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This paper aims to study the impact of information and communication technologies in organizations to capture and manage intellectual capital. The paper focuses particularly on the use of Web-based geographical information systems (Web GIS) to increase relational capital.

This paper analyzes in detail the Web sites of 143 general merchandise retailers, which have been grouped according to their dominant operational format. Menus and search tools have been used to find out about the way in which these retailers provide information to the customers about their stores, with special attention to the use of Web GIS.

The results obtained show that most of the companies analyzed use Web GIS to provide information about the location and other characteristics of the stores. The findings in this paper also suggest that the quantity and quality of the information provided by is somewhat related to the company size.

The limitations of this study come from the difficulty of predicting whether small and medium enterprises (SMEs) will generalize the use of Web GIS in the future.

The findings of the paper suggest that large retail firms have adopted Web GIS to provide information to the customers and for other geomarketing purposes. Moreover, SMEs should use Web GIS to improve their relationship with customers.

To the authors’ knowledge, no paper has analyzed in detail the use of Web GIS by companies with the aim of enhancing relational capital.

The purpose of this paper is to establish common metrics for web-based mapping applications to facilitate user decision making and enhance information providers’ product design.

The metrics were developed from a combination of literature review and case studies. From the literature review, the authors identified three major areas of assessment for web-based mapping applications. The authors then studied six online applications to refine the metrics.

The results suggest that web-based mapping applications can be evaluated from three major aspects: data content, geographic information systems (GIS) functionality and usability. The authors have developed detailed measures for each factor through the evaluation of the six applications.

The metrics developed from this study could be used as a standard for online spatial information users to choose appropriate products according to their needs. It can also provide valuable information for data providers to improve their products.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that has systematically examined web-based mapping applications in academic libraries. Results from this study could be a valuable tool for librarians as well as general information users without background of GIS and usability to evaluate online mapping resources.

The combination of desalination technology with renewable energy sources (RES) provides a sustainable approach for increasing potable water availability without imposing negative environmental effects. This paper aims to present the development of a platform, which is an internet-based tool integrating the design optimization of desalination systems with spatial modeling based on a geographic information system (GIS).

The proposed platform assists decision-makers to select the optimal location and configuration of both the energy- and water-related subsystems of desalination plants that are power-supplied by RES, such that the lifetime cost of the overall desalination plant is minimized. It enables to optimize the desalination plant site selection and sizing with various hybrid power supply (solar, wind, wave and electrical grid power systems) and desalination technologies combinations, while simultaneously exploiting spatial technologies in an internet-based GIS platform.

A pilot study for the optimal design of stand-alone and grid-connected desalination plants powered by RES is presented, which demonstrates the functionality and features of the proposed platform. It is also shown that a grid-connected desalination plant designed by the proposed software design tool exhibits significantly lower lifetime installation and maintenance costs compared to its stand-alone counterpart.

The proposed platform combines technological, scientific and industrial knowledge with information about societal/political conditions and geo-spatial technologies in a user-friendly graphical interface. Therefore, it provides a design tool enabling its users to secure water supply in a sustainable and economically viable manner.

The purpose of this paper is to implement an activity support system for volunteer fire corps using Web-GIS technology.

In this study, the authors implemented a volunteer fire corps activity support system comprising a dispatch request system, a water sources geographic information system, a fire-vehicle location confirmation system, a route history system and an integrated management system. They implemented this system as a Web application in consideration of responsive design assuming that it is used on mobile terminals.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, the authors conducted a survey of 18 fire corps volunteers who were asked to evaluate the system for operability, relevance, functionality, usability and effectiveness.

In this research work, the authors implemented the volunteer fire corps activity support system using Web-GIS technology. The authors conducted a questionnaire survey of the volunteer fire corps activity support system, asking 18 fire corps volunteers to evaluate the system for operability, relevance, functionality, usability and effectiveness. The results of the survey indicate an overwhelming positive response to the volunteer fire corps activity support system for all five measures.

Geotechnologies have a long tradition in several areas of society and research. The recent development of the ‘Internet of Everything’ (IoE) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technologies opened several doors to the contribution of tourism. Emergent technologies contributions to tourism and planning such as web mapping, augmented reality (AR), crowdsourcing and crowdsensing are relatively recent, and there is a lack of research around their potential for Creative Tourism enhancement. For example, combining web mapping with AR or storytelling can be an excellent contribution to operators, planners and tourists. For research purposes, new opportunities are open, particularly by integrating community-shared data. It is well known for the popularity of social networks, the exponential growth of photo sharing, but few studies have been implemented to understand their contribution to research. This chapter focuses on emerging geotechnologies concerning cultural mapping, Creative Tourism and sustainability. Since it is a new growing niche, more research is needed to develop and understand the potential of new approaches. Besides traditional techniques such as quantitative (e.g. surveys) and qualitative ones (e.g. interviews, focus groups and world café), it revises the role of geotechnologies on Creative Tourism development and growing activities. Results from case studies from Europe are analysed.

