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Pertinent information sharing across various government agencies, as well as non‐governmental and private organizations, is essential to assess the incident situation, identify the needed resources for emergency response and generate response plans. However, each agency may have incident management systems of its choice with valuable information in its own format, posing difficulty in effective information sharing. Application‐to‐application sharing cross agency boundaries will significantly reduce human efforts and delay in emergency response. Information sharing from disparate systems and organizations, however, requires solving of the interoperability issue. The purpose of this paper is to present the UICDS™‐based resource sharing framework as a step toward addressing the afore‐mentioned challenges.

A prototype middleware system is developed using a standards‐based information sharing infrastructure called UICDS™ (Unified Incident Command and Decision Support™), an initiative led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology division. This standards‐based middleware, resource management plug‐in utilizes the ontology of organizational structure, workflow activities and resources, and the inference rules to discover and share resource information and interoperability from different incident management applications.

The middleware prototype implementation shows that the UICDS™‐based interoperability between heterogeneous incident management applications is feasible. Specifically, the paper shows that the resource data stored in the Resource Directory Database (RDDB) of the NJ Office of Emergency Management (NJOEM), Hippocrates of the New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services (NJDHSS) can be discovered and shared with other incident management systems using the ontology and inference rules.

This study illustrates the possible solutions to the application to application interoperability problem using the DHS initiated interoperability platform called UICDS™.

The resource discovery and emergency response planning can be automated using the incident domain ontology and inference rules to dynamically generate the location‐based incident response workflows.

The construction industry worldwide is looking for overall efficiency in the entire project life cycle. Lean construction and Building Information Modeling (BIM) are together, key constituents in this quest. This study looks to reinforce the contribution of BIM to deliver applied lean principles to enhance productivity and performance.

The study adopts mixed methodologies of Ethnographic Action Research (EAR) and crisp set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (csQCA). The mosaic of case studies provides a descriptive and instrumental approach. While a descriptive approach investigates the interventions and phenomenon relating BIM to Lean, an instrumental approach constitutes exemplars of the interrelated phenomenon of BIM and Lean.

The themes of Elimination of Waste, Kaizen, Respecting the Human Elements, Poke-a-Yoke and Jidoka are contributed to the maximum by BIM. All the case studies discussed evidence of the contribution to Lean, as they enhance end-customer value.

The contribution of BIM towards Lean could encourage collaborations amongst stakeholders for mutual benefits. BIM could enhance decision making, predictive simulation, risk analysis, etc. with many other exciting possibilities of delivering productivity and performance. The study is limited by the insights offered by the individual cases.

The study provides insights into potential developments and research. It is expected to encourage reflective professional practice triggered by innovative thinking for the gainful utilization of BIM to deliver Lean.

Changing scattered and dynamic business rules in business workflow systems has become a growing problem that hinders the use and configuration of workflow-based applications. There is a gap in the existing research studies which currently focus on solutions that are application specific, without accounting for the universal logical dependencies between the business rules and, as a result, do not support adaptation of the business rules in real time. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

To tackle the above problems, this paper adopts a bottom-up approach, which puts forward a component model of the business process workflows and then adds business rules which have clear logical semantics. This allows incremental development of the workflows and semantic indexing of the rules which govern them during the initial acquisition.

The paper introduces an event-driven model for development of business workflows which is purely logic-based and can be easily implemented using an object-oriented technology, together with a model of the business rules dependencies which supports incremental semantic indexing. It also proposes a two-level inference mechanism as a vehicle for controlling the business process execution and the process of adaptation of the business rules at real time based on propagating the dependencies.

The framework is strictly logical and completely domain-independent. It allows to account both synchronous and asynchronous triggering events as well as both qualitative and quantitative description of the conditions of the rules. Although our primary interest is to apply the framework to the business processes typical in the construction industry we believe our approach has much wider potential due to its strictly logical formalization and domain independence. In fact it can be used to control any business processes where the execution is governed by rules.

The framework could be applied to both large business process modelling tasks and small but very dynamic business processes like the typical digital business processes found in online banking or e-Commerce. For example, it can be used for adjusting security policies by adding the capability to adapt automatically the access rights to account for additional resources and new channels of operation which can be very interesting ion both B2C and B2B applications.

