Bolzano Traffic: An Example of Open ITS Deployment for Advanced Traveller Information Services

This paper aims to present the experience gathered in the Italian alpine city of Bolzano within the project“Bolzano Traffic”whose goal is the introduction of an experimental open ITS platform for local service providers,fostering the diffusion of advanced traveller information services and the future deployment of cooperative mobility systems in the region.Several end-users applications targeted to the needs of different user groups have been developed in collaboration with local companies and research centers;a partnership with the EU Co-Cities project has been activated as well.The implemented services rely on real-time travel and traffic information collected by urban traffic monitoring systems or published by local stakeholders(e.g.public transportation operators).An active involvement of end-users,who have recently started testing these demo applications for free,is actually on-going.

China Telecom Forging An Empire of Comprehensive Information Services

The transformation of China Telecom starts from late 2004. General Manager Wang Xiaochu put forward the strategy of transforming into a comprehensive information services provider soon after he took the post and defined transformation as the core mission in the next several years in 2005.

A New Start for the Library and Information Services at CAS

The new modern library of Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), situated in the central area of Science Town in Zhongguancun, Beijing, has just been put into operation. As the largest specialized library in China, the library has become one of paradises for China' s avid readers,offering a central repository and global gateway for the collection and dissemination of scientific and technical information.……

The college students' response to customized information services based on Library2.0 technologies at universities in Nanjing

Through a questionnaire survey of students’ response from 6 universities in Nanjing, this paper aims to determine their varying degrees of satisfaction about the customized information service based on Library2.0 technologies. In so doing, the authors carefully examined the data collected from the returned questionnaires about such key issues as the students’ perceptions about the customized information service via a Library2.0platform, self-initiated use experience of such a mechanism, their achieved information searching results vis-à-vis their expectations, etc. In addition, the authors also made a comparative study between information providers(i.e. librarians) and information consumers(i.e. students) at Chinese and American academic libraries.

Characterization of Small-Scale Farmers and Assessment of Their Access to Crop Production Information in Selected Counties of Kenya

Small-scale farming accounts for 78% of total agricultural production in Kenya and contributes to 23.5% of the country’s GDP. Their crop production activities are mostly rainfed subsistence with any surplus being sold to bring in some income. Timely decisions on farm practices such as farm preparation and planting are critical determinants of the seasonal outcomes. In Kenya, most small-scale farmers have no reliable source of information that would help them make timely and accurate decisions. County governments have extension officers who are mandated with giving farmers advisory services to farmers but they are not able to reach most farmers due to facilitation constraints. The mode and format of sharing information is also critical since it’s important to ensure that it’s timely, well-understood and usable. This study sought to assess access to geospatial derived and other crop production information by farmers in four selected counties of Kenya. Specific objectives were to determine the profile of small-scale farmers in terms of age, education and farm size;to determine the type of information that is made available to them by County and Sub-County extension officers including the format and mode of provision;and to determine if the information provided was useful in terms of accuracy, timeliness and adequacy. The results indicated that over 80% of the farmers were over 35 years of age and over 56% were male. Majority had attained primary education (34%) or secondary education (29%) and most farmers in all the counties grew maize (71%). Notably, fellow farmers were a source of information (71%) with the frequency of sharing information being mostly seasonal (37%) and when information was available (43%). Over 66% of interviewed farmers indicating that they faced challenges while using provided information. The results from the study are insightful and helpful in determining effective ways of providing farmers with useful information to ensure maximum benefits.

Chaining Distributed Geographic Information Web Services Based on Ontology

To solve the problem of chaining distributed geographic information Web services （GI Web services）, this paper provides an ontology-based method. With this method, semantic service description can be achieved by semantic annotation of the elements in a Web service description language（WSDL） document with concepts of geographic ontology, and then a common under-standing about service semantics between customers and providers of Web services is built. Based on the decomposition and formalization of customer requirements, the discovery, composition and execution of GI Web services are explained in detail, and then a chaining of GI Web services is built and used to achieve the customer＇s requirement. Finally, an example based on Web ontology language for service （OWL-S） is provided for testing the feasibility of this method.

