Smart Farming is a development that emphasizes the use of information and communication technology in the cyber-physical farm management cycle. New technologies such as the Internet of Things and ...Cloud Computing are expected to leverage this development and introduce more robots and artificial intelligence in farming. This is encompassed by the phenomenon of Big Data, massive volumes of data with a wide variety that can be captured, analysed and used for decision-making. This review aims to gain insight into the state-of-the-art of Big Data applications in Smart Farming and identify the related socio-economic challenges to be addressed. Following a structured approach, a conceptual framework for analysis was developed that can also be used for future studies on this topic. The review shows that the scope of Big Data applications in Smart Farming goes beyond primary production; it is influencing the entire food supply chain. Big data are being used to provide predictive insights in farming operations, drive real-time operational decisions, and redesign business processes for game-changing business models. Several authors therefore suggest that Big Data will cause major shifts in roles and power relations among different players in current food supply chain networks. The landscape of stakeholders exhibits an interesting game between powerful tech companies, venture capitalists and often small start-ups and new entrants. At the same time there are several public institutions that publish open data, under the condition that the privacy of persons must be guaranteed. The future of Smart Farming may unravel in a continuum of two extreme scenarios: 1) closed, proprietary systems in which the farmer is part of a highly integrated food supply chain or 2) open, collaborative systems in which the farmer and every other stakeholder in the chain network is flexible in choosing business partners as well for the technology as for the food production side. The further development of data and application infrastructures (platforms and standards) and their institutional embedment will play a crucial role in the battle between these scenarios. From a socio-economic perspective, the authors propose to give research priority to organizational issues concerning governance issues and suitable business models for data sharing in different supply chain scenarios.
•Big Data is expected to have a large impact on Smart Farming and involves the whole supply chain.•Smart sensors and devices produce big amounts of data that provide unprecedented decision-making capabilities.•Big Data is expected to cause major shifts in roles and power relations among traditional and non-traditional players.•Governance (incl. data ownership, privacy, security) and business models are key issues to be addressed in future research.
Imagining Twitter as an Imagined Community Gruzd, Anatoliy; Wellman, Barry; Takhteyev, Yuri
The American behavioral scientist (Beverly Hills),
10/2011, Letnik:
55, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The notion of “community” has often been caught between concrete social relationships and imagined sets of people perceived to be similar. The rise of the Internet has refocused our attention on this ...ongoing tension. The Internet has enabled people who know each other to use social media, from e-mail to Facebook, to interact without meeting physically. Into this mix came Twitter, an asymmetric microblogging service: If you follow me, I do not have to follow you. This means that connections on Twitter depend less on in-person contact, as many users have more followers than they know. Yet there is a possibility that Twitter can form the basis of interlinked personal communities—and even of a sense of community. This analysis of one person’s Twitter network shows that it is the basis for a real community, even though Twitter was not designed to support the development of online communities. Studying Twitter is useful for understanding how people use new communication technologies to form new social connections and maintain existing ones.
In recent decades, information and communication technology (ICT) has revolutionized the world affecting every aspect of life, including education, business, social activities, and environment. ...Consequently, the studies linking ICT and environmental sustainability are growing owing to its positive and adverse effects on environmental sustainability, and the noticeable disagreement in literature. Therefore, current work examines the criticality of ICT, human capital (education and return on education), and globalization in environmental sustainability, controlling urbanization and economic growth in the Latin American and Caribbean (LCA) region, where economic growth and globalization have substantially increased over the past three decades. Reliable panel econometric techniques, including second-generation unit root tests, Westerlund (2007, 2008) cointegration tests, and continuously-updated fully modified (CUP-BC) and continuously-updated bias-corrected (CUP-FM) long-run estimators are employed on the data for the period 1995–2017. The empirical estimations unfold that ICT (computed by a four components ICT index) and globalization contribute to reduce CO2 emissions. On the dark side, economic growth and urbanization degrade environment. Surprisingly, human capital adds to environmental degradation. The panel causality results reveal that ICT and globalization Granger cause CO2 emissions. These unique findings provide new insight to alleviate environmental degradation in the LCA region. Based on these outcomes, a comprehensive set of policies are directed for environmental sustainability.
