Digital Transformation and Global Society

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of the youth Twitter-community from two main perspectives. First, we analyze sociological theoretical and methodological concepts. Second, we interpret both the survey data provided by informants (N = 10; 2014–2015), residing in the city of Saratov and being popular within a given community, and the materials of the informants’ Twitter-accounts. In our opinion this social network underlines the new trends of modernity better than others, successfully displays the person’s inner world. According to the results of theoretical and methodological analysis, significant sociological discourse fields of the youth virtual communities were highlighted. The results of the collected interviews’ analysis are provided.

The paper presents the results of empirical research aimed at analyzing the effectiveness of the social media usage by administrations of Russian cities. We use both qualitative and quantitative methods to assess the content of municipalities’ SNS accounts, as well as ways of communication between public employees and citizens in the digital public policy sphere. It is argued that in the overwhelming majority of cases municipal authorities do not use the potential of SNS to contact with citizens, mainly because of lack of material adaptation, necessary recourses, as well as inability to adapt to the new information environment.

According to authors’ research, traditional media staff has lost sharp interest to ordinary people. Such a trend means a lack of interest to the mainstream everyday life which is represented in the common persons’ lives. These content gaps should become a focus of attention for nontraditional media if they wish to develop the “people-to-people” model of communication in a new media environment. New social Internet projects challenge the traditional media routine. Thus, the digital media can gain an advantage in their competition with print and audiovisual channels.

The article is based on the cross-national analysis of the social behavior on the Internet. The authors identify the development coefficients of the Internet as a means of political empowerment, financial activity, consumer behavior and social communication in Russia and Latin America, including such countries as Mexico, Chile and Uruguay. The national databases of the mass poll in Russia, Mexico Chile and Uruguay comprise the empirical research base. The key results of the research reveal the differences in development of various Internet segments (functions) from county to country. Chile and Uruguay have the greatest values of Internet use for financial and consumer purposes, whereas Russia and Mexico have low values, however, the latter countries have greater values of Internet use for social, communication and entertainment activities.

The paper discusses the role of emotionally significant political images in Russian youth culture. The study covers the period between 2006 and 2012, during which Russia saw not only a political and economic transition, but also dramatic changes in communication technology. The 6-stage research included two waves of testing in 2006 and 2012, with 179 respondents selected for the final stage of the survey. Respondents were aged 17 to 24 years old.

In this article we review the understanding of the “Soviet” phenomenon by social network users. The scope of our analysis includes social networks that are most often used by Russian citizens: Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki and Facebook. In the course of the research, there were used methods of content analysis and linguistic analysis. Techniques of semantic and textual analysis were applied to the analysis of certain types of text: titles, slogans, descriptions of groups and user comments. Content analysis method was used to identify the key semantic categories (topics) that are relevant to users of social networks. The analysis of the information placed in groups (communities) in social networks shows a significant difference in understanding of the investigated phenomenon.

The field of sociology became a science with the introduction of methodological and mathematical tools to study and analyze the sociological phenomena. On the other side, the invasion of ICT in all areas force to a review of the methodological processes of sociology studies for an efficient use of technologies and to improve the quality level of the sampling, the conduct of investigations and more rapid delivery of results. Indeed, a social phenomenon is characterized by an unpredictable cycle and the results are in a risk of subjectivity. This paper is intended as a fairly exhaustive study of currents that have influenced the process of sociological studies analyzing different aspects. We then move to a proposed hybrid life cycle and functional architecture of what would be a cooperative sociology system combining various technologies such as social networks and geographical information systems. We call that “geographic sociology system”.

The intensive development of cyberspace regarding the requirements of developing and improving the quality of communication, requires the emergence of some new tools in order to form (certain) communication strategies. In this article the authors describe the various aspects of building an effective communication strategy in cyberspace.The research purpose was to explore a set of design tools for effective communication strategies in cyberspace. The authors propose a new approach to assessing the prospects of development of cyberspace based on the research presented in the works of D. Burt, A. Kleiner, J.P. Nicholas, et al.As a result, the following research identified key features common to all online resources: a lack of emphasis on building effective communication strategies of online resources (web-sites, web-pages, networking communities) for interaction with users. This reduces the effectiveness of communication, and poses the problem of low satisfaction within society regarding the results of the interaction with the online resource. Low efficiency is manifested in the form of reduced financial stability of the resource, its popularity with users and decreased satisfaction in communication. For increasing the level of effectiveness of communications in the cyberspace the authors suggest a set of tools that allow you to perform data analysis to assess the effectiveness of engagement strategies, as well as to undertake measures to improve the characteristics of the resource, and adjust its “behavior” with a view to an increase of efficiency.

