International Journal of Engineering Intelligent Systems

Editorial - Special Issue DEBEST

Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker — 2024-01-01

The DEBEST International Conference on Digital Ecosystems, Blockchain Evolution, and Sustainable Transformation (DEBEST2023 (https://debest.tech/2023/) took place in the beautiful ecosystem of Villa La Collina at Lago di Como from 18-23 Oct 2023, Cadenabbia, opposite the historic paradise island Bellagio at the Lago di Como Lake, Italy. The modern conference facility used to be the summer residence of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer of Germany.

The DEBEST2023 has drawn on the tradition of the IEEE DEST (Digital Ecosystems, Science and Technology) conference, which was established in 2007, and sponsored by the IEEE Industrial Electronics Society which was emerged at the same time as the European Union 6th Framework Initiative in 2006 on Digital Business Ecosystems. In the last 15 years, this conference series has extended the concepts and expanded the studies across Europe, Asia Pacific and North America. It was the first technical conference on Digital Ecosystems in the world and was one of the highest-cited conferences in IEEE IES society publications. The future DEBEST conference will be continuously embraced by IEEE as a technically sponsored conference. This conference attracts a wide range of participants, including ICT leaders, network engineers, AI experts, gig workers, knowledge consultants, educators, governors, and policy makers from across the world.

Advancing Sustainable Mobility Infrastructure and Environment Through Automated Low Threshold Analyzation of Road and Cycling Path Surfaces

Professor Oliver Tamine — 2024-01-01

This paper presents a novel application of digital ecosystems in the realm of sustainable mobility - the Automatic Bike Path Analysis (ABPA) system. ABPA utilizes machine learning techniques and smartphone-generated video data to automatically assess the condition of bike paths, aiming to enhance the safety and comfort of cyclists. By leveraging the concept of digital ecosystems, ABPA seamlessly integrates data collection, analysis, and visualization, offering a holistic approach towards real time infrastructure maintenance. This research highlights the potential of digital ecosystems to drive sustainable transformations and enhance the well-being of cyclists and sustainable mobility. The findings contribute to the growing body of
knowledge in the intersection of digital technologies making a significant impact on fostering greener and more resilient mobility.

Keywords: AI, Machine Learning, Image recognition, CNN, Automatic detection, Conditions analysis, Bicycle paths, Surface
condition

Cite As

O. Tamine, J. Baier, "Advancing Sustainable Mobility Infrastructure and Environment Through
Automated Low Threshold Analyzation of Road and Cycling Path Surfaces", Engineering Intelligent
Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 9-17, 2024.

Blockchain Ecosystem Meet Supply Chain Ecosystem and an Application to Dairy Product Provenance

Pengdi Zhao — 2024-01-01

The demand from consumers about information transparency in raw materials, production, and manufacturing processes of the products they purchase is increasing in recent markets. The traceability and provenance of information across all stakeholders on the supply chain is becoming an essential requirement. In this paper, we design a model for a blockchain ecosystem to meet the supply chain ecosystem and an application for dairy farm product provenance. This model aims to provide a reliable provenance of dairy products for consumers based on the requirements and regulations. By adopting this model, consumers can receive all information from the public blockchain by scanning the QR code on the package of products. The overall benefits of this proposed model are discussed along with further applications in Australian Diary exportation trade.

Keywords: Supply Chain Ecosystem, Blockchain Ecosystem, Dairy Product, Provenance, Traceability

Cite As

P. Zhao, A. Jensen, T. Johnsen, "Blockchain Ecosystem Meet Supply Chain Ecosystem and an Application
to Dairy Product Provenance", Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 19-23, 2024.

Design Thinking for Sustainable Transformation: An Analysis Framework for Practitioners

Irma Lindt — 2024-01-01

Design Thinking is an approach to develop innovative solutions for challenging goals and problems with particular considerations of human needs. According to its openness to many problem areas it has a huge number of application possibilities. However, practitioners might not be aware which challenging problem might benefit from design thinking. To support them this paper presents a two-step analysis framework consisting of an identification sheet for design thinking and a method canvas. During the development process our analysis framework has been evaluated in some design challenges and in many workshops on design thinking.

Cite As

I. Lindt, W. Grather, "Design Thinking for Sustainable Transformation: An Analysis Framework
for Practitioners", Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 25-33, 2024.

Enabling Digital Transformation with Sustainability Criteria through Resilient Cybersecurity: Challenges and Opportunities

Michael Zipperle — 2024-01-01

Digital transformation, necessitating the integration of digital technology across all business domains, is vital for long-term business policies seeking competitive advantage in our interconnected global economy. Sustainable transformation requires resilient and trustworthy Digital Ecosystems and transparency with respect to sustainability criteria. However, cybersecurity threats are at an all-time high, accelerated by the expansion of digital footprints and the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) paradigm during the COVID-19 crisis. These risks are worsened by the straightforward misuse of the latest sophisticated cybersecurity educational platforms and Large Language Model (LLM)s. This study examines these challenges, proposes a conceptual framework for Cybersecurity-enabled DigitalTransformation (CeDT) to illustrate the interplay between cybersecurity
and digital transformation with sustainability criteria, and introduces a conceptual framework for Provenance-enabeld GraphAutoencoders for Anomaly Detection (PGAE-AD) as one potential security tool to detect cyber-security threats in continuously changing real-world environments. By providing a secure environment, these frameworks can be instrumental in facilitating digital transformation while minimizing associated cybersecurity risks.

