SLP- Information Sensitivity and Protection of Data Essay

SLP- Information Sensitivity and Protection of Data - Essay Example The reason why the present in-house learning system is that the hospital information system (HIS) has been described as one of the most complex, which if practitioners do not get very familiar with could lead to several health complications for service users (Miller and Sim, 2004). In addition to the in-house learning system, there has also been the acquisition of enough information system equipment and technology tools that caters for modern trends and changes in health service delivery. The assurance of confidentiality of data and information constitutes an ethical consideration for the new hospital information system implemented within the organization (Devaraj and Kohli, 2000). This is because it is important that the organization adheres to national and international provisions of health service delivery such as HIPAA regulations, which enshrines that patients receive maximum security and confidentiality on their data and information (Chaudhry et al, 2006). Presently, the organization uses a technology based policy that makes it impossible for data and information within the database of the organization to be accessed by people who are not directly involved in a given department of the organization to which the information belongs. For example, regardless of the network provision on the system, those in the pharmacy section cannot access information from the laboratory department without prior approval from the laboratory department. Moreover, there is the use o f a password system in the protection of data such that only a limited number of people are allowed access to the system. This policy also goes a long way to ensure reliability of data as the possibility that there will be doctoring of key information is almost an impossibility. Finally, there is a special biometric identification and coding system that identifies patients and people whose information is stored on the system rather than the use

Case Study 8-1 Aero Marine Logistics Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

8-1 Aero Marine Logistics - Case Study Example At the outset it seems that the second alternative is preferable. However, AML has expertise and capability to handle 20-foot containers. Their flatbed trailers can transport these containers. If they are to go for 40-foot containers it is not clear whether they have the capability of transporting such huge containers. Even if the transport can be arranged, it is not mentioned whether fitting larger flatbed trailers with refrigeration equipments will cost more than Rs 12 lakh. If it costs more, the second proposal may not remain more efficacious. Further, there is always a chance, albeit smaller, of one container getting waylaid or damaged. In that case, with the second proposal, the loss will be higher. Another potential risk may be that the promised 150,000 kg mushrooms per month may not be feasible. Then it will be easier to decommission one smaller container rather than one larger container. 4. Here the supply chain considered is based on an agricultural production. Mushroom is not an ordinary agricultural product. Special expertise is required for mushroom farming. Assuming the farming is done in Holland (since the port mentioned is Amsterdam), export of food item from there to India is considered. Farmers (Holland) Wholesellers/ Distributors (Holland) Food Processing Unit (Holland) Freshfoods (Holland) Shipping Company AML (India) Market (India) Consumers (India) 5. Costs are due to production (mushroom spawn, medium, labor), transport to distributors, storage, cost of freezing and storage in the Food Processing Units, power cost, containers and others as described in the case study, cost of setting up channels to market, cost of shelf display etc. At every stage labor cost is there as well as management cost. Then, even though it is not mentioned, there will be insurance premiums and shipping costs to be taken care of. Since it

Your opinion of the war against drugs (illegal drugs) Essay

Your opinion of the war against drugs (illegal drugs) - Essay Example Politicians understand that ‘tough talk’ on drugs gains votes by tapping into the parents’ natural instincts to protect their children. A politician’s promise to eradicate drugs is a popular sentiment amongst parents who wish to shield their kids from drugs. It is interesting that the debate on drug policies is simply that, drug policies, without distinction for the different types but youths certainly realize that there is a difference. This is evidenced by the fact that the great majority of youths who use illegal drugs choose the least harmful. The debate combines heroin with cannabis when attempting to find a solution to the problem but different drugs include widely different issues which require widely different solutions. America’s war against recreational drugs is an example of good intentions gone terribly wrong. While this country squanders over billions of dollars annually on the efforts to stop illegal drugs, trafficking and use continue as the related violence escalates. Those that want to continue the ‘war’ say that it is well worth the effort and money to try to stop the trafficking and use of illegal drugs because the practice increases criminal activity causes more pregnancies, suicide and disease especially for teens. The U.S. fights the ‘war on drugs’ by trying to inspect all cargo and passengers entering along any of the country’s 9,600 miles of land and sea borders, aboard any of the 200,000 ships, 900,000 aircraft, 135 million trucks, trains, buses or automobiles, in any of the 16 million containers or in some non-recorded boat, plane or other mode of entry (McCaffrey, 2005). It does this through search and seizure conducted by a variety of different agencies, depending upon the mode of transportation and port of entry. These agencies include the U.S. Customs Service, the U.S. Border Patrol and the Coast Guard as well as numerous state and local organizations and initiatives. Although it is reported that the

Should the government provide free public education to children of Essay - 2

Should the government provide free public education to children of illegal immigrants - Essay Example Critics’ against free public education for illegal immigrants a. Expense b. Threat c) Conclusion 2. Work cited Illegal Immigrants and Free Public Education America has been experiencing a high number of immigrants. Many people are leaving their countries heading to America in pursuit of job opportunities and better living standards. Some of these immigrants do not have the permit, or have expired visas or even improper documentation to be in America hence are illegal immigrants and may come with their families inclusive of their school going children. Although America advocates free primary school education, it has the challenge of whether or not to provide these children with free public education (Grandrath, 2011). This argument has been continuing for quite a long time, but no specific agreement reached. Education is crucial but expensive, hence the need for free public education. Though the provision for free public education to illegal immigrants still face challenge, the need is inevitable. Educational Goals Generally, every young individual has aspirations and expectations of a good future. It is considerably true that education is the key to self-development and sustainability. To enable the young individuals achieve their goals, America provides its’ citizens with free education in public schools. ... Education also renders an individual, political empowerment (Grandrath, 2011). This will make sure that the individuals are aware of the voting systems, rights, and freedom on any political freedom. Importance of free public education for illegal immigrants Providing education to children of illegal immigrants will reduce the rate of crimes in America. This is because when children are at school, their minds are busy and with constructive ideas. Ignoring such children may end up involving themselves with robbery, immoral behaviors, and all sorts of vices, following a common saying; an idle mind is a devils workshop. Therefore, educating such children shall contribute in upholding high morals in the society. Education is the foundation of development and actualization. Since every child has a goal and a dream to attain in future, refuting a child right to education interferes with his future (Longley, 2012). Although the security bodies argue that illegal immigrants are a threat to st ate security, educating their children will assist on enlightening them on the importance of peace and harmony in the society. Once educated, they may realize their talents and explore them in promoting the security issue in the states (Ramirez, 2008). Moreover, every economy faces labor shortage at any times due to the economic cycle. Providing such children with skills and knowledge will make sure that there is an adequate supply of labor. In return, this stable labor supply supports economic growth but leaving such children out of the education block, may translate that, important labor force has been ignored. Therefore, educating these children will solve the problem of labor importation to cater for the unfilled job vacancies which is a bit

Environmental Impact of Prescribed burning in the United States Essay Example for Free

