B.A. van de Walle

Virtual community knowledge evolution

Puts forth a vision and a possible architecture for a community knowledge evolution system. We propose augmenting a multimedia document repository (digital library) with innovative knowledge evolution support, including computer-mediated communications, community process support, decision support, advanced hypermedia features and conceptual knowledge structures. These tools and the techniques developed around them would enable members of a virtual community to learn from, contribute to, and collectively build upon the communitys knowledge and improve many member tasks. The resulting collaborative knowledge evolution support system (CKESS) would provide an enhanced digital library infrastructure serving as an ever-evolving repository of the communitys knowledge, which members would actively use in everyday tasks and regularly update.

Classification of Microblogs for Support Emergency Responses: Case Study Yushu Earthquake in China

Emergency Response encompasses the decisions and actions taken to deal with the immediate effects of an emergency. How to get onsite information about the disaster quickly has been the key issue affecting the effectiveness of the emergency response. As a new form of social media, microblogging is becoming an applicable source of information for emergency response management. This paper discussed how to use text classification techniques to divert useful microblogs to relevant departments. At first we pre-proceed microblogs in order to fit the classification model, and then the Naïve Bayes model was adopted for the classification. Microblogs of Yushu earthquake in China was used as the study case. As the results of our proposed model for the case, we achieved over 85% recall rate in average. Our experiment shows the feasibility of the method proposed and efficiency of the classification.

Are you thinking what I am thinking? A comparison of decision makers' cognitive maps by means of a new similarity measure

We propose a new measure for analyzing the structural similarities among the cognitive maps of different decision makers. Upon interpreting the cognitive response elicitation process in the general framework of fuzzy set theory, we are able to develop the similarity measure from straightforward operations of fuzzy relational products. In addition to the mathematical analysis, we present visual representations of cognitive structures and the structural similarities among them. We illustrate the measures applicability to an empirical dataset collected in an urban planning decision problem, for which the URBS decision support system has been developed to offer information and advice. The key components of the URBS decision support system are the identification and the comparison of the cognitive structures of the decision makers that were interviewed. We illustrate how the new similarity measure can be used to gain a better understanding of the structural resemblances and differences among the cognitive maps of the decision makers.

Smart Web services: student OddJobs on university Websites

OddJobs is a centrally hosted job information system providing job-related Web services to registered university Websites. We outline the SOAP Web services-based software architecture that has been developed for OddJobs, and summarize how universities can connect to OddJobs. The system is currently being launched at universities in Europe and the USA after extensive pilot testing at NJIT.