Computer games are the new research theme for social scientists and humanitarians with increased interest over the past 10–15 years. To evaluate the dynamics of research interest to the different thematic aspects of computer games expansion we made the review of the Russian scientific journals for the period 2005–2016 by the e-Library «Humanitariana» having the function of a flexible thematic full-text search. This information system is developed at the ITMO University. We used the methods of frequency-oriented search. We analyzed material of articles (N = 601) which were placed on the portal e-LIBRARY (http://elibrary.ru/).We based on the idea that the language of scientific publications as well as the mass media language is included in the formation of the “agenda-setting”. Scientific agenda manifested in the fact that the importance of certain issues, ideas, approaches were determined by the frequency of their reference in journal publications. It creates a set of scientific topics that are understood as the most important by research community.Firstly, our results allow to see “top concepts” or “hot zone” as a set of burning issues reflecting the specificity of texts devoted to computer games. Secondly, we identified meaningful groups and analyzed their composition in denotative and connotative aspects in the set of top concepts. Third, we examined the dynamics of the use of terms for years, such as “addiction”, “child”, “teenager”, “education”, it helps to interpret the development of computer games research subject. In conclusion we discussed lack in area of Russian computer games studies.

The paper aims at revealing factors influencing the development of e-government in the Russian regions. Based mainly on the innovation diffusion concept we run quantitative analysis, testing the significance of political, technological, socio-economic and administrative variables. Our study shows that the diffusion of e-government itself was to a large extent the result of a vertical influence of the federal government, however, disproportions of e-government performance can better be explained by internal characteristics of the regions. We argue that the key predictors for a more mature e-government are relatively democratic political regime, technological advancement, bureaucracy effective-ness and investment in ICT. The explanatory model could best be expanded by case studies focused on agency rather than the structure.

Among the most important, and certainly most promising, trends of the last decade is this of digitization. Organizations, and mainly businesses, of various profiles invest lots of money and effort in order to digitize processes, products and offerings. The paper at hand aims to investigate whether the same applies to the public sector as well. A pair of carefully selected indicators (namely Digital Adoption Index and Digital Evolution Index) are applied to a selected sample of countries (namely Germany, Greece, Russia, Spain and United Kingdom) in order for interesting results to be derived.

This paper discusses the functions of value added tax, shortcomings of value added tax levying in Russian taxing practice, it also justifies the necessity of transition to the new electronic system of tax administration. Main attention is paid to issues of comprehensive tax administration modernization on the basis of information technologies, description of the innovations and advantages of the new system that came into use in 2015.

Smart and sustainable cities use information and communication technologies to improve quality of life. Smart economy and digitalization of banking are the core issues of this trend. New technologies are profoundly changing the strategic context of the financial business and communication by changing customers’ attitude and expectations, the nature of competition and business conduct. The progress of ICT services all over the world is different and is underdeveloped in some countries and continents. The paper will present insights from various studies and explore the future banking landscape. The behavior and financial needs of millennials will be examined. The arguments supporting the idea that digital transformation of banks is an imperative for survival and thriving in smart cities will be presented. The ICT transformation of Deutche Bank, Raiffisen Bank, Hana-Bank and Bank Group “Otkrities” will be analyzed. Recommendations for the Russian bank smart transformation will be discussed.

The paper examines different types of e-participation tools functioning in Russia. This research presents a part of a complex scientific sociological project focused on determination of the critical factors which influence the e-participation development in Russia. This paper reflects the results of a comparative study of e-participation portals functioning with a special attention to its nature: government and non-government.The authors made an attempt to find the effectiveness of Saint Petersburg portals’ work with the use of an automated information system. The research hypothesis stated that individuals and their groups could be more productive in e-participation tools development.The research results showed the difference in activities on each portal as well as an expected fate of e-petitions. The research hypothesis was partly confirmed. The first practice of citizens’ electronic collaboration was linked with an initiative platform “Beautiful Saint Petersburg”. At the same time a governmental portal “Our Petersburg” also demonstrated a high-level of citizens’ interest and involvement. The research also showed comparatively common citizens’ activity in different city districts.The study revealed that Saint Petersburg example is an illustration of authorities’ orientation to the citizens’ needs. The development of e-participation platforms of both types had found a positive feedback from the citizens from the very beginning of its operation.