Cite As

M. Zipperle, M. Becherer, Y. Zhang, E. Chang, T. Dillon, A. Karduck, "Enabling Digital
Transformation with Sustainability Criteria through Resilient Cybersecurity: Challenges
and Opportunities", Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 35-41, 2024.

Enabling Trustworthy Collaboration for Sustainable Transformation

Marius Becherer — 2024-01-01

As global resource consumption surges, the ‘Club of Rome’ highlights the risks of unchecked quantitative growth in our constrained world, advocating for a shift to qualitative growth. The Internet of Things (IoT)emerges as a pivotal tool in this transition, exemplified by its transformative impacts to coordinate complex activities efficiently while reducing resource consumption in cities like Barcelona and Singapore already today. However, intricate network challenges such as network control, interoperability, and resource constraints complicate efficient communication in a large-scale IoT network. Concurrently, establishing trust among diverse devices often becomes a paramount concern, hindering expansive collaboration across
domains and organisations. In response to these multifaceted challenges, the Social Internet of Things (SIoT) has been introduced to address intricate network challenges issues but also fosters a foundation of trust among devices. Despite, the potential benefits of developing trust in SIoT, one of the key challenges for the innovation adaption remains the determination of trust in continuously evolving and uncertain environments. Therefore, there is a need to understand specific situation and provide fine-grained trust mechanism to address multifaceted requirements and consider prevailing constraints of the environment. In this work, we study the existing literature on trust in the SIoT and present potential use cases of how trustworthy
collaboration between devices can help to enable the sustainable transformation. We discuss prevailing trust challenges and introduce a novel research framework for trustworthy collaboration to bridge the gap between theoretical trust research and their real-world applicability in the SIoT landscape. Achieving trustworthy collaboration between devices of various organisations will help to improve the activity orchestration while reducing resource consumption.

Keywords: Social Internet of Things, Trustworthiness, Collaboration, Sustainable Transformation, Trust Management, Trust Mechanism

Cite As

M. Becherer, M. Zipperle, O. Hussain, F. den Hartog, Y. Zhang, E. Chang, A. Karduck,
"Enabling Trustworthy Collaboration for Sustainable Transformation", Engineering
Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 43-51, 2024.

Automated House of Resilience with AI-based Measures

Aloïs Goeury — 2024-01-01

This paper presents the automated analysis of resilience capability and situation awareness of the capability readiness at one glance through the House of Resilience. We extend the concept of House of Quality into House of Resilience. The resilience attributes and measures were inspired by the work of Jnitova et al. (2022). However, such analysis is complex, usually manual and would take 3 weeks to 6 months to generate, and the interpretation of the result is another level of challenges for both junior or senior officers or employees or executives. because Resilience is an open-end concept, can be interpreted in many ways and resulting in different measures and leading to different understanding. To have a system that can unify the concept,
allow common and shared understanding of resilient capability and how it can be measured is the motivation of this study. There is no such tool available in the world. We research into open-source technology aimed at help represent the complex concept of Resilience in a simple and straight way, and we believe such system and approach will be very useful for any organization for resilience capability measure, whether it is related to workforce performance or professionalisation training systems and operation processes. This automated analysis and results visualisation represented by the House of Resilience allow quick understanding of strength and weakness of the capability readiness in near real tine or within few minutes of data collection.

Keywords: House of Resilience, Automation, Resilience Attributes, AI based Measures

Cite As

A. Goeury, E. Chang, "Automated House of Resilience with AI-based Measures",
Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 63-75, 2024.

Sustainability in the Software Industry: A Survey Study on the Perception, Responsibility, and Motivation of Software Practitioners

Dominic Lammert — 2024-01-01

While the topic of software sustainability is gaining increasing significance in academia, there is a need to explore its implementation in industrial practice. In this paper, we investigate how software practitioners assess sustainability as a topic within their profession. We conducted a survey study with 104 software practitioners, and the data provides evidence that companies assign moderate importance to sustainability. Different occupational roles indicate varying perceptions and levels of responsibility regarding the development of sustainable software products and services. Notably, technology-oriented roles (e.g., Software Engineers) exhibit lower valuation and responsibility of sustainability aspects compared to managementoriented
roles (e.g., Project Managers). The motivation to engage with sustainability shows a connection to business factors such as profitability, competitive opportunities, and risk mitigation. Consequently, researchers should give greater consideration to the circumstances and requirements of businesses, incorporating them into practical approaches to contribute to sustainability.

Keywords: software sustainability, sustainability design, software engineering, software industry

Cite As

D. Lammert, S. Betz, J. Porras, S. Oyedeji, "Sustainability in the Software Industry: A
Survey Study on the Perception, Responsibility, and Motivation of Software Practitioners",
Engineering Intelligent Systems, vol. 32 no. 1, pp. 77-84, 2024.