C. Costopoulou - Academia.edu (original) (raw)
Papers by C. Costopoulou
International Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems, 2017
Despite the increasing interest in the adoption of corporate social responsibility by businesses ... more Despite the increasing interest in the adoption of corporate social responsibility by businesses in a variety of industries, hardly any attention has been paid to the agri-food sector and especially, to the Greek food sector. The agri-food sector has a strong impact on the economy, the environment and the society of each nation. In this light, the purpose of this article is to investigate the largest ninety-eight Greek food companies in dairy, meat, snack, flour & milling and fishing industries about their corporate social responsibility campaigns. A survey has been conducted based on the content analysis of the companies' website. The analysis' results show that companies in the Greek agri-food sector have started to pay attention in CSR strategies with the most portion of their CSR income to environmental campaigns even though the unfolding Greek financial crisis.
Int. J. Electronic Democracy, 2009
The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase ... more The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase in firms using and/or deploying e-markets online. This development undoubtedly affects the agri-food sector, since a large number of agricultural firms are demonstrating or are expected to demonstrate e-commerce activities. This paper aims to provide an overview of the current status of agricultural e-markets in Greece, by presenting results from an analysis of 100 cases. Results indicate that Greek e-markets may still have a rather low degree of sophistication, but they demonstrate a strong B2B orientation, as well as an outreach for international customer bases.
The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase ... more The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase in firms using and/or deploying e-markets online. This development undoubt-edly affects the agri-food sector, since a large number of agricultural firms are demon-strating or are expected to demonstrate e-commerce activities. This paper aims to pro-vide an overview of the current status of agricultural e-markets in Greece, by present-ing results from an analysis of 100 cases. Results indicate that Greek e-markets may still have a rather low degree of sophistication, but they demonstrate a strong B2B ori-entation, as well as an outreach for international customer bases.
Abstract:- The objective of this work is to develop business-to-business processes of electronic ... more Abstract:- The objective of this work is to develop business-to-business processes of electronic markets using Web services in order to facilitate the execution of these processes in different electronic markets. The main contribution of this approach is the promotion of interoperability, just-in-time integration, and reduction of complexity. In specific, the Cooperation, Orchestration and Semantic Mapping of Web Services (termed as COSMOS) tool, which is an integrated development environment that enables the creation, design and modification of executable business processes based on the Business Process Execution Language, is used for the integration of business-to-business processes of a Virtual Agricultural Market into a fully functional Web-based environment.
E-government is one of the most rapidly evolving service domains in the contemporary information ... more E-government is one of the most rapidly evolving service domains in the contemporary information society. Many governments have already developed and provided e-government services to businesses and citizens. Nowadays actors in the government domain attempt to take the next step and exploit the latest wireless technologies in order to provide ubiquitous services for mobile users. However, this approach involves some hidden risks mainly due to the inherent insecurity of the air medium and the vulnerabilities of the wireless systems. Thus, in this paper we investigate the security gaps and considerations which should be taken into account for an m-government system. Also, the case of an m-government portal, which was designed to provide mG2B services for the agricultural sector, is presented. Furthermore, we describe the architectural aspects of this portal and provide some best practices for securing its transactions. Finally, we provide a list of security guidelines and policies, wh...
Quarterly bulletin of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, 1999
The Internet, fueled by the phenomenal popularity of the Web, has acted as a catalyst for the gro... more The Internet, fueled by the phenomenal popularity of the Web, has acted as a catalyst for the growth of electronic commerce. During recent years the field of electronic commerce has seen rapid growth in several sectors. The aim of this paper is to encourage the development of electronic commerce in the agricultural sector of remote rural areas. More specifically, it describes an Internet-based electronic commerce application for trading perishable agricultural products (vegetables, fruits and flowers) on a Greek island. The proposed application aims to effectively cover the farmer-to-trader business relationships and collaborations.
Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences
Nowadays, we are witnesses to an unpreceded growth of infrastructure and technology, especially i... more Nowadays, we are witnesses to an unpreceded growth of infrastructure and technology, especially in the mobile services and applications domain. However, not all mobile applications prove suitable for meeting end-users anticipations. In order for an application to properly address the users' needs, it has to feature usability or, in other words, be effective, efficient and satisfactory. The aim of this paper is to study agricultural mobile applications available for smartphones in the Greek market and conduct a thorough evaluation of their usability characteristics. The paper materials and methods employed involve the conduction of two separate usability evaluation surveys of five selected agricultural applications. The first one includes a heuristic analysis performed by three experts in design and human factors. The second one is a survey performed with end-users and specifically involves a user group of ten agricultural professionals, who were asked to rate the applications with respect to five different dimensions affecting usability. Both methods included properly composed questionnaires conforming to relevant international usability standards and best practices (such as the ten heuristics of Nielsen) and suitably selected Likert scales. Results show that some of the applications under consideration feature severe design and functionality flaws (e.g. with respect to system feedback and recovery from errors) that could limit their usefulness as well as their impact on farmers' everyday activities. In conclusion, both of the employed methods acted in a complementary fashion and their joint utilization revealed design flaws that could be addressed and improved in subsequent application development.
International Journal of Electronic Governance
The eIDAS regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions ... more The eIDAS regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European single market, provides a legal framework to enable secure and seamless transactions between citizens, businesses, and public agencies. The objective of this paper is to present the design and implementation of academic eIDAS-based services. Two particular services have been studied, namely, the Erasmus student mobility and the certificate issuance services. In this context, microservice architecture has been deployed, as it comprises an innovative approach for facilitating the process of registration of Erasmus students and the issuance of certificates in a fast, secured and reliable way.
Information Services & Use
The application of Internet technologies to online transactions has lead to the amazing growth of... more The application of Internet technologies to online transactions has lead to the amazing growth of Internetbased electronic markets (e-markets). This paper describes an Internet-based directory service for e-markets that aims to facilitate online buyers by making the process of finding an e-market easier and less time-consuming. This service, termed e-Market Metadata (eMaM) directory service, is based on a metadata repository of e-markets' descriptions. These descriptions store a number of e-market characteristics according to the 'Dublin Core for E-Markets' (DC-EM) metadata model. In particular, this paper introduces metadata models and describes the DC-EM metadata model. Then, it presents the specification and implementation of the eMaM service using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). Finally, a pilot usage of the implemented eMaM service that examines 120 B2B and B2C e-markets for various business sectors is discussed.
Journal of Agricultural Informatics, 2011
Emerging Research Applications, 2011
Abstract During the evolutionary course of e-government, various initiatives have been taken to c... more Abstract During the evolutionary course of e-government, various initiatives have been taken to correspond to the increasing demand of quality e-government services for citizens, businesses, and public agencies. This chapter describes the Electronic/Mobile Government (EMG) framework, which contributes to the migration of traditional public services to the electronic/mobile (e/m) delivery mode in a coherent and usable format. The framework guides public agencies in modeling and deploying e/m-government services through a ...
Administration & Society, 2014
Governments apply policies to alleviate administrative burdens especially for small businesses so... more Governments apply policies to alleviate administrative burdens especially for small businesses so as to increase their flexibility and viability. The objective of this article is the reduction of administrative burdens. The article presents a European initiative applying a method for measuring the costs incurred by small and medium enterprises on finding information for performing a public service. The method has been applied in five rural areas in Europe. In this article, a Greek case is analytically described. The research results provide guidelines to policy and decision makers for fighting businesses’ administrative burdens of the informational phase of public services.
Performance of Distributed Systems and Integrated Communication Networks, 1992
The purpose of this paper is to describe the modeling of Quality of Service and Network Performan... more The purpose of this paper is to describe the modeling of Quality of Service and Network Performance in an object-oriented way, as well as their representation inside different networks that lie one on top of the other. It is shown that the Quality of Service and the Network Performance object classes can be described in a straightforward manner, giving a precise meaning to these two concepts. Furthermore an orthogonal model is introduced combining the earlier mentioned systems so as to have effective control of their changes and interactions.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2008
The field of electronic markets (e-markets) is an active research field that attracts growing int... more The field of electronic markets (e-markets) is an active research field that attracts growing international attention, and the volume of related publications is increasing every year. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the developments in this research field during the decade 1995-2005. This paper uses a two-level approach for the analysis and categorization of e-market
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2008
The growing number of electronic markets (e-markets) that offer agricultural products and supplie... more The growing number of electronic markets (e-markets) that offer agricultural products and supplies and that are currently operating online, may create confusion to a typical Internet user that is searching for interesting e-markets online. To overcome this information overload, appropriate Internet-based services can be introduced. To this direction, this paper presents the development and pilot evaluation of an online observatory
International Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Information Systems, 2017
Despite the increasing interest in the adoption of corporate social responsibility by businesses ... more Despite the increasing interest in the adoption of corporate social responsibility by businesses in a variety of industries, hardly any attention has been paid to the agri-food sector and especially, to the Greek food sector. The agri-food sector has a strong impact on the economy, the environment and the society of each nation. In this light, the purpose of this article is to investigate the largest ninety-eight Greek food companies in dairy, meat, snack, flour & milling and fishing industries about their corporate social responsibility campaigns. A survey has been conducted based on the content analysis of the companies' website. The analysis' results show that companies in the Greek agri-food sector have started to pay attention in CSR strategies with the most portion of their CSR income to environmental campaigns even though the unfolding Greek financial crisis.