The paper presents a review on existed approaches to e-participation assessment with the focus on indicators and proposed metrics. A research on the applicability of international tools for e-participation evaluation to the Russian context has been conducted.The focus of the analysis was concentrated on the Russian legislator documents that determine e-participation development. Based on the normative base study, a comprehensive research of international techniques for assessing the progress in this sphere has been developed. The researchers determine 10 spheres to be evaluated in accordance with stated goals and targets, and 5 international tools for e-participation evaluation reflecting different specific of the research phenomenon.The research revealed the necessity of two kinds of innovations. The first one reflects the demand to develop a clear detailed strategic document describing e-participation targets, prospects and orientations. The second one is connected with the development of a monitoring system for e-participation evaluation adequate for the Russian context.

This paper describes the model of citizens and more generally any person engagement in Digital Transformation processes. Essential barriers that governments, business and people face and should be ready to overcome in the Digital Era are examined. The two-level model of person involvement in the Digital Transformation based on an increase in person’s motivation for acquiring additional competences and participation in the Transformation is suggested. This motivation is ensured by the synergy of person’s multiple roles and subject domains integration. Successful methods and practices in areas of integrated using information about children’s healthcare and education in Russia, the UK, and Canada are presented in evidence of possibility to gain valuable synergy achieved even at the first level of involvement. The schematic chart of the person’s Private Virtual Workplace and interactions in the Digital Society is presented for the second level of person involvement model realization.

The decision of the European Court of Justice (ECJ) in the case Google Spain (2014) has provoked continuous debates about the existence and the content of the so-called ‘the right to be forgotten’. Many recent works contain different approaches to the idea and the rationale of such a legal concept in the framework of already existing and more well-known privacy rights as ‘right to oblivion’, ‘right to erasure’, etc. Nonetheless, the idea quickly has captured the minds of scholars and practitioners over the world. Russia has also followed the European initiative and adopted in 2015 similar provisions with entry into force on 1 January 2016. The paper seeks to evaluate probable consequences and risks for information society, access to information and principle of transparency in Russia. The inappropriate use of the right may affect seriously freedom of information and hide potentially crucial information from the general public.

The paper provides preliminary results of the comparative overview of e-participation projects development within the e-governance institutional structure in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member-states. The authors analyze (1) Legal base on e-governance and e-participation; (2) E-governance institutions and stuff; (3) Participation instruments of public engagement. In future the authors plan to elaborate the methodology of e-participation processes monitoring in the countries of the EAEU, and to examine the issue of e-governance institutions effectiveness in the EAEU region.The purpose of research is to identify the challenges and opportunities of government’s digital diplomacy effectiveness assessment. The authors review the up-to-date studies of digital diplomacy effectiveness assessment, generalize the international experience in the evaluation and practical implementation of digital diplomacy, as well as develop the proposals on indicators and criteria of digital diplomacy effectiveness assessment. The authors consider the effectiveness of digital diplomacy on three different levels: the level of information delivered to foreign audience, the level of influence, and the level of interaction with the foreign audience.The authors find out that foreign policy strategies of leading powers do not contain references to the criteria for digital diplomacy effectiveness, with the exception of the United States. Therefore, the authors have attempted to develop such criteria and constraints that need to be discussed.

Most conflict scholars, practitioners, and parties dedicated to the thematic of conflict agree that alternative means of solving and managing conflicts other than the traditional court system offers an efficient and cost-effective way to manage and resolve conflicts. However in the area of conflicts involving municipalities, the use of these alternative means and, in particular, early intelligent decision-support systems is not common. Therefore, we propose to deliver an intelligent environment capable of assisting elected and non-elected municipal officials in managing conflict. To develop this proposal, we present a brief review about how the conflict is handled in a digital environment. Further, the system’s requirements and a conceptual framework to facilitate information gathering are depicted. Through a proof of concept, we also expose that our approach to handling conflict can be integrated into a generic municipal decision-making process in a viable and feasible way.

The paper provides preliminary results of the comparative overview of e-participation projects development within the e-governance institutional structure in the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) member-states. The authors analyze (1) Legal base on e-governance and e-participation; (2) E-governance institutions and stuff; (3) Participation instruments of public engagement. In future the authors plan to elaborate the methodology of e-participation processes monitoring in the countries of the EAEU, and to examine the issue of e-governance institutions effectiveness in the EAEU region.

Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and Indian government focuses on financial inclusion as the foundation for inclusive growth. Around 2/3rd of the Indian population falls under the rural category and majority of it is currently not part of the mainstream banking. Rural India contributes a lot to country economy. In this regard, there is a long felt need to have systemic approach to leverage advances in technology to enhance effectiveness of rural cooperative credit structures, particularly delivery of payments and credits to rural citizens on various social sector schemes.While the commercial banking system is taking steps to extend its reach to rural areas, there is a need to develop innovative solutions to provide access to people in rural areas so as to help them get efficient and reliable payment and banking services near to them.To meet financial inclusion objectives, National Informatics Centre (NIC) has developed a Cooperative Core Banking Solution (CCBS) to serve the needs of the rural India to make availability of efficient and reliable payments and banking services closer at their doorsteps.

World perspectives of digital governance are directed by the idea of turn from services to the value of services and co-production. This idea transforms understanding of the relations between the government, businesses, and citizens. All of that attaches importance to the monitoring of service policy and policy feedback. Recent trends in Russian administrative reform (2006–2010) and in implementation of e-government (2009–2015) show some evidence of adopting connected d-governance perspectives here. Three main points could be mentioned: (1) feedback in the regulation of government monitoring of effectiveness; (2) citizen participation in the process of service standardization; (3) multi-functional centers, governmental service portals, and e-consultation on federal and regional levels of e-government. Some tensions and limits accompany these trends.

Rapid improvements in access to ICT in Russia result in increased demand for e-government services. The citizens using electronic means to apply for and receive the results of public services demonstrate higher satisfaction with quality of public service delivery, compared to those who use traditional in-person application procedures. However, both statistical and sociological data analyzed in the article suggest that the share of public services actually delivered in electronic form is still low (about 3.2% of Russian citizens managed to receive the administrative public services in electronic form in 2015). To reduce the gap in e-services development with OECD countries in the current budget constraints, there is a need to reallocate ICT resources along the key priority public functions and services and to turn e-government tools from being a cost item to becoming a factor of budget savings. To achieve such results, it is expedient to introduce the practice of measuring and monitoring service delivery transaction costs and to use cost-effectiveness as one of the key factor guiding the decision-making process on ICT investments.

This paper dwells on the potential of information technology to ensure the mechanisms of direct democracy. The authors defend the thesis that modern information technologies provide all the necessary tools and the “building blocks” for direct participation of citizens in state affairs management. The authors analyze the strengths and weaknesses of direct democracy, considering the advantages of direct democracy forms to the representative one in today’s society. The prospects and the possibility of implementation of the relevant institutions in the Russian Federation in accordance to Russian legislation are evaluated. The authors conclude that objectively there is a need for some institutions of direct participation of citizens in state affairs management (in particular, e-referendum) and offer to start working on introduction of relevant amendments to the legislation.

The current stage in development of Russian civil society bears the appearance of new forms of expression and realization of the interests of society. Terms of civic activity in Russia are associated primarily with increased activity of NGOs, the growth of social movements and networked civic movements and development of Internet technologies. Networked movement uses the principles of equality, resource interaction, voluntary participation, developing in the geography of their activities and number of participating citizens. The Internet provides new forms of civic engagement. Civic engagement appears on the Internet via web portals and sites, civic applications and social networking, crowdsourcing and crowdfunding platforms. Social networks and online applications provide significant opportunities for communication, transmission of information, resources, research, and become a really effective tool for horizontal relationships and connections in the community. Large-scale protests and civic companies are formed with the help of networks. Internet resources allow operatively spread information about activities and events, help to effectively mobilize members of civil activity.

Many researchers have talked about the role of e - participation as a means of linking Citizens with their Leaders and also playing roles in decision making processes on public resources allocation. However, little is known about models which can cater for citizens who are in rural areas where there are limited infrastructures and other factors like low education, culture, gender, marginalization etc. This paper describes an ICT System which uses Mobile Phone SMS to accelerate citizens - leaders’ democratic engagement to improve public service delivery. It builds on the Participatory Action Research (PAR) theoretical framework and aims at operationalizing the PAR e-participation model proposed by Toro Development Network in 2014. The system design develops knowledge required for joint reflection and continuous decision making during the engagement processes between citizens (civil society) and government through a participatory action research approach. The paper emphasizes the ICT convergence approach combining broadcast media specifically radio, mobile phone and ICT system to receive and request grass-roots citizens’ public opinion on national strategies, policies and programs.

This paper presents the opportunities, advantages and limitations of e-participation portals automated monitoring system (AMS) in social and political research. The system was initially developed in 2013 to analyse petitioning and voting dynamics of the Russian e-petitions portal – the Russian Public Initiative – and then was further expanded. In the paper the architecture and working principles of the system are described. It is argued and exemplified that the data collected automatically from e-petition portals can be used to advance research in several areas: media and PR effects on political participation, issue salience, as well as factors of voting behavior and online political engagement.