This paper aims to describe two Web-based technologies of geographic information systems (GIS) to be used in monitoring and analysis of environmental processes, proposed by the authors. The technologies analyze the temporal aspect of the process together with the spatial aspect, which defers them from most other works on environmental processes, as these are usually limited either to spatial statistics or to temporal statistics. The approach is instrumental in dynamically finding the relationships between the processes and predicting critical incidents.

Often, the study of natural processes is limited to the analysis of their spatial properties presented by individual time series. The principal idea of this approach consists in supplementing this traditional analysis with the analysis of time fields. In this way, the authors are able to analyze temporal and spatial properties of environmental processes together.

The paper presents two technologies which provide the analysis of spatial and temporal data obtained in natural environment monitoring. The discussed spatio-temporal data mining methods are shown to enable the research into environmental processes, and the solution of practical issues of critical situation forecasts.

The paper discussed Web-based GIS technologies for the analysis of the temporal aspect of the environmental process together with the spatial aspect. Application examples demonstrate the ability of this approach to find the relationships in dynamics of the processes and to predict critical incidents.

The impact of information technology (IT) on the agility of supply chain management (SCM) systems is very noticeable in the business world nowadays. Competition and constant changes, including product/technological innovations, decreasing product lifestyles and product proliferation, create pressure that affects the business environment. Organizations are required for answering the changes in the market to gain a competitive advantage and business success. The organizations are able to answer to unexpected market changes through supply chain market, and these changes are converted to business opportunities. Using IT to achieve the agility of SCM is one of the important factors to help the organizations. Therefore, the adoption of IT and its efficient implementation can improve the cooperation between supply chain agility through the rapid transfer, the distribution of accurate information and the use of information. This paper aims to investigate the impact of IT on the agility of SCM.

A total of 120 employees of the Golasal firm are involved in collecting data using a questionnaire. Measurements were performed in all questionnaires using a five-point Likert scale. The causal model is evaluated by structural equationmodeling technique, which is used to examine the reliability and validity of the model.

The results have shown that IT has positive influences on the agility of SCM systems. In addition, the obtained results have shown that four variables, namely, IT skills and knowledge, IT-based systems integration, IT infrastructure and design of global position system and geographic information systems, affect the agility of SCM systems.

In this paper, the agility of SCM systems is pointed out and the approach to resolve the problem is applied into a practical example. The presented model provides a complete framework to examine the impact of IT on the agility of SCM systems.

The purpose of this paper is to address the urgent need for guiding the construction of information systems for disease surveillance and early warning, given the latest efforts of the report system of public health information over China.

A system framework for disease surveillance and early warning, based on disease clustering test and cluster detection techniques, geographical information system, network and communication is conceived. Through geographical surveillance analysis of severe acute respiratory syndrome occurring in Beijing in 2003, an application example of the framework is illustrated.

Through approaches such as integrating spatial‐time clustering test and cluster detection algorithms, spatial visualization, computer network, wireless communication, it is feasible to build a systematic, automatic, real‐time surveillance and early warning system for prevention and control of disease.

The present study provides an underlying framework for the development of disease surveillance and early warning system enabling data acquisition, data analysis and alarm publishing.

The framework integrates report system of public health information, GIS and disease clustering test and cluster detection techniques into an application, which will significantly enhance the resilience of healthcare facilities. It is supposed to be implemented in near future and provides fundamental support for nation‐wide disease surveillance and early warning.

While high-quality information is critical in decision-making for environmental issues and assessing the impact of natural disasters, there is a significant lack of research on how environmental information systems (EISs) can be integrated through service-oriented architecture (SOA). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the EISs in South Korea and to propose an SOA to improve the quality of EISs.

This study follows the design science research methodology proposed by Peffers et al. (2007). A pilot test was conducted with Environmental Impact Assessment Support System (EIASS) end users based on the modified DeLone and McLean’s IS success model to discern the moderating effect of SOA readiness.

This study proposed a new SOA for the South Korea EIASS; the work processes among EIASS, nationwide EISs and local EISs are also analyzed. Conceptual and hardware SOA for the EIASS were presented. The finding shows that SOA readiness has a significant moderating effect for EIASS end user benefits.

Supply chain managers can exploit GIS-based environmental information, which can be provided by the new EIASS architecture, to estimate the risk of a natural disaster within the geographical region of their supply chain.

This is one of the few studies in the EIS literature that propose an SOA to improve the quality of EIS. In addition, the study remodeled DeLone and McLean’s IS success model to assess the proposed SOA for EAISS and found that the new SOA would be useful for end users.