Int. J. Electronic Democracy, 2009
The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase ... more The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase in firms using and/or deploying e-markets online. This development undoubtedly affects the agri-food sector, since a large number of agricultural firms are demonstrating or are expected to demonstrate e-commerce activities. This paper aims to provide an overview of the current status of agricultural e-markets in Greece, by presenting results from an analysis of 100 cases. Results indicate that Greek e-markets may still have a rather low degree of sophistication, but they demonstrate a strong B2B orientation, as well as an outreach for international customer bases.
The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase ... more The role that information technology plays in today’s business activities has led to an increase in firms using and/or deploying e-markets online. This development undoubt-edly affects the agri-food sector, since a large number of agricultural firms are demon-strating or are expected to demonstrate e-commerce activities. This paper aims to pro-vide an overview of the current status of agricultural e-markets in Greece, by present-ing results from an analysis of 100 cases. Results indicate that Greek e-markets may still have a rather low degree of sophistication, but they demonstrate a strong B2B ori-entation, as well as an outreach for international customer bases.
Abstract:- The objective of this work is to develop business-to-business processes of electronic ... more Abstract:- The objective of this work is to develop business-to-business processes of electronic markets using Web services in order to facilitate the execution of these processes in different electronic markets. The main contribution of this approach is the promotion of interoperability, just-in-time integration, and reduction of complexity. In specific, the Cooperation, Orchestration and Semantic Mapping of Web Services (termed as COSMOS) tool, which is an integrated development environment that enables the creation, design and modification of executable business processes based on the Business Process Execution Language, is used for the integration of business-to-business processes of a Virtual Agricultural Market into a fully functional Web-based environment.
E-government is one of the most rapidly evolving service domains in the contemporary information ... more E-government is one of the most rapidly evolving service domains in the contemporary information society. Many governments have already developed and provided e-government services to businesses and citizens. Nowadays actors in the government domain attempt to take the next step and exploit the latest wireless technologies in order to provide ubiquitous services for mobile users. However, this approach involves some hidden risks mainly due to the inherent insecurity of the air medium and the vulnerabilities of the wireless systems. Thus, in this paper we investigate the security gaps and considerations which should be taken into account for an m-government system. Also, the case of an m-government portal, which was designed to provide mG2B services for the agricultural sector, is presented. Furthermore, we describe the architectural aspects of this portal and provide some best practices for securing its transactions. Finally, we provide a list of security guidelines and policies, wh...
Quarterly bulletin of the International Association of Agricultural Information Specialists, 1999
The Internet, fueled by the phenomenal popularity of the Web, has acted as a catalyst for the gro... more The Internet, fueled by the phenomenal popularity of the Web, has acted as a catalyst for the growth of electronic commerce. During recent years the field of electronic commerce has seen rapid growth in several sectors. The aim of this paper is to encourage the development of electronic commerce in the agricultural sector of remote rural areas. More specifically, it describes an Internet-based electronic commerce application for trading perishable agricultural products (vegetables, fruits and flowers) on a Greek island. The proposed application aims to effectively cover the farmer-to-trader business relationships and collaborations.
