Julia Celia M. Strauch

Coordination aspects in a spatial group decision support collaborative system

SPeCS a Spatial Group Decision Collaborative Support System intends to integrate Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Group Decision Support Systems (GDSS), Electronic Meeting Systems (EMS), and Workflow concepts in a framework based on Coordination premises. The coordination features should aid design team members to cope with their activities supporting the aspects of multi-criteria spatial analysis within a distributed GIS. Coordination aspects of SPeCS, which can vary from workflow facilities to integrated decision support tools can, intensively enhance the resolutions achieved that should represent the consensus in a decision-making process. This work presents a prototype, which explores the coordination in a spatial collaborative environment that supports the georeferencing of the argumentation just as they are being produced by the discussion involving the members of the design team. The main task of these groups is to produce a proposal for environmental preservations or changes considering social economics, climate and soil aspects.

Spatial data integration in a collaborative design framework

Building an extended architecture to eliminate boundaries to accessing and sharing data.

SPeCS - a spatial decision support collaborative system for environment design

The integration of geographic information systems (GIS), electronic meeting systems (EMS), and workflow concepts, introduces a new approach called SPeCS. Our system intends to support the aspects of multi-criteria spatial analysis within a distributed GIS with tools that can help a group to cope with their activities in this kind of project. It should aid design team members with coordination features that can vary from workflow facilities to tools that can help them achieve resoulutions which shall represent the consensus in a decision-marking process. This work presents a prototype that explores coordination in a spatial collaborative system and supports the geo-referencing of the arguments produced by the discussion involving the members of the design team. The main task of these groups is to produce a proposal for environmental preservations or changes taking into account socio-economic, climate and soil aspects.

Epistheme: a scientific knowledge management environment in the SpeCS collaborative framework

Scientific work was known for being solitary work, where human interaction happened only in small groups within a research domain. Nowadays, due to technology improvements, scientific data from different sources are available, communication between researchers is facilitated and scientific information creation and exchange is faster than in the past. To facilitate this exchange, sharing and dissemination of knowledge and its management, we propose a scientific knowledge management environment where researchers may share their data, past experiences, ideas and get all the necessary information to execute their tasks, make decisions, collaborate with one another and disseminate knowledge.

Adaptative methodology of sustainability indicators management by ontology

The growth of many sectors in modern society has increased the degradation of the environment. Consequently, it generates great ecological unbalance, enhancing the importance of sustainable development, since it stimulates productivity, job and income creation, while reduces the rates of deforestation, erosion and water and soil pollution. In this context, sustainability indicators can be useful to monitor the environmental and social changes. We analyse different proposals adopted in Brazil and present an adaptive methodology, based on Bossels criteria (1996a, 1996b). It enables the choice of the most relevant indicators according to the sustainability study and the geographic region focused.

Decisio-Epistheme: An Integrated Environment to Geographic Decision-Making

Collaborative decision-making in geographic-driven management projects often face problems as: difficulties of manage spatial data as a component of the process, lack of coordination of the different areas involved in the process, difficulties of knowledge access, badly defined decision processes, and absence of an appropriate tool that manages spatial data in a collaborative approach. Decisio-Epistheme is an integrated web-based environment that uses workflow, knowledge management and decision support tools to ease collaborative decision processes that deal with spatial data. In our approach, the collaborative decision process is treated as a form of knowledge creation because its definition and related activities are complementary to the process of externalization, internalization, combination and socialization of knowledge. The system is being applied in an agro-meteorological project, with the purpose of improving the results at the Brazilian agro-business.