OSIRIDE: state of the art and future developments

OSIRIDE (OSI over Heterogeneous Italian Data Network) is the result of the efforts of a number of persons mainly from the Italian National Research Council and industries. The first phase of OSIRIDE (named OSIRIDE/I), dealing with the formal specifications production of a number of protocols, was completed on schedule and in accordance with the initial objectives. The second phase of the project (named OSIRIDE/II), dealing with implementation, started at the beginning of the 1984. Previous papers have already introduced OSIRIDE, its goals, participants and technical choices. However, for the sake of understandability, a brief resumé of the whole project is dealt with in the first sections: for more information the interested reader is referred to the papers cited.     

Cyber insurance: state of the art,trends and future directions

Society has become increasingly dependent on IT infrastructure and services. Additionally, the pandemic of COVID-19 forced the transition of the traditional way of working (i.e., physical presence) into a more modern and flexible one (i.e., working remotely). This has led to an increase of cyberattacks, as a direct consequence of the increase of the attack surface but subsequently also led to an increased necessity for the protection of information systems. Toward the protection of information systems, cyber insurance is considered as a strategy for risk management, where necessary. Cyber insurance is emerging as an important tool to protect organizations against cyberattack-related losses. In this work, we extensively examine the relevant literature on cybersecurity insurance, research and practice, in order to draft the current landscape and present the trends.

     

Enterprise information systems state of the art: Past,present and future trends

This state-of-the-art paper is intended to set the scene for a special issue of the Computers in Industry Journal on “Future Perspectives on Next Generation Enterprise Information Systems”. It gives a brief history of Enterprise Information Systems (EISs) and discusses various aspects of EISs, including EIS design and engineering, the impact of enterprise modelling, enterprise architecture, enterprise integration and interoperability and enterprise networking on EISs before concluding.     

浅谈实体建模：历史、现状与未来

实体建模技术是CAD软件的“功能心脏”,相关基础理论与算法是CAD发展历史上最关键的成果之一,成功回答了为使计算机能够辅助产品设计与制造,需在计算机中存什么几何信息以及怎么存的问题。本文对实体建模的主要历史发展脉络做了简要介绍,同时对各发展阶段的关键问题以及研究现状进行了讨论,最后选取了3个方向对实体建模的未来做出展望,重点关注从Computer-Aided Design到Computer-Automated Design的发展趋势。     

Testing Web-based applications: The state of the art and future trends

Software testing is a difficult task and testing Web-based applications may be even more difficult, due to the peculiarities of such applications. In the last years, several problems in the field of Web-based applications testing have been addressed by research work, and several methods and techniques have been defined and used to test Web-based applications effectively. This paper will present the main differences between Web-based applications and traditional ones, how these differences impact the testing of the former ones, and some relevant contributions in the field of Web application testing developed in recent years. The focus is mainly on testing the functionality of a Web-based application, even if some discussion about the testing of non-functional requirements is provided too. Some indications about future trends in Web application testing are also outlined in the paper.     

Web mining in soft computing framework: relevance, state of the art and future directions

The paper summarizes the different characteristics of Web data, the basic components of Web mining and its different types, and the current state of the art. The reason for considering Web mining, a separate field from data mining, is explained. The limitations of some of the existing Web mining methods and tools are enunciated, and the significance of soft computing (comprising fuzzy logic (FL), artificial neural networks (ANNs), genetic algorithms (GAs), and rough sets (RSs) are highlighted. A survey of the existing literature on "soft Web mining" is provided along with the commercially available systems. The prospective areas of Web mining where the application of soft computing needs immediate attention are outlined with justification. Scope for future research in developing "soft Web mining" systems is explained. An extensive bibliography is also provided.     

Empirical studies in reverse engineering: state of the art and future trends

Starting with the aim of modernizing legacy systems, often written in old programming languages, reverse engineering has extended its applicability to virtually every kind of software system. Moreover, the methods originally designed to recover a diagrammatic, high-level view of the target system have been extended to address several other problems faced by programmers when they need to understand and modify existing software. The authors’ position is that the next stage of development for this discipline will necessarily be based on empirical evaluation of methods. In fact, this evaluation is required to gain knowledge about the actual effects of applying a given approach, as well as to convince the end users of the positive cost–benefit trade offs. The contribution of this paper to the state of the art is a roadmap for the future research in the field, which includes: clarifying the scope of investigation, defining a reference taxonomy, and adopting a common framework for the execution of the experiments.     