Environmental Impact of Prescribed burning in the United States Essay The term prescribed burning refers to a management practice in which fire is used to burn a predetermined area under specified environmental conditions.   Burning in this case is used as a management tool in areas that are vulnerable to catching fire due to the ground cover that acts as fuel load. In addition, burning is considered to be the most environmentally friendly and cheapest method of having woody growth in an ecosystem controlled.   Prescribed burning in the United States is common. In this form of burning, controlled fires are used to burn a specified land area after proper planning which ensures that the present weather conditions are favorable for the burning. When weather conditions are not suitable for the burn, negative impact of the fire in the burnt areas is likely to be witnessed (Dale et al, 2009).   In the United States, prescribed burning is considered to be a very important management tool due to the benefits associated with it.   Both the landowners and the United States National Forest System have been using prescribed burning for many years. According to the United States fire policy in relation to the forest ecosystem, there is need to undertake prescribed burning in order to enhance the growth of commercial forests, prevent wildfire damage and to enhance fire dependent ecosystems.   However, prescribed burning has been criticized for its negative impact on the environment. For instance, prescribed burning results to the clearing of land or use of land for agricultural activities that have negative effects on the environment.   In this paper, the impact of prescribed burning on the environment in the United States will be discussed.   The paper will focus on the effect of prescribed burning on land after it is cleared by prescribed fires.   Land clearing that results from the burning impacts negatively on the vegetation, soil, water and biodiversity. Thesis In the United States prescribed burning is made necessary by the conditions in the forest ecosystems or ranches. The burning aims at preventing wildfires that can damage properly or lead to death of the people if the fuel load on the ground encourages wild fires.   In addition, the United States national forest system undertakes prescribed burning activities due to the ecological benefits that burning gives to the forests.   The national forest system associates prescribed burning to the reduction of wildfire hazards, land improvement, game habitat enhancement, insect and disease management and site preparation for reforestation (Biswell, 1999). Examples of areas that have undergone prescribed burning activities include the California wild lands, Florida Flatwoods and the Southern eastern US National Forest.   It is important to realize that although prescribed burning in these areas has its benefits to the ecosystem and the people; it also impacts negatively on the environment over time. Negative environmental impact of prescribed burning occurs despite the fact that prescribed burning is planned in a manner that minimizes negative effects of burning on the environment.   This has made the issue of prescribed burning to become a subject of debate in the country .While some consider prescribed burning to reduce negative impact of wild fires on the environment, burning can also impact negatively on the environment.   Land clearing that result from the burning has negative effect on the environment. Discussion Negative impact of Prescribed burning on vegetation after clearing of land Prescribed burning results to the clearing of land in a predetermined area as the fire burns the fuel load.   The burning has both indirect and direct negative effects after land clearing by the fire.   Land clearing in turn has negative effects on the vegetation, water, soil and wildlife. The negative impact of prescribed burning in the United States has been witnessed in some areas because prescribed burning has become a very important activity in the country. Every year, hundreds of thousands of hectares are burned. Although various methods of burning are used burn the vegetation cover in the predetermined areas, fires destroy the existing vegetation by either injuring or killing the entire plant or parts of the plant.   This depends on the duration that the fire burns or the intensity of the fire.   Prescribed burning based on the slash reduction method results to the reduction of debris. This method is also used to reduce debris in case of a natural event or road construction.   When management ignited fire is used, the burning of a stand that has been established is done while ensuring that fire does not spread beyond the predetermined area. While small trees are completely burned during the burning, larger trees may survive the fires but some of their trees may be destroyed.   When fires are ignited, the burning forest fuels increase the temperatures which make it difficult for the vegetation to survive. Since when it comes to burning the temperature of the vegetation and that of the air are very important, people who have the responsibility to ignite fires should do it when the air and vegetation temperatures cannot encourage fires that can have adverse effects on the environment.   For instance, prescribed fires in the United States during winter top kill the hard woods while hardwood rootstocks are killed by summer burns. In areas where burning has not been done for a longtime, deep organic layer that accumulates during prescribed burning leads to the cambial damage of trees. Because only little heat is required to destroy the plant cells in growing plants, burning the vegetation kills growing plants. This leads to the short and long term destruction of the vegetation which over time exposes land to changes that impact negatively on the good conditions of the environment. One short term and long term impact of prescribed burning in the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National parks in the United States is the change in species composition (Mary Berth, 2000).   This change alters proper functioning of the ecosystem since it leads to the growth of new species while those that earlier existed and are not tolerant to fire before the fire fail to regenerate. These two parks are located in California’s South Nevada areas.   The parks cover about 864, 383 acres of land and prescribed burning in these two parks was made necessary by the desire to initiate ecological benefits in the parks.   The two parks prescribed fire programs were developed in 1969 and continues to be implemented in order to reduce fuel hazard problem that may result from heavy surface fuel loads.   Though the fires have been used to reduce the damage that may result from severe wild fires, change in species composition due to the clearing of land by fires has over the years been witnessed in the parks. Fires have limited the growth of species that are not tolerant to the fire ignited over a long time.   For instance, the increase in relative density of the giant Sequoia due to prescribed fires over a long time has altered the growth and survival of some other plant species.   The successful fire regimes restoration in the parks has encouraged the regeneration of the species that are fire-adapted at the expense of the species that are less-adapted to fire.   The reduction of fuel load and the restoration of forest structure after the fires alter the number and pattern of growth of plant species.   The parks have conifer forests dominated by the sequoia species. The change in the species number in a forest ecosystem affects the proper functioning of the natural ecosystem and this may lead to bare ground and soil erosion when plants and animals that promote proper functioning of the ecosystem are eliminated from the environment. In ecologically sensitive habitats in the United States, prescribed fires have had adverse effects on the regeneration and survival of plant species.   For example, the riparian areas in a forest system.   A study carried out to determine the effect of prescribed fire on the riparian areas in the Dark Canyon area showed that the fire consumed 90 per cent of the ground fuel, 79 per cent of the riparian zone pre-fire fuel, and 34 per cent of the total surface fuel.   The fire significantly reduced the percentage cover of the surface vegetation (Beche et al, 2005). As compared to the unburned areas, the burned area showed a change in the plant taxa richness after the regeneration of vegetation.   The reduction in plant taxa cover and richness changed the under story riparian vegetation community composition. These changes show that when an area experiences prescribed burning for a long time, disappearance of some species can lead to reduction in the percentage of vegetative cover. In the California Oak woodlands, the Native Americans used fire to have the Oak woodland vegetation altered.   Prescribed fires are considered to reduce the under story woody vegetation and have the tree density is lowered.   After the fires, regeneration may result to growth of vegetation in patches.   Since the settlement of Euro-Americans in the area, prescribed fire ignited in an ecosystem to create land for livestock ranches has removed the vegetation cover and instead encouraging the growth of plant species that are good for forage production. The woody vegetation in the area has been affected.Eventually, reduced vegetation cover has made it easy for soil to be exposed to either wind or rain erosion.Prescribed fires in Oregon’s Mixed – conifer forests of Crater Lake over the years have altered species composition by killing species that are not fire resistant while providing favorable conditions for the regeneration of fire-resistant species (Agee, 2003).   The Crater Lake National park has in the past prescribed a fire program that aims at increasing growth of pine trees and killing of the white fir tree species in the park.   Natural ecosystems can undergo succession to form forests that are dominated by the hardwood. The southeast region in the United States is considered to be the most fire dependent area in the country.   The removal of fuel loads in burned areas impacts negatively on the environment when over time plant species that support proper functioning of an ecosystem are eliminated. This makes an ecosystem to be vulnerable to changes that have adverse effects on the environment.

