On Incentive and Coordination Mechanism of Service Outsourcing Based on Principal-Agent Theory and Blockchain Technology

To address the issue of information asymmetry between the two parties and moral hazard among service providers in the process of service outsourcing,this paper builds the Stackelberg game model based on the principal-agent framework,examines the dynamic game situation before the contract being signed,and develops four information models.The analysis reveals a Pareto improvement in the game’s Nash equilibrium when comparing the four models from the standpoint of the supply chain.In the complete information scenario,the service level of the service provider,the customer company’s incentive effectiveness,and the supply chain system’s ultimate profit are all maximized.Furthermore,a coordinating mechanism for disposable profit is built in this study.The paper then suggests a blockchain-based architecture for the service outsourcing process supervision and a distributed incentive mechanism under the coordination mechanism in response to the inadequacy of the principal-agent theory to address the information asymmetry problem and the moral hazard problem.The experiment’s end findings demonstrate that both parties can benefit from the coordination mechanism,and the application of blockchain technology can resolve these issues and effectively encourage service providers.

Can harvest outsourcing services reduce field harvest losses of rice in China?

The purpose of this study is to quantify the rice harvest losses in China and to evaluate the impacts of machinery and harvest outsourcing services on these losses,given the background of high-speed mechanization and outsourcing services.Data were collected from a national survey conducted in 2016 by the research team in conjunction with the Research Center for the Rural Economy of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China.A non-parametric method was used to test whether combine harvesting and outsourcing services could significantly reduce harvest losses.Next,quantile regression was used to estimate the real effects of machinery and outsourcing services on harvest losses.The analysis yielded four main study outcomes.First,the harvest loss rate of rice in China was 3.65%.Second,mechanical reaping and winnowing caused greater losses than manual methods,while the opposite was true of field transportation.Third,combine harvesting increased the losses.Fourth,the effects of an outsourcing service on losses differed among the different harvesting methods.Outsourcing services increased losses in segmented harvesting but they reduced losses in combine harvesting.

Service outsourcing:A new way to shrink regional gaps

International outsourcing is an important way to realize intra-product division of labor. China's industrial upgrade and policy efforts directed at outsourcing are not entirely endogenous but have a dependent path prone to be captured and locked at the low end of the global value chain by developed countries at the chain's high end. In light of the stage and reality of China's economic development, we should not only upgrade manufacturing outsourcing but also grasp service outsourcing opportunities. We should implement a strategy of coordinated development of manufacturing and service outsourcing rather than hastily transforming China from a "factory of the world" into an "office of the world." Balancing services with manufacturing and linking the global value chain with the domestic value chain is the best tool to address the problem of China's uneven regional development and establish a multi-tiered modern industrial system.

Location Service Information Supporting System Based on Ontology

In order to solve the problem of how to collect and manage large amount of location information and improve the accuracy of location service, interactive information supporting system based on ontology and location service is presented in this paper. It can transmit special information about users＇ location to front-end instantaneously, so it is very convenient for their daily life. It makes full use of the available wireless communication, which is easy to arrange and convenient for users.

Analyze the service outsourcing on the base of the modern economy theory

The paper provides information about the concept and the characteristics of the service outsourcing. It also analyzes the service outsourcing classification and the modem economy theory of the service outsourcing. Through the analysis, we hope to provide the foundation for further study.

GoTa Digital Trunking System and It's Location Service

1 GoTa System Features andLocation Service1.1 GoTaGoTa, the abbreviation of“Global OpenTrunking Architecture”, is anew-generation digital trunkingcommunication system based on theCDMA2000 1x technology. It makes use of manyadvantages of the CDMA technology and makesimprovement and optimization for the digitaltrunking communication system. It cansimultaneously realize multipte services including

Outsourcing Service Departments

In a manufacturing company, certain departments can be characterized as production departments and others as service departments. This paper expands and simplifies the results by the author and his co-author （Lowenthal ＆ Malek, 2005; 2013）, by explaining in a simple way how to obtain the fair-price per unit to pay to external suppliers that replace service departments. The paper also proves that replacing several service departments at once produces exactly the same fair-price per unit if they were replaced sequentially.

Questionnaire Survey of Services and Outsourcing in Finnish Distribution Companies

The aim of this study was to find out what types of services Finnish distribution companies were purchasing and what is the future trend related to them. Results were gathered from Finnish distribution companies using questionnaire. Theoretical background was collected from literacy to get more information of benefits and risks. Results indicate that purchasing services especially from independent service providers is increasing. Also the benefits are greater than the risks related to service purchasing.