With the advent of Information Society and the new Technologies of information and communication (ICT) and its use through Internet, the fundamental right of access to information gets a new dimension and allows the exercise of other relevant rights such as popular participation. Thus, we think that it is worth to elaborate a comparative analysis between the Portuguese law on the access to administrative documents (LADA) and the Brazilian law on access to information (LAI). For the elaboration of such study we used the method of monographic procedure, using the technique of research based in bibliographic revision. From the analysis undertaken we will try to identify and qualify the transparency and the effectiveness of access to information in both countries.

In this paper we describe how investments in human capital are managed in the quintessential e-Society type of community, namely among the students of programming in ITMO University (Russia) who are famous for the unprecedented achievement of 6 times absolute winning of the ACM Student International Collegiate Programming Contest Championship (ICPC) (The team of ITMO University became absolute champion of The ACM-ICPC in 2004, 2008, 2009, 2012, 2013, 2015. ACM ICPC is the oldest, largest, and most prestigious programming contest in the world and is sponsored by IBM. https://icpc.baylor.edu/). The three-stage process, described in the article, is the answer to the question of how to nurture the best programmers in the world. When reproduced exactly, this process can be applied to guarantee high quality education and research in any area of science, since the model of investments in human capital can work across different disciplines and create sustainable world-class creative environments in almost any area of science.

The article considers the various aspects of the potential capacities of school and university E-learning environment for the organization of educational activities with students. The environment of the e-learning opens a number of new opportunities which are not only for the organization of a learning activity, but also for creation of the conditions for self-realization of the personality and socialization of the student.

As the title implies the article describes a way to solve a problem of automated assistance to a teacher that organize practical group classes in a higher education. It is spoken in a detail about developing automated system to help teachers in dividing students group into working subgroups. Proposed automated system should take into account student’s level of concepts knowledge of studied subject as well as the personal characteristics of students.

The paper presents a form of management and support for participants in socio-educational co-creative projects. The method is based on the use of the social network analysis. The results of the social network analysis, static and dynamic sociograms are used as materials that augment the narratives that we send to participants.

This paper presents the results of the study of current trends in the quick dissemination of scientific research results based on the application of information society technologies. The paper demonstrates approaches enabling automatic integration of scientific metadata into different information systems. It also demonstrates an optimal solution for the dissemination of interdisciplinary research results published as proceedings of an annual scientific conference. Specific features of metadata dissemination in diverse information systems have been studied. An approach is presented for the optimization and automation of metadata preparation and for their presentation into diverse information systems that do not support automatic metadata exchange.

The article characterizes a digital textbook as one of the most promising informational and learning resources that is in greatest demand now in online university education. Considering the requirements of competence-oriented approach to learning, the authors describe the advantages of up-to-date computer-based informational and educational technologies that promote effective application of new-format learning materials in local and distance learning. Theoretical points are illustrated by a pilot project of a digital textbook “Academic Skills” for vocationally-oriented foreign-language informative reading, which is aimed at the improvement of the communicative and informative competences of physics students. The textbook operates on the basis of Moodle and uses the SCORM standard. It is being developed to support English-speaking environment and is scheduled for integration in the INFOMEPHIST author system of the Online University within the National Nuclear Research University MEPhI.

We discuss the problem of the application of online team project training in nuclear engineering education in bachelor, specialist and master programs in the area of nuclear physics and technologies, nuclear reactors and materials of National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering-Physics Institute). The methodological aspects of organization of student online work in a team project, development of a “design office” and “project office” as well as application of project management practice are in focus of attention. The results of the ongoing process of the transformation of engineering education in compliance with the CDIO (Conceive-Design-Implement-Operate) international and Russian federal national educational standards are discussed.

The paper describes the results of the application of project-implementation methods in nuclear education in National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering-Physics Institute). The role of information technologies and eKnowledge in the transformation of educational process is discussed as well as the brief description of future perspectives. The general description of the new methodology as well as a case scenario are provided.

The focal point is the problem of synthesis of educational and innovation process in the contemporary research university. The main purpose of the paper is to describe motivational and methodological aspects of such transformation, necessary to increase the effectiveness of educational process with the aid of CDIO standards. The particular case of implementation of the new laboratory module on how digital transformation of educational process works as the key to development of new approaches and achievement of major results in obtaining new competences and skills for graduates of nuclear engineering educational programs is introduced.