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW)

Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Abstract- In the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) domain, researchers have always wondered about which principles and models to adopt for the development of collaborative applications capable to really meet the needs of their users. However, these users requirements are unpredictable and depend on several task or environment-related factors. Integrated collaborative environments are rarely open, extensible and reconfigurable enough so as to meet these requirements. This paper presents an environment, called LEICA (Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications), allowing the integration of existing cooperative applications. LEICA adopts a loosely-coupled integration approach which is based on Web services Services technology, an event notification system, and the definition of Collaboration Policies to control the interactions among integrated applications. LEICA allows different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled, enhancing therefore the flexibility. Through a case study we show how LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, an instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. Index Terms-Collaborative work, integrated collaborative environments, web services. INTRODUCTION Advances in networking and computing technologies, combined with the fact that companies and work teams are becoming geographically distributed, have created increased a need for communication technologies to ease distance collaboration among distributed individuals (virtual work teams). This leads to the appearing of the so-called Integrated Collaboration Environments (ICEs), having as main goal to integrate different collaborative applications together into a single easy-to-use operational environment [1]. Users needs are very frequently unpredictable and depending on several emerging factors, including the size of the workgroup, the collaborative activities to be accomplished, the intensiveness of the required communications, the coordination policy and the communication needs of the workgroup. Therefore, the possibility of dynamically integrating new functionalities to the environment appears as an important characteristic for collaborative applications [3]. Supporting the integration of new collaborative functionalities reflects how flexible the environment is while responding to unpredictable users needs. We can define this characteristic as integration flexibility that denotes the ease with which an ICE can be its functionalities in response to the users needs. Nowadays one of the main problems of ICEs is that their lack of integration flexibility and as consequence various users decide to set-up their own environments composing different collaborative applications executed independently. In this case, each application is completely isolated from others, without any possibility of coordination among them. This lack of integration can lead to a loss of control from the part of the user, since the operation environment is particularly artificial. Promoting the integration flexibility of ICEs could bring significant benefits to users, allowing different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled (enhancing therefore the flexibility itself). For instance, a whiteboard application can be integrated with an instant messaging application in such a way that whenever a user joins an instant messaging room, he is automatically logged into the same whiteboard session, instead of been forced to manually login into a session of each one of these collaborative tools. Another case could be the integration of a distributed game and an audio conference application. Whenever a user avatar enters a level/place into the game, his is logged into the audio conference session associated to that level/place, so that the users can online discuss with each other. In order to achieve the integration of existing collaborative applications without having to deal with their low-level features, this work presents LEICA, a Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications. Relying on Web services Services (WS) technologies and an event notification system, different collaborative applications can interoperate by exchanging information within the context of a global collaborative session. The loosely-coupled approach proposed by LEICA overcomes a key problem usually related to integration environments it does not require a true semantic integration of applications. Accordingly, it supports further integration possibilities, such as the integration of third party applications, enhancing, thus, flexibility. LEICA also offers flexibility in the level of the integration semantics. Based on Collaboration Policies to control the interactions between integrated applications, LEICA provides means to define how the collaboration activity supported by one collaborative application will be affected by information received from other collaborative applications. In practice, these collaborative applications interact through the notification of events which may lead to performing specific action(s) in some of these applications themselves. As we will explain later in detail, we think that once a collaborative session has been configured, the use of LEICA can improve users productivity by reducing the application-related administrative tasks, focusing precisely on the collaboration activity itself, and all that by just by interpreting the rules stated for a particular session, all this in function of some pre-established policy rules (also to be explained in detail later). In this way users will find a more natural collaboration environment from the users point of view. In order to illustrate the usability of LEICA in real-world conditions, this paper presents a case study that demonstrates the capability of LEICA to integrate collaborative applications. In this case study, LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. The paper is structured as follows. Section II presents related work regarding the integration of CSCW systems. Section III overviews the general integration approach proposed by LEICA. Section IV explains how to specify Collaboration Policies. Section V presents the LEICAs architecture, detailing how to integrate applications in practice. Some implementation issues are considered in section VI. Section VII describes a case study illustrating the use of LEICA. Finally, in section VIII we draw some conclusions and presents directions of future work. RELATED WORK There are several works oriented to improving integration flexibility of collaborative environments. In this context, four main approaches can be identified: user-tailorable solutions; CSCW toolkits; middleware based solutions; and platforms for integration of heterogeneous collaborative systems. User-Tailorable Solutions As stated in [2], different definitions of tailorability can be found in the literature. Most of them focus on user tailorability ([3], [4], [5] [6]) defining that a tailorable application can be adapted and modified by its own users in order to meet their different requirements. In CSCW, tailorability must focus on the requirements of the group task and of the organization, in which the CSCW system is used [5]. Actually, tailorability is one of the main concerns of groupware development methods. For example, application of participatory design methods ([7] [8]) has been proposed in order to approach the user involvement during groupware development, augmenting thus the opportunities for tailoring. According to [6], tailoring can be supported in three different levels: customization, selecting among a set of predefined configuration options; integration, linking together predefined components within or between applications; extension, improving the implementation by adding new program code. Most of user-tailorable groupware tools support only the customization or integration level (e.g. [2] [9]). Note that the integration level supposes that the functionality to be integrated has been pre-developed and is available somewhere [6]. Only at the extension level users would be able to integrate new functionalities, even if they have not been anticipated by developers at design time. A method frequently used for supporting tailoring at the extension level is the component-based tailoring. For example, in [10], components are implemented using Flexibeans (an extension of the Java Beans model) and end-users tailor the system using a composition language. In [11], end-users may assemble components into larger composite components using the visual representation rather than writing lines of code. However, even at the extension level the integration flexibility is partial as the integration of existing collaborative systems or groupware would require them to be redesigned according to the system architecture. CSCW Toolkits CSCW toolkits ease the implementation of CSCW systems by providing reusable components and behaviors designed to be applicable in a range of circumstances [12]. The need for flexibility and tailorability in CSCW toolkits is well acknowledged. The Neem Platform [13] offers a generic (application-neutral) evolvable framework upon which socially and culturally aware applications are developed. Flexibility and extensibility in Neem result from its foundation on a core architectural coordination model [13]: decoupled components interact indirectly through message exchanges. Intermezzo [14] is a collaboration support environment supporting the coordination information sharing, offering fluid interactions, user awareness, session management and policy control. It addresses dynamic flexibility [12] by allowing applications to adapt not just their own behavior, but also the behavior of the toolkit in reacting to the changing dynamics of the world they run into. The Groupware Toolkit/Shared Dictionary (or GT/SD) toolkit [15][16] has been developed to support rapid development of groupware, focusing mainly on networking and data sharing