Benign Strategy for Recommended Location Service Based on Trajectory Data

A new collaborative filtered recommendation strategy oriented to trajectory data is proposed for communication bottlenecks and vulnerability in centralized system structure location services. In the strategy based on distributed system architecture, individual user information profiles were established using daily trajectory information and neighboring user groups were established using density measure. Then the trajectory similarity and profile similarity were calculated to recommend appropriate location services using collaborative filtering recommendation method. The strategy was verified on real position data set. The proposed strategy provides higher quality location services to ensure the privacy of user position information.

Service outsourcing strategy decision for value creation in manufacturing firms

This study aims to resolve the difficult problem of manufacturers’service outsourcing strategy decision-making,with services divided into two types:hygienic and motivational.We build a value creation model for the manufacturer,service contractor,and customer under different outsourcing strategies,and we examine optimal outsourcing decision-making in various scenarios and its effect on the value creation of related entities.The results indicate that motivational services have a lower bound characterized by service utility.When the manufacturer derives services higher than this lower bound,it should operate its own motivational service and outsource the hygienic service to create greater value.When the manufacturer is limited by resources or capabilities and is required to outsource the motivational service,it can maintain value creation by setting an appropriate contract coefficient.The service contractor should undertake motivational services within the contract boundary negotiated by the manufacturer and conduct hygienic services outside the boundary.Theoretically,outsourcing both service types can maximize customer value,but this may not achieve the manufacturers’optimal value creation.

User location privacy protection mechanism for location-based services

With the rapid development of the Internet of Things(IoT),Location-Based Services(LBS)are becoming more and more popular.However,for the users being served,how to protect their location privacy has become a growing concern.This has led to great difficulty in establishing trust between the users and the service providers,hindering the development of LBS for more comprehensive functions.In this paper,we first establish a strong identity verification mechanism to ensure the authentication security of the system and then design a new location privacy protection mechanism based on the privacy proximity test problem.This mechanism not only guarantees the confidentiality of the user s information during the subsequent information interaction and dynamic data transmission,but also meets the service provider's requirements for related data.

Location Privacy in Device-Dependent Location-Based Services:Challenges and Solution

With the evolution of location-based services(LBS),a new type of LBS has already gain a lot of attention and implementation,we name this kind of LBS as the Device-Dependent LBS(DLBS).In DLBS,the service provider(SP)will not only send the information according to the user’s location,more significant,he also provides a service device which will be carried by the user.DLBS has been successfully practised in some of the large cities around the world,for example,the shared bicycle in Beijing and London.In this paper,we,for the first time,blow the whistle of the new location privacy challenges caused by DLBS,since the service device is enabled to perform the localization without the permission of the user.To conquer these threats,we design a service architecture along with a credit system between DLBS provider and the user.The credit system tie together the DLBS device usability with the curious behaviour upon user’s location privacy,DLBS provider has to sacrifice their revenue in order to gain extra location information of their device.We make the simulation of our proposed scheme and the result convince its effectiveness.

Location and Its Semantics in Location-Based Services

Starting with a simple presentation of location determination techniques, physical location and geographic location as two common kinds of location description methods are discussed. The semantic location concept is then introduced and a correction is given, which especially emphasizes that location property is an important part of semantic location. By analyzing the connotation and extension of every geographic location, what should be contained in a location property is determined. Using a hierarchical model, the relations and associations among locations are clearly described. To realize a formalized description of semantic location, an ontology technique that can adequately describe semantic information of location is used. Organized by ontology web language, a location ontology model allows semantic location to be read and processed by computer. The location ontology model realizes the knowledge description of location information and establishes an important foundation to personalized preference services in location based services.

Privacy Preserving Scheme for Location-Based Services

Homomorphic encryption schemes make it possible to perform arithmetic operations, like additions and multiplications, over encrypted values. This capability provides enhanced protection for data and offers new research directions, including blind data processing. Using homomorphic encryption schemes, a Location-Based Service (LBS) can process encrypted inputs to retrieve encrypted location-related information. The retrieved encrypted data can only be decrypted by the user who requested the data. The technology still faces two main challenges: the encountered processing time and the upper limit imposed on the allowed number of operations. However, the protection of users’ privacy achieved through this technology makes it attractive for more research and enhancing. In this paper we use homomorphic encryption schemes to build a fully secure system that allows users to benefit from location-based services while preserving the confidentiality and integrity of their data. Our novel system consists of search circuits that allow an executor (i.e. LBS server) to receive encrypted inputs/requests and then perform a blind search to retrieve encrypted records that match the selection criterion. A querier can send the user’s position and the service type he/she is looking for, in encrypted form, to a server and then the server would respond to the request without any knowledge of the contents of the request and the retrieved records. We further propose a prototype that improves the practicality of our system.

