Hans Akkermans | Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (original) (raw)

Papers by Hans Akkermans

Requirements Engineering, Oct 13, 2011

In this paper, we introduce e 3 alignment for inter-organizational business-ICT alignment. With t... more In this paper, we introduce e 3 alignment for inter-organizational business-ICT alignment. With the e 3 alignment framework, we create alignment between organizations operating in an agile networked value constellation-which is a set of organizations who jointly satisfy a customer need-by (1) focusing on the interaction between the organizations in the constellation, (2) considering interaction from four different perspectives, and (3) utilizing conceptual modeling techniques to analyze and create alignment within and between the perspectives. By creating inter-organizational business-ICT alignment between the actors in the constellation, e 3 alignment ultimately contributes to a sustainable and profitable constellation. To actually create alignment, e 3 alignment iteratively takes three specific steps: (1) identification of alignment issues, (2) solution design, and (3) impact analysis. We illustrate our approach with cases from the Dutch aviation industry, Spanish electricity industry, and Dutch telecom industry.

Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering, 2016

Technological innovation and information & communication technologies (ICTs) are considered enabl... more Technological innovation and information & communication technologies (ICTs) are considered enabling factors for social and economic development, even in very poor parts of the world. However, successful ICT deployments in low-resource regions, with low levels of literacy and poor infrastructures are scarce. In this paper we argue that a user-centered, iterative approach, bridging the gap between developers and local users, is the path to successful, contextualized ICT service development, in benefit of local needs and goals. Based on field experimentation in rural regions of West Africa we present a framework to iteratively and collaboratively develop ICT systems, adapted to local needs and context.

Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, 2019

Despite its global reach, the World Wide Web still fails to serve about 3 billion people, the maj... more Despite its global reach, the World Wide Web still fails to serve about 3 billion people, the majority living in the Global South, especially in poor, lowresource regions, where broadband internet is not expected to be rolled out in the foreseeable future. Yet, to bring the advantages of ICTs at the reach of communities in low-resource development regions, lightweight, affordable and contextaware ICT solutions are needed, that fit local needs and context. To this end the Kasadaka platform was developed. This platform supports easy creation of localcontent and voice-based information services, targeting currently 'unconnected' populations, taking into account contextual and infrastructural requirements, and matching local ecosystems. The Kasadaka platform and its Voice Service Development Kit support the development of decentralized voice-based information services, to serve local populations and communities in their own local languages, in regions where Internet and Web are absent and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

IFIP advances in information and communication technology, 2019

International audienceThe European project INTEGRAL aims to build and demonstrate an industry-qua... more International audienceThe European project INTEGRAL aims to build and demonstrate an industry-quality reference solution for DER aggregation-level control and coordination, based on commonly available ICT components, standards, and platforms. To achieve this, the Integrated ICT-platform based Distributed Control (IIDC) is introduced. The project includes also three field test site installations in the Netherlands, Spain and France, covering normal, critical and emergency grid conditions

Studies in health technology and informatics, 2005

We-centric services may play an important role in the field of care and support for elderly perso... more We-centric services may play an important role in the field of care and support for elderly persons with dementia and their carers. They may solve problems, such as fragmentation of care, gaps in the continuum of care and welfare services, and inefficient and uncustomized service delivery to patients and carers. In the FRUX Health Care pilot opportunities for we-centric, context-sensitive service bundles in the field of dementia care will be explored. The service on which we focus in this paper is a dynamic interactive social chart for dementia care (DEM-DISC). The feasibility of DEM-DISC will be investigated from a domain specific content perspective (needs, offerings, information and advice), an ICT perspective (ontology and application), a user perspective (persons with dementia, their carers and professionals/organizations), and an organisational perspective (necessary collaboration, governance and control, business modelling). A first demonstrator (validator) of the DEM-DISC wi...

E-Business Innovation and Process Management

We outline a rigorous approach that models how companies can electronically offer packages of ind... more We outline a rigorous approach that models how companies can electronically offer packages of independent services (service bundles). Its objective is to support prospective Web site visitors in defining and buying service bundles that fit their specific needs and demands. The various services in the bundle may be offered by different suppliers. To enable this scenario, it is necessary that software can reason about customer needs and available service offerings. Our approach for tackling this issue is based on recent advances in computer and information science, where information about a domain at hand is conceptualized and formalized using ontologies and subsequently represented in machine-interpretable form. The substantive part from our ontology derives from broadly accepted service management and marketing concepts from business studies literature. In earlier work, we concentrated on the service bundling process itself. In the present chapter, we discuss how to ensure that the ...