China's Information Consultancy Services

China’s opening,reform and economicdevelopment,as well as the worldinformation technology revolution,hasenhanced China’s information consultancyservice.Before 1978,China’s economy wasa product economy governed by a highly-centralized planning system with economicinformation basically based on statisticscollected from lower levels and planningcommands to lower levels.The annual productexchange meetings sponsored by specialeconomic departments became the mainchannels for information exchange,soinformation services basically failed to meetneeds.In 1979,China’s economy began itstransfer from a planned to a market one。

Exploring the Potentialities of Automatic Extraction of University Webometric Information

Purpose:The main objective of this work is to show the potentialities of recently developed approaches for automatic knowledge extraction directly from the universities’websites.The information automatically extracted can be potentially updated with a frequency higher than once per year,and be safe from manipulations or misinterpretations.Moreover,this approach allows us flexibility in collecting indicators about the efficiency of universities’websites and their effectiveness in disseminating key contents.These new indicators can complement traditional indicators of scientific research(e.g.number of articles and number of citations)and teaching(e.g.number of students and graduates)by introducing further dimensions to allow new insights for“profiling”the analyzed universities.Design/methodology/approach:Webometrics relies on web mining methods and techniques to perform quantitative analyses of the web.This study implements an advanced application of the webometric approach,exploiting all the three categories of web mining:web content mining;web structure mining;web usage mining.The information to compute our indicators has been extracted from the universities’websites by using web scraping and text mining techniques.The scraped information has been stored in a NoSQL DB according to a semistructured form to allow for retrieving information efficiently by text mining techniques.This provides increased flexibility in the design of new indicators,opening the door to new types of analyses.Some data have also been collected by means of batch interrogations of search engines(Bing,www.bing.com)or from a leading provider of Web analytics(SimilarWeb,http://www.similarweb.com).The information extracted from the Web has been combined with the University structural information taken from the European Tertiary Education Register(https://eter.joanneum.at/#/home),a database collecting information on Higher Education Institutions(HEIs)at European level.All the above was used to perform a clusterization of 79 Italian universities based on structural and digital indicators.Findings:The main findings of this study concern the evaluation of the potential in digitalization of universities,in particular by presenting techniques for the automatic extraction of information from the web to build indicators of quality and impact of universities’websites.These indicators can complement traditional indicators and can be used to identify groups of universities with common features using clustering techniques working with the above indicators.Research limitations:The results reported in this study refers to Italian universities only,but the approach could be extended to other university systems abroad.Practical implications:The approach proposed in this study and its illustration on Italian universities show the usefulness of recently introduced automatic data extraction and web scraping approaches and its practical relevance for characterizing and profiling the activities of universities on the basis of their websites.The approach could be applied to other university systems.Originality/value:This work applies for the first time to university websites some recently introduced techniques for automatic knowledge extraction based on web scraping,optical character recognition and nontrivial text mining operations(Bruni&Bianchi,2020).

Information service platform of forest pest forecast based on WebGIS

Taking Linkou Forestry Bureau, Heilongjiang Province, China as the demonstration plot and Dendrolimus pinidiatrea as an example, we developed a WebGIS-based information service platform for forest pest forecast using J2EE and ArcGIS Server technology. The service platform is able to predict the occurrence period, amount of pest, occurrence tendency, and pest zones in the B/S environment and realized the display, querying, analysis and editing of the spatial data and the automatically integrated control of multilevel Data,. Additionaly, the service platform offers the visualization of geographic service and predicted results. It provides a solution for prediction of forest pest and forest resource management.

Establishing an academic digital library& information system in China: The case of CADLIS

China Academic Digital Library & Information System(CADLIS) was established as a public service system in 1996. Its mission is to improve the resource sharing for China's higher education. The framework of CADLIS is constructed to allow easy interconnection and interoperability. This paper presents an introduction to the portal,academic resources, bibliographic system, service network, digital library technical platform,standards and criteria of CADLIS as well.