Location Based Services Acceptance and Adoption Evaluation: An Investigation on Mobile Phone Users’ Response to Awareness and Utilization of LBS Technology in Nairobi Kenya

Location Based Navigation System (LBNS) is a specific Location Based Service (LBS) purely for navigational purpose. These systems resolve position of a user by using GNSS/GPS positioning technologies, to which supplementary information on goods and services are tagged. The navigation services have become popular and can be installed on mobile phones to provide route information, location of points of interest and user’s current location. LBS has continued to face challenges which include “communication” process towards user reference. Location Based Service System conveys suitable information through a mobile device for effective decision making and reaction within a given time span. This research was geared at understanding the state of LBS technology acceptance and adoption by users in Nairobi Kenya. To do this a quantitative study was carried out through a questionnaire, to investigate mobile phone users’ response on awareness and use of LBS technology. Testing the growth of this technology in this region compared to predictions in previous studies using Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), it is evident that many users may be aware of GPS functionality in mobile phones but are certainly yet to fully embrace the technology as they rarely use it. This points to some underlying challenges towards this technology within this part of the World, thereby recommending for deliberate monitoring and evaluation of LBS technology for sustenance growth based on user satisfaction and acceptance for improved usability.

A Privacy Protection Method for Continuous Query Based on Location Services

To solve the problem that the traditional location-based services anonymity model is not applied to the continuous query, quasi real-time cloak algorithm （QR-TCA） has been proposed, and the non-delay cloak model （N-DCM） has been established. After comprehensive analysis of location-based continuous query privacy protection models, a model that can solve the user service delay problem is proposed, which can provide the users with quasi-real time location-based services. The experiment measures the N-DCM model with multiple dimensions, such as service response time and service quality of standard datasets. The experiment results show that the method is suitable for continuous query location privacy protection and can effectively protect the user’s location privacy.

Greedysearch based service location in P2P networks

A model is built to analyze the performance of service location based on greedy search in P2P networks. Hops and relative QoS index of the node found in a service location process are used to evaluate the performance as well as the probability of locating the top 5% nodes with highest QoS level. Both model and simulation results show that, the performance of greedy search based service location improves significantly with the increase of the average degree of the network. It is found that, if changes of both overlay topology and QoS level of nodes can be ignored during a location process, greedy-search based service location has high probability of finding the nodes with relatively high QoS in small number of hops in a big overlay network. Model extension under arbitrary network degree distribution is also studied.

Services and Applications Based on Mobile User’s Location Detection and Prediction

Many wireless applications are deployed and available to customers via their mobile phones. Variety of these applications and services are based on determination of the current or future location of mobile user. Location based services (LBS) are one of the vital applications which are subdivided into two main categories: economical category and public category. Economic applications include mobile marketing, entertainment and tracking applications. Whereas, emergency cases, safety, traffic management, Muslims’ applications and public information applications are sort of public applications. The first part of the paper presents a new proposed system with developed procedure to recreate public and economic applications with high positioning accuracy and good authentication of users’ data. The developed system is created to enhance both location based services and network allocation resources within mobile network platform using either normal or GPS supported mobile equipment. The second part of the paper introduces future location prediction of mobile user dependent applications. New algorithm is developed depending on utilizing both intra-cell Movement Pattern algorithm (ICMP) [1] and hybrid uplink time Difference of Arrival and Assisted GPS technique (UTDOA_AGPS) [2]. It has been noticed that ICMP algorithm outperforms other future location prediction algorithms with high precision and within suitable time (less than 220) msec. However, UTDOA_AGPS guarantees high precession of mobile user independent of the surrounding environment. The proposed technique is used to enhance reliability and efficiency of location based services using cellular network platform.

Integration of Location-Allocation and Accessibility Models in GIS to Improve Urban Planning for Health Services in Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah, Saudi Arabia

In this study, accessibility and location-allocation models have been integrated into GIS to improve spatial planning and environmental sustainability of health services in Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah. This integration provides a planning framework in order to check the efficiency of the spatial allocation of health services and to generate alternatives either by proposing an active service or to improve an existing one. To achieve these objectives, the accessibility to the service area was analyzed within the analysis of health services networks, which are divided into eight types: public hospitals, specialized hospitals, health units, healthcare centers, infirmaries, clinic complexes, the Red Crescent Center, and ambulance facilities, with time intervals of (5 minutes - 10 minutes - 15 minutes) to access coverage ranges, and the location-allocation model was used based on the maximum coverage model within a response time not exceeding 15 minutes, The results of the study revealed the poor distribution of health services Al-Madinah Al-Munawwarah suffers from weak accessibility to health services coverage areas and is unable to meet the needs of its population at present. The current need for health services reached twenty-four locations, including two public hospitals, three specialized hospitals, two health centers, three ambulance facilities, four infirmaries, three clinic complexes, four health units, and three Red Crescent centers.