KAW’98, Banff, Canada, April 18, 1998

The process of agent communication modeling has not yet received much attention in the knowledge ... more The process of agent communication modeling has not yet received much attention in the knowledge systems area. Conventional knowledge systems are rather simple with respect to their communication structure: often it is a straightforward question-and-answer sequence between system and end user. However, this is different in recent intelligent multi-agent systems. Therefore, agent communication aspects are now in need of a much more advanced treatment in knowledge management, acquisition and modeling. In general, a ...

The article discusses the behavior of the Distributed Generation (DG) in order to increase the EP... more The article discusses the behavior of the Distributed Generation (DG) in order to increase the EPS (Electric Power System) robustness. Special attention is paid to the DG influence during emergency states such as the propagation of cascading failures or other major events. In one hand, a high amount of DG can improve the system response to these disturbances but, on other hand, a massive DG insertion could endanger the system operation. The article proposes a methodology to define the robustness and risk of a system operating point through the evaluation of a robustness index. Furthermore, EPS robustness could be enhanced by new emergency strategies such as intentional islanding operation. This would require new ICT components (Information and Communication Technologies) in order to share and analyze the information and then, elaborate decisions to avoid total blackouts.

14th ACM Web Science Conference 2022

Development of fully featured Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems for a complete language ... more Development of fully featured Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems for a complete language vocabulary generally requires large data repositories, massive computing power, and a stable digital network infrastructure. These conditions are not met in the case of many indigenous languages. Based on our research for over a decade in West Africa, we present a lightweight and downscaled approach to AI-based ASR and describe a set of associated experiments. The aim is to produce a variety of limited-vocabulary ASRs as a basis for the development of practically useful (mobile and radio) voice-based information services that fit needs, preferences and knowledge of local rural communities. CCS CONCEPTS • Social and professional topics → Cultural characteristics; • Computing methodologies → Machine learning algorithms.

Artificial Intelligence, 1991

Seven years ago the Journal Artificial Intelligence published a special volume entitled "Qua... more Seven years ago the Journal Artificial Intelligence published a special volume entitled "Qualitative Reasoning about Physical Systems" [3]---qualitative reasoning for short. This special volume proved to be a watershed for qualitative reasoning research, which inspired a decade of ferment and innovative exploration. Now qualitative reasoning has reached another watershed, by returning to its original roots of coping with fundamental engineering tasks. ~ As both editors feel that addressing real tasks'is crucial to the success of the qualitative reasoning enterprise, we decided that now would be a judicious time to recognize and explicitly encourage this focus--through this special volume. This introduction conveys our personal perspective on what qualitative reasoning is about, what are some of the common misconceptions, and where we would like to see the research headed. The motivation for qualitative reasoning arose predominantly from research on engineering problem solving, which sought techniques for automating engineering practice for a variety of important tasks--circuit analysis and parameter selection [15,42,41 ], the diagnosis and teleological description of bipolar amplifiers [11 ], tutoring systems for steam plant operation [ 19 ], the design of MOS memory buffers [48], and the interpretation of geological structures [38]. It quickly became clear that, if we want to capture the skills of an engineer or technician we must do far more than build bigger simulators (such as Spice [44]) or equation solvers (such as Macsyma [28])--the

Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGCAS Conference on Computing and Sustainable Societies, 2020

and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requi... more and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. • Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research. • You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain • You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal ? Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim.

Summary The research program Societies of Computation (SoC) at the IDE department of HK/R has bee... more Summary The research program Societies of Computation (SoC) at the IDE department of HK/R has been in operation since more than one year [11,[2]. The SoC framework takes a Multi Agent System (MAS) approach when addressing issues in open distributed computing. The results so far are very promising and will shortly be outlined below.

Distributed Intelligence for Distributed Energy Resources: Selected Publications from the CRISP Project, Oct 21, 2005

The recent deregulation of the electric power system has facilitated the apparition of new actors... more The recent deregulation of the electric power system has facilitated the apparition of new actors (producers, market agents…) and the split of the old national entities, which controlled the different parts of the system (generation, transmission and distribution), in new companies and operators that are responsible of the system operation.