The article discusses an approach of coordinating university scientific activities with using contextual search and contextual knowledge extraction technologies. For the implementation of the proposed approach, the authors use an e-library «Humanitariana» with services of contextual search, different types of queries, automated extraction of knowledge from the scientific texts. The advantage of using «Humanitariana» is in the possibility of combining the resources of several organizations, which can function in a local network mode and in distributed IT environment with ability to appeal to all resources from any of the servers of participating organizations. The approach was created and tested in context of preparation of master’s theses in “Applied Computer Science” (ITMO University) and scientific exploratory research (The Sociological Institute of the RAS).

The article gives an overview of Open Science concept to support online scientific collaborations and open science data contribution. The authors give a description of ‘Linked Open Data in University’ project (developed Russian universities linked open data hub, architecture of this portal, published datasets and approach to mapping data from relational database to RDF).

The paper deals with a new theoretical and technological framework of higher education within the transformation of university environment taking into account the transition from Information Society to Global Knowledge Society. The authors synthesized the new communication methodologies and teaching practices, as well problematize the achievement of the main benchmarks of Innovative Society, such as freedom of scientific research and creative activity.

Modern information technologies have changed our world dramatically during last years. We see how a number of traditional professions were died, and how a number of new specialties and workplaces were born under pressure of new technologies. Technologies are moving so quickly, and in so many directions, that it becomes challenging to even keep in mind a general picture. In this article, we shortly discuss one of the most visible disruptive technologies – automation of knowledge work, and tried to formulate our vision why and how we can use soft computing framework in this area. Main ideas are illustrated on a very core activity in every society – smart learning for education.

In the article the application of Unity 3D game engine for the implementation of the virtual physical laboratory is considered. The competing platforms, program models, the development methodology and the realization of the laboratory work to study the light polarization are described. It was shown, that the Virtual physical laboratories represent one of the successful examples of introduction of information technologies in the training process.

This study developed methods to improve student motivation by means of an e-learning system. While using e-learning systems in higher educational institutions, which train students in areas of science and technology, not enough attention is paid to the use of methods and means of motivating students. The developed technique helps to solve this problem. This paper presents the results of testing of developed methods in the educational process of ITMO University.

The article is devoted to the issues of identifying security threats to a citizen using Open Source Intelligence. To refine the search for information on the Internet about a person or event that poses a potential security threat it was suggested to use a structured method of collecting and analyzing information based on decomposition of data and connections between data. The method of testing alternative hypothesis was used. The article provides classification of open information sources. A conceptual model that allows experts to perform substantiated sequential information search was developed. The article gives real-life examples that confirm efficiency of the suggested methodological approach to the search and analysis of information.

Nowadays the smart home represents the most sensible form of the Internet of Things (IoT) world. The communication protocols allowing devices to share data and respond to commands using a little power and wireless connection exist over a decade. The variety of the devices and communication protocols as well as the lack of standards for their manufacturing make building of smart homes challenging task and leads to a need for implementation of integration frameworks. The paper addresses this challenge by proposing an IoT Framework for integration of short range devices, called smartFW. The smartFW framework acts as mediator between integration platforms used by the end users to control their smart homes and the connected devices in those homes. It has a flexible architecture allowing to be enriched with new application and communication protocols to enable integration of wide range of devices. The smartFW framework is based on the OSGi standard and currently supports Zigbee, EnOcean, KNX, X10, Z-Wave device communication protocols as well as Coap, MQTT and XAMPP application protocols.

Technology has shown its capability in different segments of development in rural and urban areas. Urban areas are more inclined to adopt and accept Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) due to advantages of better financial and digital literacy as compared to rural areas. Urban landscapes are congenial to the success of ICTs. Most of the villages in India are agrarian based and rural economy is based on agriculture. The rural populace needs to be sensitized on the role of ICT being an enabler and gains they can make by effective utilization of the same. The driving motivation behind the idea of “Smart Village” is that technology should act as an accelerator for growth and sustainable development. It should enable education, improve local business opportunities and promote health. The “Smart Village” theory aims to realize its objective through providing decision makers with perceptive analyses of the challenges of smart village development. This paper will explore how ICTs improves quality of life in the form of Smart Village for rural citizens and a possible framework for implementation. It will also explore a few challenges and solutions. It also campaigns for use of mobile technologies to bring e-Governance services closer to rural citizens.

In this paper we describe a multi-model approach used for modeling cities as a complex poorly formalized system, based on three modeling methods: linguistic-combinatorial, logical-linguistic and algorithmic ones, which provide a holistic view of the object from different perspectives to solve fundamentally different problems to support managerial decisions.