The potential scope of the impact of the research reported here is linked to the wide applicability of rule-based systems in business. Our approach makes it possible not only to control the execution of the processes, but also to identify problems in the control policies themselves from the point of view of their logical properties – consistency, redundancies and potential gaps in the logics. In addition to this, our approach not only increases the efficiency, but also provides flexibility for adaptation of the policies in real time and increases the security of the overall control which improves the overall quality of the automation.

The major achievement reported in this paper is the construction of a universal, strictly logic-based event-driven framework for business process modelling and control, which allows purely logical analysis and adaptation of the business rules governing the business workflows through accounting their dependencies. An added value is the support for object-oriented implementation and the incremental indexing which has been possible thanks to the bottom-up approach adopted in the construction of the framework.

The purpose of the paper is to investigate how health and safety gains and improvements of the construction workplace can be made through the use of three‐dimensional (3D) and four‐dimensional (4D) visualization technologies.

The methodology used in the paper was a combination of semi‐structured interviews with five construction project planners from three construction projects and observations of a 4D model used in one of the three projects.

The findings of the paper have shown a great potential for 3D and 4D visualization in terms of communicating construction information as well as the health and safety risks in the design process where clash detection, work tasks sequence, workspace congestion can be identified by project stakeholders who are thus able to plan for alternative solutions to reduce or eliminate rework, heavy material handling and repetitive and awkward postures which expose workers to musculoskeletal injury risk.

The 3D and 4D models as they are currently used in the design of construction projects, particularly in the three projects investigated in this paper, still lack the worker reference frame and the visual interaction between the worker and the permanent as well as the temporary works.

The paper describes the current and emerging trends in the development of 3D, virtual reality and 4D computer‐aided design visualization and simulation, which have affected or are likely to have an impact on construction projects planning in the Swedish construction sector.

The purpose of this paper is to overview key features of grid portals and e‐government portals and assess the potential for using features of the former in the latter. In the context of this paper, grid portals are defined as graphical user interfaces that a user employs to interact with one or more grid infrastructural resources.

The paper classifies grid portals in five categories and two development frameworks and based on this classification overviews ten existing grid portals. The overview covers, where possible, the developers, the objective, the implementation, and the features of the considered grid portals. For e‐government, the paper focuses on the overview of a typical e‐government portal and best design practices. Based on the overview of grid portals and the typical e‐government portal, the paper assesses the potential benefit of grid portals in meeting the critical success factors for e‐government identified as: integration, knowledge management, personalization, and customer engagement. The results are tabulated, analysed, and discussed.

Many of the features of existing grid portals have the potential to be used within an e‐government portal, but the lack of any in‐depth study of the nature of the e‐government application domain (from a technical and social perspective) in‐line with grid development makes this potential far from reachable at this stage. This is disappointing but does highlight opportunities.

This paper motivates a greater in‐depth analysis and study of the potential use of the grid for e‐government. The grid infrastructure promises solutions to various applications domains including e‐government.

This paper explored the potential of a technology infrastructure for e‐government. This exploration is based on a novel dual overview and evaluation of the technology and the application domain. The paper can be a basis and a reference for further research in different areas including, among others: technology infrastructures for e‐government, grid development for various application domains, benchmarking of grid utility and usability for various application domains, grid gateways, and emerging technologies to meet the critical success factors for e‐government.

This study aims to understand the research data management (RDM) services offered by academic libraries in South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. This study aims to evaluate the library and information science professionals’ required RDM skills and the challenges faced with providing RDM services.

The research methodology for this study used a survey method with purposive sampling. Data were collected through online structured questionnaires, which were used to examine the current state of RDM services offered in academic libraries in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

South Asian and Southeast Asian region major types of RDM services provided were data repository, data management training, maintaining Web resources, data study and analysis, and promoting awareness of reusable data sources. Little attention was given to advisory services on data analysis/mining/visualization and supporting reproducibility and workflow transparency. The results indicated that most respondents agreed that metadata standards and data management planning skills were required for RDM services in South Asia and Southeast Asia.