aspects. GT/SDs extensibility is based on its modular design, which allows adding or modifying behavior by replacing or wrapping different components. Toolkits may represent an interesting solution for helping the development of CSCW systems, as they promote the reuse of components. But in general, CSCW toolkits offer a limited set of functionalities or they are target for some specific kind of domain. Besides, to reuse components of the toolkit, developers often need to implement very specific details of the toolkit in order to adapt it to the application needs [16][17]. Middleware based solutions The integration of heterogeneous applications has been a widely investigated subject, mainly in distributed systems area. General integration solutions based on middleware, like CCM (CORBA Component Model), .NET and Enterprise JavaBeans have been developed. Moreover, integration solutions associated with specific domains have also been proposed, such as Enterprise Application Integration systems [17][18]. The emergence of Web services WS has also led to the development of general solutions for integration of distributed applications, due mainly to the use of open standards. In the CSCW domain, some middleware-based solutions have been proposed. Dustdar et al. [18][19] discuss the importance of using Web services WS in order to provide collaborative application interoperability. But in order to be integrated, collaborative applications must originally support Web servicesWS. Even if Web servicesWS represent an emerging software trend, only a limited set of collaborative applications are currently supporting these technologies. As an enhancement to traditional middleware, some SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) solutions have also been proposed. For example, WGWSOA [19][20] uses Web ServicesWS as an access interface in order to support the reuse and the interoperability of different collaborative services. But an important drawback of WGWSOA is that collaborative services must be developed following the respective middleware architecture. It is also important to note that like WGWSOA, most middleware based solutions present technical responses to the so called syntactic interoperability [20][21]. They provide mechanisms allowing applications to communicate and interact through information exchange. But according to [21][22], the integration concept goes beyond the possibility of sharing and exchanging specific information. Applications must agree upon the meaning (or the semantics) of these exchanges. In other words, integration solutions should provide means for defining integration semantics. Thus, interoperability can be seen as a requirement for integration. The EcoSpace Project [22][23] proposes an environment that, besides being based on SOA and Web servicesWS, relies on Semantic Web technologies (WSDL-S with services ontologies) to support semantic description of collaborative services. Besides a semantic description of each service, it would be necessary a semantic description of the composition of services so as to coordinate their orchestration. However, this part of the project remains as design aspect. Moreover, using Web serviceWSs as integration technology may imply some performance loss, particularly associated to the use of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) [23][24]. Luo et al. [24][25] claim that Web ServicesWS should be only used in situations which are really heterogeneous. They propose a service-oriented solution for the integration of collaborative applications that, instead of using SOAP, adopts a unified service bus (implemented through an open source Enterprise Service Bus). Platforms for integrating heterogeneous collaborative systems The latter latest approach to improve the integration flexibility of collaborative environments is to create platforms aiming specifically at the integration of collaborative applications. They focus on the integration of collaborative functionalities provided by these applications while trying to define any semantics behind integration. Iqbal et al. [25][26] propose an integrative framework based on the three-level model presented by [26][27]: the Ontological Model specifies shared objects, their relations and taxonomies; the Coordination Model specifies how interactions take place during system execution; and the User Interface Model specifies how the system is presented to the final user. Integration process consists firstly in identifying, for each collaborative application, the elements associated with these three models. Then, on each level the elements from different applications are grouped and merged when equivalent. As a result, common ontological, coordination and user interface models are generated. In spite of enabling a multi-level integration, this approach requires an internal knowledge of the collaborative applications so that their functionalities can be mapped into the three-level model. Accordingly, the integration of third party applications becomes a complex task. In order to avoid considering application internals during the integration process (facilitating the integration of existing applications), some integration solutions propose the so called loosely-coupled approach. This approach presents two main features: (i) once integrated to the environment, collaborative applications preserve their autonomy, i.e., they can still be used as standalone application; (ii) the integration environment remains independent of integrated applications, and accordingly, applications can be integrated and detached from the environment without compromising its behavior. This last feature is particularly important considering the integration flexibility aspect. In fact, in a loosely-coupled environment, the set of integrated applications must be easily modified according to users needs. Systems like AREA [27][28] and NESSIE [28][29] have proposed a loosely-coupled integration for supporting cross-application awareness. Both systems represent a collaborative environment where independent applications can share a common information space, implemented through an event notification system. Users can receive notifications of activity relevant events from different applications (executed by other users). An important aspect of these systems is the use of open Internet technologies (such as HTTP and CGI) to enable the integration of third party collaborative applications. However, the main drawback of both systems is that the integration semantics is statically defined collaborative applications are integrated so as to offer a common awareness of the whole collaboration activity. Another proposal also based on a loosely-coupled approach is the framework XGSP [29][30]. XGSP proposes the integration of audio and videoconferencing tools based on SIP and H.323 standards, as well as the integration of Access Grid applications [30][31]. In this framework, XGSP manager servers are in charge of controlling collaborative sessions. A different gateway is defined for each application type (i.e. SIP, H.323 and Access Grid applications). Using a signaling protocol based on Web servicesWS, these gateways are employed to mediate the communication between applications and XGSP servers. An important disadvantage of XGSP is the fact that, originally, it only allows the integration of application based on SIP, H.323 and Access Grid. Loosely-coupling is also inherent to the Web servicesWS based solutions presented in the previous section. Similarly to those solutions, LEICA represents an integration environment that proposes a loosely-coupled approach based on Web servicesWS technologies. Regarding the performance implications of SOAP, Alonso et al. [31][32] suggest that Web ServicesWS technologies should be used only to implement coarse-gained interactions, where the impact of the overhead associated to SOAP would be less important. Following the recommendations of [31][32], Web servicesWS are employed by LEICA for coarse-grained operations only. As it will be detailed in the following sections, LEICA defines a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied as an initial mechanism for registering newly integrated applications, as well as for setting and starting up collaborative sessions. Then, during the execution of integrated collaborative sessions a different infrastructure is used to interconnect collaborative applications. Another important aspect concerns integration semantics. Unlike the previous solutions, LEICA provides users with the possibility to define the desired integration semantics for each collaborative session. The Integration Environment: LEICA LEICA aims at the integration of different collaborative applications, where integration semantics is to be defined according to user requirements. Before explaining the general integration approach and the behavior of LEICA, a possible scenario is presented to better illustrate the advantages of such integration. Integration Scenario An important domain where collaborative environments have been largely used is e-Learning. In particular, a CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) can be used to implement a 3D shared world representing a school building divided into: one entrance hall, classrooms, and teachers rooms. Different collaborative applications could be associated to each room: (i) a chat room associated to the entrance hall; (ii) a collaborative web browsing (it would enable teachers to guide students through lecture notes) and an audio conference tool associated to the classrooms; and (iii) a shared whiteboard associated to each of the teachers room. Un paragraphe pour montrer la situation: Utilisation des outils non integrà ©es, et lintà ©gration avec LEICA. With this integration semantics, whenever an avatar enters into a room, the respective user is automatically connected to the associated collaborative application(s). Besides, only authorized users should enter into private rooms (e.g. the teachers rooms with its whiteboard could be restricted to teachers). Another possible behavior specified by this