Many problems of cities and their inhabitants can be presented as a choice of the preferred embodiment on a finite set of alternatives. The emphasis in the paper is not to discuss various urban problems, but to give methods for their solution. In this paper we describe the universal Decision Support System (DSS) SVIR and its application to solving urban problems. This system implements most of the known methods of multiattribute choice. It is argued that versatility of the system allows us to not only solve various problems of choice, but also to solve a single problem by different methods. This helps to debug the model of choice and increases the objectivity of the evaluation. The considered system is a promising tool for solving complex social and humanitarian problems, which consist of many aspects.

It is known that crowds as spontaneous aggregations of people have been studied from as early as XIX century. Today these investigations have advanced to the point where scholars are trying to not only observe and analyze crowds, but also simulate those using computational methods. As a result, a distinct area of research emerged that draws expertise from various subject fields – crowd modeling. Though the applicability of crowd modeling is widely acknowledged, the conceptual development of the area received rather scarce attention. It seems that it has so far been developing as an area predominantly driven by the aim of informing the practice of planners and decision makers. In this paper, we examine the current state of affairs in a distinct branch of crowd modeling that focuses on groups of people other than individuals as key actors within the crowd. We argue that crowd modeling can be effectively used to facilitate not only for prediction, but also allows to deepen theoretical understanding of the crowds as collectives of people that are complex, contextually embedded and consist of dynamic entities that impose certain logics of behavior.

In this paper we present the first step towards the development of a mathematical model of human immune system for advanced individualized healthcare, where medication plan is fine-tuned for each patient to fit his conditions. We reproduce two representative models of the innate immune system. The first model by Rocha et al. describes the dynamics of the innate immune response by ordinary differential equations, focusing on LPS, neutrophils, resting macrophages, and activated macrophages. The second model by Pigozzo et al. describes the spatial dynamics of LPS, neutrophils, and pro-inflammatory cytokines by partial differential equations. We found that the results of the first model are fully reproducible. However, the second model is only partially reproducible. Several parameters had to be adjusted in order to reproduce the dynamics of the immune response: diffusion coefficients and the rates of LPS phagocytosis, cytokine production, neutrophils chemotaxis and apoptosis.

In this paper we propose a way of managing allergy and asthma based on pollen recognition using images from an optical microscope. GIST descriptors are extracted as features. Our research can help to automate a time-consuming process of pollen grains classification, which is usually performed by highly qualified palynologists, and to create a real-time system of immediate notification about high atmospheric allergenic pollen concentration. Standard machine learning methods are applied and results are compared on different pollen datasets. The best model is support vector machine with 95.2% of accuracy on 9 pollen species and 98.3% on 5 pollen species.

The present work is aimed at improving the efficiency of selection of traits in order to increase the information value of the checked pulmonary node, as well as the comparative evaluation of machine learning algorithms for classification in CT images.

This paper examined the effect of mobile telephone technology on physical distance separating out-patients from healthcare centres. A structured questionnaire which focused on socio-demographic characteristics (gender, age, income) and mobile telephone usage for healthcare services was randomly administered on 711 out-patients in Lagos University Teaching Hospital (LUTH) and Lagos State University Teaching Hospital (LASUTH). Mobile telephone ownership among out-patients was 98.9%. About 33% used mobile telephone to access healthcare services. Mobile telephone technology deployment in the health domain negates the distance decay function given a correlation value of r = 0.86 between distance travelled and mobile telephone usage. This suggests that mobile telephone could enhance better healthcare provision for out-patients in Lagos metropolis, Nigeria.

Electronic health records (EHRs) have the potential to form the basis for a personalized approach to patient management, deliver high-quality care, and make the healthcare system more efficient and safer. Finding and studying the possible trends and long term changes of individual results in stored medical data may facilitate selection of an optimal treatment plan. Moreover, guidelines on disease management usually include only shifted results of clinical trials that are poorly generalized to routine clinical practice. In numerous EHR-related errors have been described, such as unstructured data, missing data, and incorrectly entered data. This study aims to assess the quality of hypertensive patients’ EHRs during 6 years after the implementation of EHRs in the specialized cardiological centre. The quality of patients’ EHRs was estimated by the completeness and consistency of stored data. We compared information entered into EHRs with diagnostic algorithms recommended by hypertension management guidelines. The results demonstrated the incompleteness and inconsistency of information in EHRs on risk factors, diabetes mellitus (DM), and subclinical organ damage. An assessment of six-year trends showed that the quality of data decreased in parallel with increase of workload of the clinic (estimated by the number of primary visits). Results indicate the urgent need for an action plan to resolve the problem of data incompleteness and inconsistency. Integration of specially designed clinical decision support system (CDSS) considered as a possible decision promoting an increase of EHRs quality. This study is part of a larger project aimed to develop of complex CDSS on cardiovascular disorders for medical research centre.