Russian Journal of Agricultural and Socio-Economic Sciences
Nowadays, we are witnesses to an unpreceded growth of infrastructure and technology, especially i... more Nowadays, we are witnesses to an unpreceded growth of infrastructure and technology, especially in the mobile services and applications domain. However, not all mobile applications prove suitable for meeting end-users anticipations. In order for an application to properly address the users' needs, it has to feature usability or, in other words, be effective, efficient and satisfactory. The aim of this paper is to study agricultural mobile applications available for smartphones in the Greek market and conduct a thorough evaluation of their usability characteristics. The paper materials and methods employed involve the conduction of two separate usability evaluation surveys of five selected agricultural applications. The first one includes a heuristic analysis performed by three experts in design and human factors. The second one is a survey performed with end-users and specifically involves a user group of ten agricultural professionals, who were asked to rate the applications with respect to five different dimensions affecting usability. Both methods included properly composed questionnaires conforming to relevant international usability standards and best practices (such as the ten heuristics of Nielsen) and suitably selected Likert scales. Results show that some of the applications under consideration feature severe design and functionality flaws (e.g. with respect to system feedback and recovery from errors) that could limit their usefulness as well as their impact on farmers' everyday activities. In conclusion, both of the employed methods acted in a complementary fashion and their joint utilization revealed design flaws that could be addressed and improved in subsequent application development.
International Journal of Electronic Governance
The eIDAS regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions ... more The eIDAS regulation on electronic identification and trust services for electronic transactions in the European single market, provides a legal framework to enable secure and seamless transactions between citizens, businesses, and public agencies. The objective of this paper is to present the design and implementation of academic eIDAS-based services. Two particular services have been studied, namely, the Erasmus student mobility and the certificate issuance services. In this context, microservice architecture has been deployed, as it comprises an innovative approach for facilitating the process of registration of Erasmus students and the issuance of certificates in a fast, secured and reliable way.
Information Services & Use
The application of Internet technologies to online transactions has lead to the amazing growth of... more The application of Internet technologies to online transactions has lead to the amazing growth of Internetbased electronic markets (e-markets). This paper describes an Internet-based directory service for e-markets that aims to facilitate online buyers by making the process of finding an e-market easier and less time-consuming. This service, termed e-Market Metadata (eMaM) directory service, is based on a metadata repository of e-markets' descriptions. These descriptions store a number of e-market characteristics according to the 'Dublin Core for E-Markets' (DC-EM) metadata model. In particular, this paper introduces metadata models and describes the DC-EM metadata model. Then, it presents the specification and implementation of the eMaM service using the Unified Modelling Language (UML). Finally, a pilot usage of the implemented eMaM service that examines 120 B2B and B2C e-markets for various business sectors is discussed.
Journal of Agricultural Informatics, 2011
Emerging Research Applications, 2011
Abstract During the evolutionary course of e-government, various initiatives have been taken to c... more Abstract During the evolutionary course of e-government, various initiatives have been taken to correspond to the increasing demand of quality e-government services for citizens, businesses, and public agencies. This chapter describes the Electronic/Mobile Government (EMG) framework, which contributes to the migration of traditional public services to the electronic/mobile (e/m) delivery mode in a coherent and usable format. The framework guides public agencies in modeling and deploying e/m-government services through a ...
Administration & Society, 2014
Governments apply policies to alleviate administrative burdens especially for small businesses so... more Governments apply policies to alleviate administrative burdens especially for small businesses so as to increase their flexibility and viability. The objective of this article is the reduction of administrative burdens. The article presents a European initiative applying a method for measuring the costs incurred by small and medium enterprises on finding information for performing a public service. The method has been applied in five rural areas in Europe. In this article, a Greek case is analytically described. The research results provide guidelines to policy and decision makers for fighting businesses’ administrative burdens of the informational phase of public services.
Performance of Distributed Systems and Integrated Communication Networks, 1992
The purpose of this paper is to describe the modeling of Quality of Service and Network Performan... more The purpose of this paper is to describe the modeling of Quality of Service and Network Performance in an object-oriented way, as well as their representation inside different networks that lie one on top of the other. It is shown that the Quality of Service and the Network Performance object classes can be described in a straightforward manner, giving a precise meaning to these two concepts. Furthermore an orthogonal model is introduced combining the earlier mentioned systems so as to have effective control of their changes and interactions.
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2008
The field of electronic markets (e-markets) is an active research field that attracts growing int... more The field of electronic markets (e-markets) is an active research field that attracts growing international attention, and the volume of related publications is increasing every year. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview of the developments in this research field during the decade 1995-2005. This paper uses a two-level approach for the analysis and categorization of e-market
Communications in Computer and Information Science, 2008
The growing number of electronic markets (e-markets) that offer agricultural products and supplie... more The growing number of electronic markets (e-markets) that offer agricultural products and supplies and that are currently operating online, may create confusion to a typical Internet user that is searching for interesting e-markets online. To overcome this information overload, appropriate Internet-based services can be introduced. To this direction, this paper presents the development and pilot evaluation of an online observatory