integration semantics is some kind of floor coupling between the two applications used as a support for virtual class sessions. This way, it would be possible to assure that the user holding the Web browsing floor (i.e. the one guiding the lecture notes browsing) is the only one to have the right to speak to the class attendees. General Integration Approach As previously mentioned, and illustrated in Fig. 1, LEICA follows a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied at the collaborative sessions start up, and an event notification system allows collaborative applications to interact through the exchange of event notifications. Two other basic components of LEICA are the Wrappers and the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The integration of a collaborative application to LEICA is achieved by attaching a Wrapper to it. Three main cases may be considered: a) open source applications, b) API-based applications, and c) applications without any available API. Integration of open source applications can achieve the tightest interaction degree, since any internal event/action can be exported/performed; it might however imply great development efforts. API-based integration is straightforward, and interaction is limited to the provided API. Applications without API are the most limitating ones, constraining to interact only through application start and stop actions. LEICAs integration approach is mainly driven by case (b), believing that developers are certainly interested in creating specific and performable collaboration tools that can be used either stand-alone or integrated with other applications (through a flexible API, being able to get a great share of the market). This is for instance the case of Skypeâ„ ¢, a successful example of communication tool that has released its API since some time ago. Fig. 2 summarizes LEICAs general integration framework. The first step of the LEICAs integration framework is the Collaborative Application Integration. For instance, in the illustrative scenario presented in III.A, the first step to integrate the CVE with the instant messenger (supporting the chat room associated to the entrance hall), the collaborative Web browser and the audio conference applications, it is necessary to create a Wrapper for each one of these applications. As detailed in Section V, these wrappers can be automatically generated by LEICAs API Factory, based on the API description of each collaborative application. The Wrappers comprise a Web services Services WS interface allowing the collaborative application to register itself with LEICA. As illustrated by Fig. 1, through the Wrappers Web servicesWS ports, the integrated application can interact with the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The SCS is a Web service Service WS used for (i) configuring new global SuperSessions and (ii) starting up SuperSessions. A SuperSession is an integrated collaborative session holding the whole collaboration activity. Within the context of a global SuperSession, different specificSessions can exist. A specificSession is a conventional collaborative session defined within the context of a collaborative application (e.g. a videoconference session, a whiteboard session, etc.). The SCS dynamically contacts each integrated application, during the SuperSession configuration process, in order to request: (i) which specific data is required to create specificSessions for this respective application (e.g. a videoconference tool could require an IP multicast address); and (ii) which kind of events it can notify, and action requests it can handle. The interaction degree among the integrated applications depends essentially on the nature of the events they are able to exchange, and actions they are able to perform. In order to create a SuperSession, a user must define its integration semantics. It is accomplished by configuring the Collaboration Policy. A Collaboration Policy is a set of rules under a condition/action model. These rules define how collaborative applications must react when receiving information (events) notified by other integrated applications. In other words, the specification of Collaboration Policies allows defining specific integration semantics (i.e. how to coordinate integrated applications) to each SuperSession, according to the different users requirements. Once a SuperSessions has been created (and its associated configuration file is generated), it can finally be started up. The SCS firstly contacts each integrated collaborative application requesting them to create the specificSessions defined in the SuperSession. Then, during the execution of collaborative sessions the integrated application can interact through the exchange of event using the Event Notification System. According to predefined Collaboration Policies, these notifications may lead specific actions to be performed. Wrappers are in charge of managing the SuperSessions Collaboration Policy. When the Wrapper of a collaborative application receives event notifications, it verifies if the notified events enable any policy rule concerning this collaborative application. If so, the Wrapper sends action requests to the respective application. Note that LEICA is not intended to support low-level physical events (e.g. mouse click/scrolling) or high frequency synchronization events (e.g. current position of moving objects). It aims at supporting activity relevant events that carry some semantics. SuperSession Concept As previously mentioned, LEICA controls the whole collaboration activity within the context of a global SuperSession. A SuperSession model has been defined in order to precisely identify and describe its components. Based on this model, LEICA maintains concise and coherent SuperSession state information. Furthermore, a well-defined taxonomy of the components and their attributes are also implied from the model. General models for describing collaborative applications have already been proposed in the literature. Some of them [26][27] [32][33] represent a conceptual or ontological model describing the entities and relationships of individual CSCW systems. Few models aim at describing integrated CSCW systems, like OOActSM [33][34] and the conceptual model presented in [34][35]. However, these models are based on the notion of a general activity as the central abstraction, which was considered rather abstract for a detailed specification of the SuperSession. Nevertheless, these models have inspired several concepts adopted in the defined SuperSession model. The SuperSession represents a collaboration activity involving different integrated applications, a group of users and general roles associated to these users. Formally, a CIE Session CS is a tuple: SS = (SSid, CA , NA , Rl , U , SSat) where: SSid is a unique identifier; CA = {CAi } | i ÃŽ [1,I]} is a finite set of collaborative applications where CAi = (CAidi, spSi, CAati) a specific collaborative application running a set of specificSessions (sSi). CAati is a list of attributes characterizing the collaborative application. These attributes provide information about the application description, including name, type, whether it is a role-based application, its distribution architecture (client/server, multi-servers, peer-to-peer) and the type of user applications (stand-alone or webWeb-based).); NA is a finite set of non-collaborative applications (data converters, databases, web applications, etc.); Rl = {Rlk } | k ÃŽ [1,K]} is a finite set of general roles. The concept of general role refers to a group of users owning the same set of responsibilities and privileges inside LEICA; Rlk = (Rlidk , Rlatk). Rlidk is a unique role identifier; and Rlatk is a list of attributes characterizing this general role. This list provides details like roles description, membership and administration rights. Regarding the membership, it defines how the role is associated with users: it may be either (i) a static association (there is a membership list), (ii) an automatic association (there is a predicate function based on users parameters and SuperSession state) or (iii) a users choice (password protected or not).); U = {Ul } | l ÃŽ [1,L]} is a finite set of connected users; Ul = (Uidl, URlidl, Mbl, Uatl) represent a user, where Uidl is a unique identifier; URlidl is one general role associated with the user; Mbl is a finite set of membership relations; Uatl is a list of attributes (name, email, IP address, network connection, device type, etc.); Mbl.n = (mCAidl.n , mSidl.n , msRlidl.n) is a membership relation, where mCAidl.n is an application identifier; mSidl.n is a specificSession identifier; msRlidl.n is a finite set of specific roles identifiers. Thus, each membership relation indicates the participation of a connected user to a specificSession of a collaborative application (once connected to the SuperSession, a user can concurrently take part in none, one or more specificSessions of different collaborative applications); SSat is a list of attributes characterizing the SuperSession. These attributes describe information like session context (name, purpose, etc.), scheduling (if scheduled or not, duration, etc.), accessibility type (open or closed), role association type (how users are associated to a general role) and maximum number of connected users. A specificSession regards a conventional collaborative session of a collaborative application. The role of the specificSession entity (spSi.m), wich is formally represented by the tuple: spSi.m = (Sidi.m, sRli.m, pUidi.m, Rsi.m, spSati.m) is not to precisely describe each aspect of a collaborative task. Instead, it captures relevant elements like the specific roles defined for this session (sRli.m), the users participating to this session (pUidi.m.) and the shared resources accessed by these users (Rsi.m). A specific role is a tuple, sRli.m.o = (sRlidi.m.o, sRlati.m.o), where sRlidi.m.o is a specific role identifier and sRlati.m.o is a list of attributes characterizing the specific role (description and maximum number of simultaneous users). A resource is also