Apostolos Vontas

Practices and Services for Enabling the Independent Living of Elderly Population

This paper presents the outcome of the evaluation of existing practices and services that assist the independent living of elderly population. In the context of this investigation we examined already existing practices and services and promote the ones that have the greatest impact to their lives and potential for wider commercial exploitation.

Building enterprise‐wide information supply chains based on the fractal concept

Presents work carried out in the wider context of the IST Adrenalin project whose aim is to facilitate formation and lifecycle management of networked enterprises utilising concepts from two key information research areas. The approach described places heavy emphasis on the notion of mobile agent technologies and their adaptation for achieving the IT realisation of the above theoretical background. It covers specification, design and conceptual realisation of how information supply chains and routes can be organised and navigated across networked enterprise activities within the context of a branch independent model. Builds on the distribute and integrate concept as well as on the fractal idea by supporting self‐similarity, self‐organisation, self‐optimisation and dynamic organisational behavior. The harmonised combination of the concepts formulated in the Adrenalin theoretical framework and their IT realisation are employed within the context of a real‐world case study in an industrial ERP system.

A proposed conceptual framework for the study of research ecosystems

The concept of ecosystems serves as a powerful metaphor in organizational studies that helps to handle the complexity of the environment in contemporary organizations and steps forward the movement towards symbiotic and co-evolutionary organizational networks. This paper elaborates on the concept of ecosystems to propose a conceptual framework for research ecosystems. The proposed concept of research ecosystems can offer significant benefits for the coordination of research initiatives because it clarifies the attributes of the research environments, outlines the general context in which research activities take place and supports the movement from the contextual level to the particular projectspsila level. The paper delineates also two methods for the study of research ecosystems that refer to the assessment of the density of relationships in research ecosystems and the development of research networks as temporary constellations of research entities.

Implementing information supply chains: the IST Adrenalin project

Presents the most recent work carried out in the wider context of IST‐Adrenalin project, dealing with the facilitation, formation and lifecycle management of networked enterprises and organisations. In this respect, how information supply chains and routes can be organised and navigated across networked enterprise activities is specified, designed and realised in a conceptual way within the context of a branch independent model that builds on the fractal idea by supporting self‐similarity, self‐organisation, self‐optimisation and dynamic organisational behavior. The approach described places heavy emphasis on the need for interoperable, integrated, and cost‐effective business practices and capabilities within each individual organisation and across the supply as well as the value chains with respect to information technology. A reflection of the above approach will be realized by the efficient optimisation of the information supply chain and fractal company concepts which will in turn significantly affect...

The 100 euro e-gov portal

In this paper we present an initiative that is lead by ALTEC Research, which is a part of the work carried out in the European IST Project OneStopGov (http://www.onestopgov-project.org). It follows the logic of the 100

A Framework for Building Distributed Agent-Based Industrial Applications

laptop and builds on experiences and lessons of the latter to improve the situation in the addressed field. More specifically we promote the idea of a truly low cost and generic e-Government solution that will be open for download as an integrated product and service suite that can be purchased and used for free or with an extreme low cost (similar to the 100 dollar laptop) so that some basic costs for running the promotional campaign can be subsidised. The successful realisation of our vision, depends not only on marketing a cheap product, but also on ensuring that the process of its adaptation by the potential deployment parties will stay on affortable levels.

Open Source Supply Chains

Abstract In the paper we present a fresh approach to viewing the technological and business and organizational aspects of agent-based systems utilized in industrial and manufacturing environments. Based on experience coming both from intensive research activities carried out by the authors’ organizations, and exposure to real market needs and technology utilization potential, our approach focuses on providing the essentials for the development, deployment, operation and evolution of agent-based technologies, infrastructures and (instances of such) systems. Policies, industrial practices and models are embedded in agents representing intra- and inter-system processes and activities.