Construction and implementation of RS integrated application information system of China's coastal zone and offshore

The coastal zone and offshore are clearly of major economic and social importance, in thesame time it causes a series of problems of resources and ecosystem too. The research on and development of integrated application techniques for remote sensing provide not only a microcosmic and dynamic and synchronous technical means to the monitor, but also an integrated technical scheme to harmonically solve the ecological environment problem. The system is designed to focus on the application techniques of multi-sources remote sensing data. By developing remote sensing information extraction module, integrated user platform, and application module objected to the real ocean procedure for China' s coastal zone and offshore, the information system consists of the management of prodigious amount of data, display, analysis, simulation and output will be constructed and implemented. The final objective is to transform the research on ocean remote sensing into application.

Benign Interaction Between Rural Information Service and Farmers' Income

Based on the improvement of interactive relationship between rural information service system and farmers＇ income, accompanied by the serious restriction to its mutual promotion caused by such problems as asymmetric information, focusing on introduction of rural information service infrastructure while ignored the application of them, shortage of human resource on information and so on, this paper proposed corresponding measures respectively to promote the benign interaction development between rural information service and farmers＇ income.

Semantic QoS Ontology and Semantic Service Ranking Approach for IoT services

Due to a rapid increase in the number of functionally equivalent web services at open and dynamic Io T service environment,Qo S has become a major discrimination factor to reflect the user's expectation and experience of using a service.There are different languages and models for expressing Qo S advertisements and requirements among service providers and consumers.Therefore,it leads to the issues of semantic interoperability of Qo S information and semantic similarity match between a semantic description of the service being requested by the service consumer,and a formal description of the service being offered by the service provider.In this paper,we propose a hierarchical two-layer semantic Qo S ontology to promote the description and declaration of Qo S-based service information in detail for any domain and application.And,we develop a semantic matchmaking algorithm to compare the web services according to their Qo S information and adopt analytical hierarchy process( AHP) to make decision for the ranked services depending on the Qo S criteria.The comparison study and experimental result show that our proposed system is superior to other service ranking approaches.

Advanced EPC Network Architecture Based on Hardware Information Service

Object traceability based on Radio Frequency Identification(RFID)is an important capability of the Internet of Things(IoT).GS1 EPCglobal,a de-facto standard in RFID technology,develops Electronic Product Code(EPC)network architecture,which mainly includes EPC Information Service(EPCIS),Object Name Service(ONS),and Discovery Service(DS).This architecture is used to capture and share standardized events representing various aspects on EPC object.However,the EPC network architecture also faces challenges;for example,the separate management of unrelated event data and master data may increase time consumption when an application extracts valuable information by combing them.A Hardware-Based Information Service(HIS)device is raised in this paper,which is installed on the specific EPC tagged object directly and this could alleviate the problem above.The HIS could store the event data and master data related to the EPC identifier centrally and the application could gain the basic information based on the data stored in the HIS without utilizing ONS,DS and EPCIS.

Evaluation of intelligent tourism information service capabilities:A case study of Hanzhong City

In the era of the rapid development of information technology,it is of great significance to study the combination of intelligent tourism industry and information industry and evaluate the intelligent tourism information service capabilities(ITISC).The purpose of this study is to explore a methodological approach of assessing ITISC,and offer insights into the theoretical investigation and practical development of ITISC.First,factor analysis is used to determine the object of intelligent tourism information service and the key evaluation items of ITISC.Next,analytic hierarchy process(AHP)is applied to the ITISC evaluation of Hanzhong City,a popular tourist attraction in China,as an example to verify the authenticity and operability of the index system.Then,importance-performance analysis is conducted to diagnose the strengths and weaknesses of Hanzhong City’s ITISC construction and some corresponding measures are put forward.The findings suggest that only through the improvement of tourism public database,the establishment of big data analysis system and the application of various forms of mobile intelligent terminal can achieve the generalization of tourism information,seamless,instant,precise and interactive,which will be the development goal of intelligent tourism information service.