Collaborative conceptual design—state of the art and future trends

This paper presents a state of the art review of existing research, projects, and applications in the domain of collaborative conceptual design, based on the Internet and Web technologies. The purpose of the review is to understand the needs for conceptual engineering design, to clarify the current conceptual design practice, to classify the available technologies, and to study the future trend in this area. The emphasis of this paper is to briefly outline the methodologies, architectures, and tools developed for the projects reviewed in this paper. It also uncovers approaches to conflict resolution and team/project management, as they are vital to a successful engineering design in a collaborative environment. More than 80 journal and conference papers and about 20 projects are reviewed based on the primary focus mentioned above. The selected research works are further categorised into several areas based on the application domain, design theory, and the technology used for implementation. The selected research projects and applications are basically for, but not limited to, the collaborative conceptual design.     

Dynamic computation offloading for ground and flying robots: Taxonomy,state of art,and future directions

The collaboration between ground and flying robots can take advantage of the capabilities of each system to enhance the performance of robotic applications, including military, healthcare, disaster management, etc. Unfortunately, this cooperation is restricted by the physical constraint that all computation should be performed on robots. The concept of computation offloading has great potential to improve the performance of both ground and flying robots. Unfortunately, external conditions like the network conditions, the robot’s mobility, and the availability of the processing resources may lead to new challenges. Accordingly, these challenges should be addressed from different perspectives, like security, network communication, response time, and energy consumption. Recently, most computation offloading solutions aim to optimize further the robot’s energy consumption. Several research works are designed 1.) to satisfy the real-time requirements of robotic applications and 2.) to solve the trade-off between the energy consumed by computation and communication. To better understand these concepts, we present a comprehensive overview of the computation offloading process for ground and flying robots. We also devised a taxonomy explaining the factors affecting the offloading decision in a robotic scenario. The taxonomy presents guidelines to recognize the scope of research in offloading decisions that were designed for robots. Then, we discuss the state-of-the-art techniques of computation offloading from an architectural point of view, and we survey works related to offloading decisions for robots.     

Interactive recommender systems: A survey of the state of the art and future research challenges and opportunities

Recommender systems have been researched extensively over the past decades. Whereas several algorithms have been developed and deployed in various application domains, recent research efforts are increasingly oriented towards the user experience of recommender systems. This research goes beyond accuracy of recommendation algorithms and focuses on various human factors that affect acceptance of recommendations, such as user satisfaction, trust, transparency and sense of control. In this paper, we present an interactive visualization framework that combines recommendation with visualization techniques to support human-recommender interaction. Then, we analyze existing interactive recommender systems along the dimensions of our framework, including our work. Based on our survey results, we present future research challenges and opportunities.     

Usability and user experience of medical devices: An overview of the current state,analysis methodologies,and future challenges

Improvements to the reliability and safety of medical devices are vital for healthcare systems. It is necessary to consider the user experience (UX) of patients and healthcare professionals at all the development stages of medical devices. Ergonomic design principles can also reduce the cost of medical device production. This study is a multilateral analytical literature review of UX and usability issues in healthcare and medical device design. The total number of literature sources presented is n = 88. The literature sources are classified according to the difference between UX and usability for various target products and services, including healthcare. The literature is reviewed with a focus on human-oriented aspects. This includes medical technology and device design, which are dependent on the user type, medical device scope, and area of use. A review of key medical device standards and regulation documents is presented. The main analysis methodologies for the UX and their advantages and disadvantages are discussed. The future challenges in healthcare and medical ergonomics are briefly highlighted. Above all, this study tried to examine the difference between usability and UX of general products and those of medical devices through the review of existing literature. Even standards do not reflect this well and need to be considered based on further research in academia and industry.Relevance to industryThe obtained results will help medical-device designers and healthcare professionals understand the main medical-research trends and improve the design process. Additionally, they will be helpful for increasing the satisfaction level among medical-device users and reducing user risks.     

T-elements: State of the art and future trends

Summary Trefftz-type elements, or T-elements, are finite elements the internal field of which fulfils the governing differential equations of the problema priori whereas the interelement continuity and the boundary conditions are enforced in an integral weighted residual sense or pointwise. Although the key ideas of such elements can be traced back to Jirousek and Leon in 1977, the T-element approach has received serious attention only for the past ten years. The T-element approach makes it possible to generate highly accurate h- or p-elements exhibiting many important advantages over their more conventional counterpart. The paper surveys existing T-element formulations (including some yet unpublished ones) and assesses critically their performance (accuracy, h- and p-convergence, sensitivity to mesh distortions, handling of singularities and geometry or load induced local effects, etc.). The available applications include plane elasticity, thin and thick plates, cylindrical shells, axisymmetric 3-D elasticity, Poisson's equation and transient heat conduction analysis. Existing approaches to adaptive reliability assurance based on p-extension are also discussed and future trends in the T-element research shortly outlined. Research engineer, on leave from the Institute of Mechanics and Machine Design     