a tuple Rsi.m.p= (urli.m.p, Rsati.m.p ), where urli.m.p is a resource locator and Rsati.m.p is a list of attributes characterizing the resource. The purpose of the resource element is simply to allow the implementation of an inter-application access control mechanism. LEICA will not need to keep the state of each resource. Thus, resources attributes just describe its type (file, device, virtual object, interface widget, etc.) and the read/write access type (exclusive or concurrent). SuperSession Configuration In order to create a SuperSession, a two step configuration process is carried out: (i) Session Management configuration and (ii) Collaboration Policy configuration. In the first configuration step, two groups of information should be specified: General Session Management information (GSMinfo): It carries management information such as scheduling, membership and general user roles.; Integrated Applications information (IAinfo): It defines the list of integrated applications to be used during this SuperSession; for each collaborative application, a list of specificSessions is defined, where specific data required by this application for creating sessions is provided (e.g. a videoconference application will be provided with an IP multicast address). Once Session Management configuration is completed, the Collaboration Polic Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) Abstract- In the Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW) domain, researchers have always wondered about which principles and models to adopt for the development of collaborative applications capable to really meet the needs of their users. However, these users requirements are unpredictable and depend on several task or environment-related factors. Integrated collaborative environments are rarely open, extensible and reconfigurable enough so as to meet these requirements. This paper presents an environment, called LEICA (Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications), allowing the integration of existing cooperative applications. LEICA adopts a loosely-coupled integration approach which is based on Web services Services technology, an event notification system, and the definition of Collaboration Policies to control the interactions among integrated applications. LEICA allows different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled, enhancing therefore the flexibility. Through a case study we show how LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, an instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. Index Terms-Collaborative work, integrated collaborative environments, web services. INTRODUCTION Advances in networking and computing technologies, combined with the fact that companies and work teams are becoming geographically distributed, have created increased a need for communication technologies to ease distance collaboration among distributed individuals (virtual work teams). This leads to the appearing of the so-called Integrated Collaboration Environments (ICEs), having as main goal to integrate different collaborative applications together into a single easy-to-use operational environment [1]. Users needs are very frequently unpredictable and depending on several emerging factors, including the size of the workgroup, the collaborative activities to be accomplished, the intensiveness of the required communications, the coordination policy and the communication needs of the workgroup. Therefore, the possibility of dynamically integrating new functionalities to the environment appears as an important characteristic for collaborative applications [3]. Supporting the integration of new collaborative functionalities reflects how flexible the environment is while responding to unpredictable users needs. We can define this characteristic as integration flexibility that denotes the ease with which an ICE can be its functionalities in response to the users needs. Nowadays one of the main problems of ICEs is that their lack of integration flexibility and as consequence various users decide to set-up their own environments composing different collaborative applications executed independently. In this case, each application is completely isolated from others, without any possibility of coordination among them. This lack of integration can lead to a loss of control from the part of the user, since the operation environment is particularly artificial. Promoting the integration flexibility of ICEs could bring significant benefits to users, allowing different functionalities of existing applications to be dynamically combined and controlled (enhancing therefore the flexibility itself). For instance, a whiteboard application can be integrated with an instant messaging application in such a way that whenever a user joins an instant messaging room, he is automatically logged into the same whiteboard session, instead of been forced to manually login into a session of each one of these collaborative tools. Another case could be the integration of a distributed game and an audio conference application. Whenever a user avatar enters a level/place into the game, his is logged into the audio conference session associated to that level/place, so that the users can online discuss with each other. In order to achieve the integration of existing collaborative applications without having to deal with their low-level features, this work presents LEICA, a Loosely-coupled Environment for Integrating Collaborative Applications. Relying on Web services Services (WS) technologies and an event notification system, different collaborative applications can interoperate by exchanging information within the context of a global collaborative session. The loosely-coupled approach proposed by LEICA overcomes a key problem usually related to integration environments it does not require a true semantic integration of applications. Accordingly, it supports further integration possibilities, such as the integration of third party applications, enhancing, thus, flexibility. LEICA also offers flexibility in the level of the integration semantics. Based on Collaboration Policies to control the interactions between integrated applications, LEICA provides means to define how the collaboration activity supported by one collaborative application will be affected by information received from other collaborative applications. In practice, these collaborative applications interact through the notification of events which may lead to performing specific action(s) in some of these applications themselves. As we will explain later in detail, we think that once a collaborative session has been configured, the use of LEICA can improve users productivity by reducing the application-related administrative tasks, focusing precisely on the collaboration activity itself, and all that by just by interpreting the rules stated for a particular session, all this in function of some pre-established policy rules (also to be explained in detail later). In this way users will find a more natural collaboration environment from the users point of view. In order to illustrate the usability of LEICA in real-world conditions, this paper presents a case study that demonstrates the capability of LEICA to integrate collaborative applications. In this case study, LEICA was successfully used to integrate three collaborative applications: a co-browsing tool, instant messaging tool and a VoIP conference controller. The paper is structured as follows. Section II presents related work regarding the integration of CSCW systems. Section III overviews the general integration approach proposed by LEICA. Section IV explains how to specify Collaboration Policies. Section V presents the LEICAs architecture, detailing how to integrate applications in practice. Some implementation issues are considered in section VI. Section VII describes a case study illustrating the use of LEICA. Finally, in section VIII we draw some conclusions and presents directions of future work. RELATED WORK There are several works oriented to improving integration flexibility of collaborative environments. In this context, four main approaches can be identified: user-tailorable solutions; CSCW toolkits; middleware based solutions; and platforms for integration of heterogeneous collaborative systems. User-Tailorable Solutions As stated in [2], different definitions of tailorability can be found in the literature. Most of them focus on user tailorability ([3], [4], [5] [6]) defining that a tailorable application can be adapted and modified by its own users in order to meet their different requirements. In CSCW, tailorability must focus on the requirements of the group task and of the organization, in which the CSCW system is used [5]. Actually, tailorability is one of the main concerns of groupware development methods. For example, application of participatory design methods ([7] [8]) has been proposed in order to approach the user involvement during groupware development, augmenting thus the opportunities for tailoring. According to [6], tailoring can be supported in three different levels: customization, selecting among a set of predefined configuration options; integration, linking together predefined components within or between applications; extension, improving the implementation by adding new program code. Most of user-tailorable groupware tools support only the customization or integration level (e.g. [2] [9]). Note that the integration level supposes that the functionality to be integrated has been pre-developed and is available somewhere [6]. Only at the extension level users would be able to integrate new functionalities, even if they have not been anticipated by developers at design time. A method frequently used for supporting tailoring at the extension level is the component-based tailoring. For example, in [10], components are implemented using Flexibeans (an extension of the Java Beans model) and end-users tailor the system using a composition language. In [11], end-users may assemble components into larger composite components using the