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•We assess the productivity effects of R&D and ICT in a sample of nineteen industries in fourteen OECD countries between 1973 and 2007.•We identify four channels of transmission: input accumulation, ...technological change, technical efficiency and spillovers.•ICT has reduced technical inefficiency and generated inter-industry spillovers.•R&D has raised technical change and generated spillovers within sectors.•Over the time frame of our analysis ICT and R&D explain the 95% of TFP growth in the OECD area.
This study explores the channels through which technological investments affect productivity performance of industrialized economies. Using a Stochastic Frontier Model (SFM) we estimate the productivity effects of R&D and ICT for a large sample of OECD industries between 1973 and 2007, identifying four channels of transmission: input accumulation, technological change, technical efficiency and spillovers. Our results show that ICT has been particularly effective in reducing production inefficiency and in generating inter-industry spillovers, while R&D has raised the rate of technical change and favoured knowledge spillovers within sectors. We also quantify the contribution of technological investments to output and total factor productivity growth documenting that R&D and ICT accounted for almost 95% of productivity growth in the OECD area.
The increasing use of the Internet for service delivery has paralleled an increase of e-service users' privacy concerns as technology offers ample opportunities for organizations to store, process, ...and exploit personal data. This may reduce individuals' perceived ability to control their personal information and increase their perceived privacy risk. A systematic understanding of individuals' privacy concerns is important as negative user perceptions are a challenge to service providers' reputation and may hamper service delivery processes as they influence users' trust and willingness to disclose personal information. This study develops and validates a model that examines the effect of organizational privacy assurances on individual privacy concerns, privacy control and risk perceptions, trust beliefs and non-self-disclosure behavior. Drawing on a survey to 547 users of different types of e-services – e-government, e-commerce and social networking – in Rwanda, and working within the framework of exploratory analysis, this study uses partial least square-structural equation modeling to validate the overall model and the proposed hypotheses. The findings show that perceptions of privacy risks and privacy control are antecedents of e-service users' privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behavior. They further show that the perceived effectiveness of privacy policy and perceived effectiveness of self-regulations influence both perceptions of privacy risks and control and their consequences; users' privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behavior. The hypotheses are supported differently across the three types of e-services, which means that privacy is specific to context and situation. The study shows that the effect of privacy assurances on trust is different in e-government services than in other services which suggest that trust in e-government may be more complex and different in nature than in other contexts. The findings serve to enhance a theoretical understanding of organizational privacy assurances and individual privacy concerns, trust and self-disclosure behavior. They also have implications for e-service providers and users as well as for regulatory bodies and e-services designers.
•Perceptions of privacy risk-control influence privacy concerns, trust and self-disclosure behavior.•Privacy policy influences perceptions of privacy risk and/or control, privacy concerns, trust and self-disclosure behavior.•Organizational privacy self-regulations influence users’ privacy concerns, trust and non-self-disclosure behavior.•Organization's strategies in executing privacy policies may reflect how effective the organization is in protecting personal information.•Privacy and trust in e-government are influenced by the level of trust users have in the government and its organizations.
•Carbon mitigation effect of information and communication technology (ICT) investment is assessed.•ICT investment has an ideal decoupling state with carbon intensity in most economies.•Emission ...intensity of ICT investment contributes an increase of carbon emissions.•Efficiency of ICT investment is most significant factor in inhibiting emissions.•ICT industrial structure should be further improved in the post-pandemic era.
Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) economies are facing a substantial increase in the information and communication technology (ICT) investments in the context of rapid spread of the Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-2019) pandemic and constraints of emissions reduction. However, the mechanism of the impact of ICT investments on carbon dioxide is still unclear. Therefore, by employing the decoupling-factor model and Generalized Divisia Index Method, we explore the decoupling states of ICT investments and emission intensity, and the driving factors of ICT investments’ scale, intensity, structure, and efficiency effects on carbon emissions in 20 OECD economies between 2000 and 2018. The results indicate that the number of economies with an ideal state of strong decoupling rose to nine between 2009 and 2018 compared to no economies between 2000 and 2009. The emission intensity of ICT investments contributes to a significant increase of carbon emissions, and the structure and efficiency of ICT investments always restrain the growth of carbon emissions. Significant emissions changes caused by the driving factors are shown in many economies before and after the crisis, reflecting the differences in the strategic choices of ICT investments and the impact on emissions due to the crisis such as the COVID-2019 pandemic. And policy implications for energy and carbon dioxide mitigation strategies in the post-COVID-2019 era are also provided.
目的：訪問看護に従事する看護師のInformation and Communication ...Technology（以下ICT）スキルを測定する尺度を作成し，作成した尺度の信頼性と妥当性を検討する．方法：2022年5月，訪問看護ステーション1,000箇所の管理者宛てに調査依頼を郵送し，訪問看護に従事する看護師156名を分析対象者とした．調査内容は個人特性，訪問看護業務におけるICT機器使用状況，訪問看護業務に関連したICTスキル22項目とした．結果：3因子14項目が抽出され，因子1【医療情報を適切に保存・送信するスキル】，因子2【組織的セキュリティに関するスキル】，因子3【有効なパスワード設定と保護に関するスキル】と命名した．Cronbachのα係数は全体で0.91，因子1は0.88，因子2は0.79，因子3は0.76であった．GFIは0.91，AGFIは0.83，CFIは0.88，RMSEAは0.09，SRMRは0.06であった．結論：本尺度の信頼性・妥当性は許容範囲である．
While power system organization has evolved from a hierarchical structure to a more decentralized model, electricity markets are still not up to date with the ongoing transformation toward more ...consumer-centric economies. As information and communication technologies are broadly adopted, they allow prosumers to have a more proactive role in power system operation. This work introduces the concept of energy collectives, as a community-based electricity market structure. We find that when prosumers are allowed to share energy at community level, the overall electricity procurement for the community reflects prosumers' preferences. We show that community members can be influenced by a supervisory third-party in charge of interfacing with the market and system operator and of guaranteeing the collective common agreements. We simulate a number of test cases and apply typical principles from analysis of communication networks and distributed systems to assess community fairness.
In recent years, policymakers, international energy, and environmental organizations have posited that advancements in information and communication technology, digitalization, renewable energy, and ...financial development can facilitate a smoother and quicker transition toward a greener and smarter global economy. This study employs the Panel Vector Auto-Regression model to evaluate this assertion across the top ten most polluted countries from 1995 to 2018. The empirical findings indicate that while individual indicators of information and communication technology have mixed impacts, the utilization of a digitalization-based principal component analysis index provides strong evidence of digitalization's positive effect on environmental quality. Additionally, the results suggest that renewable energy and the economic complexity index also contribute to environmental improvement. Therefore, the empirical evidence underscores the significant role of digitalization, information and communication technology, and renewable energy in enhancing environmental sustainability in the most polluted countries. Moreover, the findings indicate that although a financial development shock initially worsens environmental quality in the first year, it leads to improvements from the second year onwards. These empirical insights offer various policy recommendations regarding information and communication technology, digitalization, renewable energy, and financial development, which could support the achievement of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
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•Impact of ICT/digitization, renewable energy and financial development on environmental quality.•We measure environmental degradation by ecological footprint and load capacity factor.•We use impulse response functions, variance decomposition and Granger causality via PVAR model.•Digitization, renewable energy, and financial development enhance the environment.•Urbanization and real GDP deteriorate the quality of the environment.
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