This study is significant because it offers a comprehensive assessment of ongoing RDM services in academic libraries of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Most current literature focuses on best practices in developed nations. This study highlights the need for more competent and dedicated academic staff for effective RDM services. Library professionals can use this study to identify the gaps in RDM services and suggest formative measures to overcome such challenges.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a solid understanding of how integrated building information modeling (BIM) is implemented in a mega project such as the (Istanbul Grand Airport IGA) construction project, which is the main case study in the research methodology.

The paper examines and identifies the lean efficiency gains achieved in the IGA project and highlights the synergies between BIM and lean concepts based on the facts and figures from the case study analysis. In complex projects, there is a vital need for a comprehensive approach that would enable successful managing of design and construction information via accurate modeling, collaboration and integration throughout the project lifecycles covering various disciplines.

The research findings in the paper make a significant impact in understanding the strategic perception for BIM as a new way of working methodology for the construction industry in Turkey, since the IGA project has become not only a key learning hub for the Turkish construction industry, but also a global landmark for digital construction and project delivery. In addition it proves the mutual synergies between BIM and lean practices.

The IGA project is a mega-scale airport construction project with features beyond building industry challenges, and it should be designed and constructed with tight deadlines and budgets and be operated afterwards in an effective and efficient way. Can lean and BIM help for timely and on-budget completion of the project and could they support the management of the airport facility after handover? The paper also discusses the lean and BIM implementation in the project in relation to the BIM Level 3 requirements.

This research aims to identify and measure the correlations between building information modelling (BIM) and lean construction (LC) principles at the design and construction phases.

The study investigates BIM-LC principles correlations using the Istanbul Grant Airport (IGA) as a case study. The Delphi technique, performed quantitatively, contributes to the identification and quantification of a set of correlations between 11 selected BIM uses and 13 LC principles, which are supported with practical examples from the case study.

Together, the two research methods provide an evidence-based approach to understand the correlations between BIM and LC. The correlation analysis results in 46 correlations, and the correlations between the LC principles and BIM uses are intensified with the LC principles.

A quantitative understanding BIM use and LC principles correlations and appreciation of their specific uses can guide the practical implementation of BIM and LC, especially in large and mega projects.

BIM and LC practices represent approaches to improve performance in construction projects. While BIM has both information technology (IT) and process perspectives, the LC approach is mainly a process and product-oriented philosophy for project efficiency, effectiveness and the elimination of non-value-adding activities and waste. Many studies have investigated how the two approaches complement each other and concluded that their combined implementation in projects can improve efficiency and effectiveness. However, to date an analytical and granular investigation identifying and measuring correlations between BIM and LC based on empirical data is lacking. This paper fills that gap with an evidence-based analysis of the tightness of coupling and correlations between BIM uses and LC principles.

Significant numbers of business process management (BPM) projects fail. Their failure is attributed toward many factors. Among them, low quality of BPM is one reason. Some of the tasks in BPM have their roots in business process reengineering (BPR). The literature has cited many different critical success and failure factors for quality BPM and BPR. Lack of software tools is one of the technology-oriented factors that results in poor BPM and BPR. This paper aims to build a generic feature set offered by software tools for process modeling their analysis implementation and management. It presents an objective analysis in identifying weaknesses and strengths of these tools, primarily for BPM.

A method is proposed to evaluate the quality of process reengineering and management delivered by software tools. It consists of four phases: feature extraction, tool selection, data extraction and tool evaluation.

The data gathered is quantified to test research hypotheses, the results are statistically significant and highlight multiple areas for future improvements. Moreover, the cluster visualizations created also help to understand the strengths and weaknesses of BPM/BPR tools.

Despite the research approach used, there is a chance of subjectivity when it comes to evaluating different tools.

The paper includes implications for practitioners and researchers for choosing appropriate software tool for process modeling, analysis, implementation and management, matching their requirements with BPM and BPR. It also identifies features that are missing in these tools.

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of BPM and supporting tools, relates them to key stages of BPM life cycle and BPR methodologies. It also identifies various areas for further development in these tools.