visual representation rather than writing lines of code. However, even at the extension level the integration flexibility is partial as the integration of existing collaborative systems or groupware would require them to be redesigned according to the system architecture. CSCW Toolkits CSCW toolkits ease the implementation of CSCW systems by providing reusable components and behaviors designed to be applicable in a range of circumstances [12]. The need for flexibility and tailorability in CSCW toolkits is well acknowledged. The Neem Platform [13] offers a generic (application-neutral) evolvable framework upon which socially and culturally aware applications are developed. Flexibility and extensibility in Neem result from its foundation on a core architectural coordination model [13]: decoupled components interact indirectly through message exchanges. Intermezzo [14] is a collaboration support environment supporting the coordination information sharing, offering fluid interactions, user awareness, session management and policy control. It addresses dynamic flexibility [12] by allowing applications to adapt not just their own behavior, but also the behavior of the toolkit in reacting to the changing dynamics of the world they run into. The Groupware Toolkit/Shared Dictionary (or GT/SD) toolkit [15][16] has been developed to support rapid development of groupware, focusing mainly on networking and data sharing aspects. GT/SDs extensibility is based on its modular design, which allows adding or modifying behavior by replacing or wrapping different components. Toolkits may represent an interesting solution for helping the development of CSCW systems, as they promote the reuse of components. But in general, CSCW toolkits offer a limited set of functionalities or they are target for some specific kind of domain. Besides, to reuse components of the toolkit, developers often need to implement very specific details of the toolkit in order to adapt it to the application needs [16][17]. Middleware based solutions The integration of heterogeneous applications has been a widely investigated subject, mainly in distributed systems area. General integration solutions based on middleware, like CCM (CORBA Component Model), .NET and Enterprise JavaBeans have been developed. Moreover, integration solutions associated with specific domains have also been proposed, such as Enterprise Application Integration systems [17][18]. The emergence of Web services WS has also led to the development of general solutions for integration of distributed applications, due mainly to the use of open standards. In the CSCW domain, some middleware-based solutions have been proposed. Dustdar et al. [18][19] discuss the importance of using Web services WS in order to provide collaborative application interoperability. But in order to be integrated, collaborative applications must originally support Web servicesWS. Even if Web servicesWS represent an emerging software trend, only a limited set of collaborative applications are currently supporting these technologies. As an enhancement to traditional middleware, some SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) solutions have also been proposed. For example, WGWSOA [19][20] uses Web ServicesWS as an access interface in order to support the reuse and the interoperability of different collaborative services. But an important drawback of WGWSOA is that collaborative services must be developed following the respective middleware architecture. It is also important to note that like WGWSOA, most middleware based solutions present technical responses to the so called syntactic interoperability [20][21]. They provide mechanisms allowing applications to communicate and interact through information exchange. But according to [21][22], the integration concept goes beyond the possibility of sharing and exchanging specific information. Applications must agree upon the meaning (or the semantics) of these exchanges. In other words, integration solutions should provide means for defining integration semantics. Thus, interoperability can be seen as a requirement for integration. The EcoSpace Project [22][23] proposes an environment that, besides being based on SOA and Web servicesWS, relies on Semantic Web technologies (WSDL-S with services ontologies) to support semantic description of collaborative services. Besides a semantic description of each service, it would be necessary a semantic description of the composition of services so as to coordinate their orchestration. However, this part of the project remains as design aspect. Moreover, using Web serviceWSs as integration technology may imply some performance loss, particularly associated to the use of SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) [23][24]. Luo et al. [24][25] claim that Web ServicesWS should be only used in situations which are really heterogeneous. They propose a service-oriented solution for the integration of collaborative applications that, instead of using SOAP, adopts a unified service bus (implemented through an open source Enterprise Service Bus). Platforms for integrating heterogeneous collaborative systems The latter latest approach to improve the integration flexibility of collaborative environments is to create platforms aiming specifically at the integration of collaborative applications. They focus on the integration of collaborative functionalities provided by these applications while trying to define any semantics behind integration. Iqbal et al. [25][26] propose an integrative framework based on the three-level model presented by [26][27]: the Ontological Model specifies shared objects, their relations and taxonomies; the Coordination Model specifies how interactions take place during system execution; and the User Interface Model specifies how the system is presented to the final user. Integration process consists firstly in identifying, for each collaborative application, the elements associated with these three models. Then, on each level the elements from different applications are grouped and merged when equivalent. As a result, common ontological, coordination and user interface models are generated. In spite of enabling a multi-level integration, this approach requires an internal knowledge of the collaborative applications so that their functionalities can be mapped into the three-level model. Accordingly, the integration of third party applications becomes a complex task. In order to avoid considering application internals during the integration process (facilitating the integration of existing applications), some integration solutions propose the so called loosely-coupled approach. This approach presents two main features: (i) once integrated to the environment, collaborative applications preserve their autonomy, i.e., they can still be used as standalone application; (ii) the integration environment remains independent of integrated applications, and accordingly, applications can be integrated and detached from the environment without compromising its behavior. This last feature is particularly important considering the integration flexibility aspect. In fact, in a loosely-coupled environment, the set of integrated applications must be easily modified according to users needs. Systems like AREA [27][28] and NESSIE [28][29] have proposed a loosely-coupled integration for supporting cross-application awareness. Both systems represent a collaborative environment where independent applications can share a common information space, implemented through an event notification system. Users can receive notifications of activity relevant events from different applications (executed by other users). An important aspect of these systems is the use of open Internet technologies (such as HTTP and CGI) to enable the integration of third party collaborative applications. However, the main drawback of both systems is that the integration semantics is statically defined collaborative applications are integrated so as to offer a common awareness of the whole collaboration activity. Another proposal also based on a loosely-coupled approach is the framework XGSP [29][30]. XGSP proposes the integration of audio and videoconferencing tools based on SIP and H.323 standards, as well as the integration of Access Grid applications [30][31]. In this framework, XGSP manager servers are in charge of controlling collaborative sessions. A different gateway is defined for each application type (i.e. SIP, H.323 and Access Grid applications). Using a signaling protocol based on Web servicesWS, these gateways are employed to mediate the communication between applications and XGSP servers. An important disadvantage of XGSP is the fact that, originally, it only allows the integration of application based on SIP, H.323 and Access Grid. Loosely-coupling is also inherent to the Web servicesWS based solutions presented in the previous section. Similarly to those solutions, LEICA represents an integration environment that proposes a loosely-coupled approach based on Web servicesWS technologies. Regarding the performance implications of SOAP, Alonso et al. [31][32] suggest that Web ServicesWS technologies should be used only to implement coarse-gained interactions, where the impact of the overhead associated to SOAP would be less important. Following the recommendations of [31][32], Web servicesWS are employed by LEICA for coarse-grained operations only. As it will be detailed in the following sections, LEICA defines a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied as an initial mechanism for registering newly integrated applications, as well as for setting and starting up collaborative sessions. Then, during the execution of integrated collaborative sessions a different infrastructure is used to interconnect collaborative applications. Another important aspect concerns integration semantics. Unlike the previous solutions, LEICA provides users with the possibility to define the desired integration semantics for each collaborative session. The Integration Environment: LEICA LEICA aims at the integration