Adjusting the information service strategies according to users' requirements—A survey of the library users' information requirements in the four library systems of Zhejiang province

Based on a survey of the circumstances of the information requirements in social science from more than 3,800 library users in 48 libraries of the four major library systems in Zhejiang Province,this paper analyzes the present main characteristics of the users' requirements to the social science document information and puts forward some proposals for adjusting the document information service strategies for the library and information institutions.

A survey of public needs for digital information service in libraries and museums

Purpose:The purpose of the research is to investigate public needs for digital information service in the Chinese libraries and museums and seek ways to help these public service institutions improve their service to meet user needs.Design/methodology/approach:An online questionnaire survey was used to study the publicneeds for digital information service provided by libraries and museums.A total of 474 valid questionnaires were retrieved for analysis.Findings:The primary purpose of using the digital library and museum service was for knowledge acquisition,followed by work or class assignment and leisure and entertainment.Users need one-stop information service that provides information and service in a more integrated form and allows cross-database searching as well.Research limitations:A majority of the respondents were young and middle-aged people who often use the Internet.We would need to increase our sample size and include different groups of users such as children and retirees to make the sample more representative.Practical implications:Libraries and museums should collaborate to provide the users with one-stop digital information service.Meanwhile,the research can serve as a reference source for the future studies of digital library and museum service.Originality/value:Few studies were published on the public needs for digital library and museum service in China.This study bridges the gap and contributes to our understanding of the Chinese users’ needs for digital information service in libraries and museums.

Library's industrial technology information service in science parks—Taking NSL's practice as an example

Purpose:The purpose of this paper is to explore how libraries can develop service and product strategies and the service support mechanism to provide industrial technology information service in science parks.Design/methodology/approach:The analysis is based on a case study of a large Chinese research library,National Science Library(NSL),the Chinese Academy of Sciences(CAS),in serving high-tech companies in Zhongguancun Science Park(Z-Park).Findings:NSL’s practices suggested that in serving business clients,libraries’ product and service strategies should be based on the understanding of users’ needs.Aside from those services that have been recognized by clients such as document retrieval & delivery and novelty search,libraries may expand their service and provide in-depth information analysis and consultation for some key clients.Moreover,a service and product development system should be established,which differentiates the libraries’ products and services from those of their competitors.In providing industrial technology information service,libraries need to construct the service support mechanism,publicize their service and learn to cooperate with clients to meet their demands for knowledge management and innovation.Research limitations:The generalizability of the findings is limited because they are based on an individual case study.Practical implications:Our service practices provide useful information for other libraries to expand their information service to high-tech companies in the new information environment.Originality/value:Z-Park is the first and one of the largest science and technology parks in China.Hence NSL’s practices in serving high-tech companies in Z-Park can be valuable to other libraries that intend to take up the similar service.

A survey of public needs for government information service in libraries

Purpose:This paper describes a comprehensive user survey carried out in China to investigate public needs for government information service in libraries.It is expected to provide insights into the ways to help public libraries meet the user needs.Design/methodology/approach:The paper is founded on a survey among library users,librarians and non-library users.Paper questionnaires were distributed in the National Library of China and 32 provincial public libraries in China and electronic questionnaires were sent to non-library users.A total of 909 valid questionnaires were collected.Findings:A lot of attention is paid to policies,laws and regulations relating to common people’s work and lives such as science,technology,education,culture,finance,market supervision,health care,sports,urban construction and environment protection.A wide variety of government information resources is needed and information delivered to users shall be accurate and timely.Internet has become the main means of accessing government information and mobile phones the preferred Web access channel,while printed materials are considered important information sources.Users need assistance and training in the use of library information resources and services.Research limitations:The sample was limited to respondents from provincial-level public libraries,but city and county-level library users were not included.Practical implications:The survey results are beneficial for the Chinese public libraries to design service programs and improve their services.Originality/value:The paper is one of the comprehensive surveys on public needs for government information service in the Chinese libraries and some of die findings will be of wider interest for other libraries.