Model-based approaches for interoperability of next generation enterprise information systems: state of the art and future challenges

Enterprise businesses are more than ever challenged by competitors that frequently refine and tailor their offers to clients. In this context, enterprise information systems (EIS) are especially important because: (1) they remain one of the last levers to increase the performance and competitiveness of the enterprise, (2) we operate in a business world where the product itself has reached a limit of performance and quality due to uniform capacity of industrial tools in a globalized economy and (3) the EIS can increase the product value thanks to additional digital services (built on data associated to the product) in order to meet and fit better client’s needs. However, the use of EISs reaches a limit in collaborative environments because enterprises management methods diverge and EISs are mainly inflexible resource packages that are not built with an interoperability objective. Consequently, we need to make EISs interoperable in order to achieve the needed gains competitiveness and performance. This paper contribution can be summarized as follows: (1) it relates existing work and it examines barriers that, at the moment, are preventing further improvements due to current methodological and technological limits, and (2) it proposes a conceptual framework and five challenges that model based approaches must overcome to achieve interoperability between EIS in the near and long term.     

Illuminating the past: state of the art

Virtual reconstruction and representation of historical environments and objects have been of research interest for nearly two decades. Physically based and historically accurate illumination allows archaeologists and historians to authentically visualise a past environment to deduce new knowledge. This report reviews the current state of illuminating cultural heritage sites and objects using computer graphics for scientific, preservation and research purposes. We present the most noteworthy and up-to-date examples of reconstructions employing appropriate illumination models in object and image space, and in the visual perception domain. Finally, we also discuss the difficulties in rendering, documentation, validation and identify probable research challenges for the future. The report is aimed for researchers new to cultural heritage reconstruction who wish to learn about methods to illuminate the past.     

Coupling predictive scheduling and reactive control in manufacturing hybrid control architectures: state of the art and future challenges

Nowadays, industrials are seeking for models and methods that are not only able to provide efficient overall production performance, but also for reactive systems facing a growing set of unpredicted events. One important research activity in that field focuses on holonic/multi-agent control systems that couple predictive/proactive and reactive mechanisms into agents/holons. Meanwhile, not enough attention is paid to the optimization of this coupling. The aim of this paper is to depict the main research challenges that are to be addressed before expecting a large industrial dissemination. Relying on an extensive review of the state of the art, three main challenges are highlighted: the estimation of the future performances of the system in reactive mode, the design of efficient switching strategies between predictive and reactive modes and the design of efficient synchronization mechanisms to switch back to predictive mode.     

Parallel manipulators: state of the art and perspectives

Parallel manipulators have been increasingly developed over the last few years from a theoretical view point as well as for practical applications. In this paper, recent advances are summarized and various applications for this kind of manipulator are illustrated.     

Software diversity: state of the art and perspectives

Diversity is prevalent in modern software systems to facilitate adapting the software to customer requirements or the execution environment. Diversity has an impact on all phases of the software development process. Appropriate means and organizational structures are required to deal with the additional complexity introduced by software variability. This introductory article to the special section “Software Diversity—Modeling, Analysis and Evolution” provides an overview of the current state of the art in diverse systems development and discusses challenges and potential solutions. The article covers requirements analysis, design, implementation, verification and validation, maintenance and evolution as well as organizational aspects. It also provides an overview of the articles which are part of this special section and addresses particular issues of diverse systems development.     

Customer relationship management mechanisms: A systematic review of the state of the art literature and recommendations for future research

In the information systems, customer relationship management (CRM) is the overall process of building and maintaining profitable customer relationships by delivering superior customer value and satisfaction with the goal of improving the business relationships with customers. Also, it is the strongest and the most efficient approach to maintaining and creating the relationships with customers. However, to the best of our knowledge and despite its importance, there is not any comprehensive and systematic study about reviewing and analyzing its important techniques. Therefore, in this paper, a comprehensive study and survey on the state of the art mechanisms in the scope of the CRM are done. It follows this goal by looking at five categories in which CRM plays a significant role: E-CRM, knowledge management, data mining, data quality and, social CRM. In each category, a couple of studies are presented and determinants of CRM are described and discussed. The major development in these five categories is reviewed and the new challenges are outlined. Also, a systematic literature review (SLR) in each of these five categories is provided. Furthermore, insights into the identification of open issues and guidelines for future research are provided.