Information Society projects. It is based on a survey that was conducted in the fall of 2003, mostly among the participants of these ...
Lecture notes in business information processing, 2016
This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Web Infor... more This book constitutes revised selected papers from the 11th International Conference on Web Information Systems and Technologies, WEBIST 2015, held in Lisbon, Portugal, May 20-22, 2015, organized by the Institute for Systems and Technologies of Information, Control and Communication (INSTICC), and technically sponsored by the European Research Center for Information Systems (ERCIS). The purpose of the WEBIST series of conferences is to bring together researches, engineers and practitioners interested in technological advances and business applications of web-based information systems. The 17 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected originally 115 paper submissions. They were organized in topical sections names: web interfaces and applications; internet technology; society, e-business and e-government; web intelligence; and mobile information systems.
The SciX (Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange) project is funded... more The SciX (Open, self organising repository for scientific information exchange) project is funded by the European Commission in order to demonstrate the feasibility of new alternative models of scientific publishing made possible by the Internet. The project builds upon the previous experience of some of the partners in running an electronic peer reviewed journal and in setting up an e-prints archive. The project includes both theoretical work in making a formal model of the scientific publishing process, to be used as a basis for studying the life-cycle costs of alternative business models, and a demonstrator of a functioning e-prints archive.
This paper deals with the CUMINCAD-repository (Cumulative Index on CAD), which was set up in 1998... more This paper deals with the CUMINCAD-repository (Cumulative Index on CAD), which was set up in 1998 and has served the CAAD-community since then as an important source of archived domain related information. CUMINCAD contains over 5,000 entries in the form of publications in the field of Computer Aided Architectural Design. The number has been growing steadily over the years. To date only advanced search mechanisms have been provided to access these works. This may work out well for a just-in-time location of a reference but, is inadequate for just in case browsing through the history of CAAD. For such applications, a hierarchical browsing interface, like one in Yahoo or DMOZ.org is envisioned. This paper describes how the keyword categories were defined and how a moderate, distributed effort in defining the categories will allow machine-identified classification of the entire data set. The aim of the paper is to contribute to building up a wide spread consensus on what the appropriate keyword categories in CAAD are, and what sub-topics should sit below the main keyword categories.
To researchers in every discipline, Internet is quickly becoming the dominating environment to do... more To researchers in every discipline, Internet is quickly becoming the dominating environment to do literature studies. Commercial bibliographic databases tend to be too general, are not up-to-date and require special skills and effort to be searched. On the other hand researchers also publish on the Web and collaboratively that can create indexes of relevant publications. CUMINCAD is a bibliographic index that compiles papers related to computer aided architectural design. Implemented with a database, it allows searching and browsing in the ways usual on the Web. It provides a “historical evolution” to learn from previous efforts and draws attention to older original works that could have been ignored because they could not be found on the Web otherwise. The authors believe that CUMINCAD will help focus future CAAD research and improve the education. CUMINCAD work started in 1998 and is available at www.fagg.uni-lj.si/cumincad/. This paper focusses on the design and development of the database and presents some ideas concerning its advanced use in the analysis of research efforts.
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