Newer methods of communication have largely contributed to the transformations of contemporary health service delivery. Interactive online health resources, which have profoundly affected the way in which healthcare is delivered, and with this, have brought changes in the relationship between doctor and patient. In this study, we try to find out what the characteristics of electronic doctor-patient health communication are and how we can identify features of electronic doctor’s advice that increase patient’s confidence and understanding. By using online medical counseling discourse analysis to find out how patients talk about health-related topics and how doctors response them we describe adaptive discursive models the doctors use to provide them with information the patients can trust.

The present paper presents an overview of the syntactic model used for automated spelling correction. We chose chunking in dependency model as Russian syntax for several reasons, as we consider it having a great potential. First, it does not require a complete description of the syntactic model. Second, it is closer to the logical description than traditional syntax, Chomsky’s model and Tesnière’s syntax. Spelling correction in Russian texts became the pilot task for chunking in the dependency model suggested in the present paper. We tested the work of the program on a mini-collection based on 20 Twitter messages, which allowed us to demonstrate the advantages of the program as well as define the frames of future improvement.

Currently, the problem of efficient gathering and analysis of heterogeneous data from public Internet sources is relevant to many companies working with social issues. Also it applies to the task of building a social profile for the subsequent person identification. This paper addresses the issues of direct and indirect identification a person on the Internet as well as data structure development to store the static and dynamic information of a personal social profile. The article considers the basic options of personal network identification such as an identification by profiling data, IDs, personal websites and blogs, accounts in social networks, e-mail addresses and links from other resources. After identifying it is necessary to collect and structure the detected data about a person. For this purpose, the authors proposed a basic data structure divided into static and dynamic parts. The static part is represented in the form of a relational database and contains immutable data that uniquely identify a specific human (for example, name and surname, completed educational institutions, career, curriculum vitae etc.). The dynamic part is organized as a NoSQL store and accumulates all the information about the current human activity in the network (for examples, accounts in social networks, network friends, current preferences when buying products, preferences when visiting network resources, political and social beliefs etc.).

This work describes an automated system for preprocessing gravimetric data from an oil and gas deposit located in the southeastern part of the Caspian Depression. The functional modelling of the company’s gravimetric monitoring was accomplished. The modelling allowed us to define the functionality and models of the system data. The executive part and database of the system are compiled by using Oracle APEX. A specialized geographic information system (GIS) was developed as part of the visualization subsystem. The GIS uses Google Maps API as a basis for the visualization of layers and as a provider of maps. The functionality and user interface of the system are described.

A topology of a banking network influences systemic stability under fixed banks’ and customers’ policy. Dynamical processes in a network affect topological changes at each iteration, so differences in initial topologies may result in different stability dynamics. Taking into account the influence of both nodes’ states dynamics and topology dynamics on the network fragility, the following ways of initial topology impact can be distinguished: (i) states of nodes after initialization (as a state of a node is influenced by its degree); (ii) nodes’ states dynamics; (iii) systemic risk at the fixed iteration. It seems that coevolution of network topology and states of nodes leads to the significant and unpredictable changes of initial conditions. We study the interrelations between initial and resulting system’s states for different types of initial topology. Our results confirm that the dynamics of a borrowing process is significantly influenced by topological features of the underlying interbank network.

To investigate incremental collaborative classifier fusion techniques, we have developed a comprehensive simulation framework. It is highly flexible and customizable, and can be adapted to various settings and scenarios. The toolbox is realized as an extension to the NetLogo multi-agent based simulation environment using its comprehensive Java-API. The toolbox has been integrated in two different environments, one for demonstration purposes and another, modeled on persons using realistic motion data from Zurich, who are communicating in an ad hoc fashion using mobile devices.

The main objects of our investigation are socio-cyber-physical systems (SCPS). The SCPS is the fusion of the socio, the cyber, the physical space and structures. In this case, the problems of SCPS complexity management and control are actual modern problems. The solving of these problems involve interdisciplinary researches in mathematics, cybernetics, economics, biology, physics, and computer technologies. Therefore, the paper presents new results of interdisplinary research in the field of SCPS structure-dynamics control and management theory. Our investigations have shown that this theory can be regarded as branch of neocybernetics.