of different collaborative applications, where integration semantics is to be defined according to user requirements. Before explaining the general integration approach and the behavior of LEICA, a possible scenario is presented to better illustrate the advantages of such integration. Integration Scenario An important domain where collaborative environments have been largely used is e-Learning. In particular, a CVE (Collaborative Virtual Environment) can be used to implement a 3D shared world representing a school building divided into: one entrance hall, classrooms, and teachers rooms. Different collaborative applications could be associated to each room: (i) a chat room associated to the entrance hall; (ii) a collaborative web browsing (it would enable teachers to guide students through lecture notes) and an audio conference tool associated to the classrooms; and (iii) a shared whiteboard associated to each of the teachers room. Un paragraphe pour montrer la situation: Utilisation des outils non integrà ©es, et lintà ©gration avec LEICA. With this integration semantics, whenever an avatar enters into a room, the respective user is automatically connected to the associated collaborative application(s). Besides, only authorized users should enter into private rooms (e.g. the teachers rooms with its whiteboard could be restricted to teachers). Another possible behavior specified by this integration semantics is some kind of floor coupling between the two applications used as a support for virtual class sessions. This way, it would be possible to assure that the user holding the Web browsing floor (i.e. the one guiding the lecture notes browsing) is the only one to have the right to speak to the class attendees. General Integration Approach As previously mentioned, and illustrated in Fig. 1, LEICA follows a hybrid architecture where Web ServicesWS are applied at the collaborative sessions start up, and an event notification system allows collaborative applications to interact through the exchange of event notifications. Two other basic components of LEICA are the Wrappers and the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The integration of a collaborative application to LEICA is achieved by attaching a Wrapper to it. Three main cases may be considered: a) open source applications, b) API-based applications, and c) applications without any available API. Integration of open source applications can achieve the tightest interaction degree, since any internal event/action can be exported/performed; it might however imply great development efforts. API-based integration is straightforward, and interaction is limited to the provided API. Applications without API are the most limitating ones, constraining to interact only through application start and stop actions. LEICAs integration approach is mainly driven by case (b), believing that developers are certainly interested in creating specific and performable collaboration tools that can be used either stand-alone or integrated with other applications (through a flexible API, being able to get a great share of the market). This is for instance the case of Skypeâ„ ¢, a successful example of communication tool that has released its API since some time ago. Fig. 2 summarizes LEICAs general integration framework. The first step of the LEICAs integration framework is the Collaborative Application Integration. For instance, in the illustrative scenario presented in III.A, the first step to integrate the CVE with the instant messenger (supporting the chat room associated to the entrance hall), the collaborative Web browser and the audio conference applications, it is necessary to create a Wrapper for each one of these applications. As detailed in Section V, these wrappers can be automatically generated by LEICAs API Factory, based on the API description of each collaborative application. The Wrappers comprise a Web services Services WS interface allowing the collaborative application to register itself with LEICA. As illustrated by Fig. 1, through the Wrappers Web servicesWS ports, the integrated application can interact with the Session Configuration Service (SCS). The SCS is a Web service Service WS used for (i) configuring new global SuperSessions and (ii) starting up SuperSessions. A SuperSession is an integrated collaborative session holding the whole collaboration activity. Within the context of a global SuperSession, different specificSessions can exist. A specificSession is a conventional collaborative session defined within the context of a collaborative application (e.g. a videoconference session, a whiteboard session, etc.). The SCS dynamically contacts each integrated application, during the SuperSession configuration process, in order to request: (i) which specific data is required to create specificSessions for this respective application (e.g. a videoconference tool could require an IP multicast address); and (ii) which kind of events it can notify, and action requests it can handle. The interaction degree among the integrated applications depends essentially on the nature of the events they are able to exchange, and actions they are able to perform. In order to create a SuperSession, a user must define its integration semantics. It is accomplished by configuring the Collaboration Policy. A Collaboration Policy is a set of rules under a condition/action model. These rules define how collaborative applications must react when receiving information (events) notified by other integrated applications. In other words, the specification of Collaboration Policies allows defining specific integration semantics (i.e. how to coordinate integrated applications) to each SuperSession, according to the different users requirements. Once a SuperSessions has been created (and its associated configuration file is generated), it can finally be started up. The SCS firstly contacts each integrated collaborative application requesting them to create the specificSessions defined in the SuperSession. Then, during the execution of collaborative sessions the integrated application can interact through the exchange of event using the Event Notification System. According to predefined Collaboration Policies, these notifications may lead specific actions to be performed. Wrappers are in charge of managing the SuperSessions Collaboration Policy. When the Wrapper of a collaborative application receives event notifications, it verifies if the notified events enable any policy rule concerning this collaborative application. If so, the Wrapper sends action requests to the respective application. Note that LEICA is not intended to support low-level physical events (e.g. mouse click/scrolling) or high frequency synchronization events (e.g. current position of moving objects). It aims at supporting activity relevant events that carry some semantics. SuperSession Concept As previously mentioned, LEICA controls the whole collaboration activity within the context of a global SuperSession. A SuperSession model has been defined in order to precisely identify and describe its components. Based on this model, LEICA maintains concise and coherent SuperSession state information. Furthermore, a well-defined taxonomy of the components and their attributes are also implied from the model. General models for describing collaborative applications have already been proposed in the literature. Some of them [26][27] [32][33] represent a conceptual or ontological model describing the entities and relationships of individual CSCW systems. Few models aim at describing integrated CSCW systems, like OOActSM [33][34] and the conceptual model presented in [34][35]. However, these models are based on the notion of a general activity as the central abstraction, which was considered rather abstract for a detailed specification of the SuperSession. Nevertheless, these models have inspired several concepts adopted in the defined SuperSession model. The SuperSession represents a collaboration activity involving different integrated applications, a group of users and general roles associated to these users. Formally, a CIE Session CS is a tuple: SS = (SSid, CA , NA , Rl , U , SSat) where: SSid is a unique identifier; CA = {CAi } | i ÃŽ [1,I]} is a finite set of collaborative applications where CAi = (CAidi, spSi, CAati) a specific collaborative application running a set of specificSessions (sSi). CAati is a list of attributes characterizing the collaborative application. These attributes provide information about the application description, including name, type, whether it is a role-based application, its distribution architecture (client/server, multi-servers, peer-to-peer) and the type of user applications (stand-alone or webWeb-based).); NA is a finite set of non-collaborative applications (data converters, databases, web applications, etc.); Rl = {Rlk } | k ÃŽ [1,K]} is a finite set of general roles. The concept of general role refers to a group of users owning the same set of responsibilities and privileges inside LEICA; Rlk = (Rlidk , Rlatk). Rlidk is a unique role identifier; and Rlatk is a list of attributes characterizing this general role. This list provides details like roles description, membership and administration rights. Regarding the membership, it defines how the role is associated with users: it may be either (i) a static association (there is a membership list), (ii) an automatic association (there is a predicate function based on users parameters and SuperSession state) or (iii) a users choice (password protected or not).); U = {Ul } | l ÃŽ [1,L]} is a finite set of connected users; Ul = (Uidl, URlidl, Mbl, Uatl) represent a user, where Uidl is a unique identifier; URlidl is one general role associated with the user; Mbl is a finite set of membership relations; Uatl is a list of attributes (name, email, IP address, network connection, device type, etc.); Mbl.n = (mCAidl.n , mSidl.n , msRlidl.n) is a membership relation, where mCAidl.n is an application identifier; mSidl.n is a specificSession identifier; msRlidl.n is a finite set of specific roles identifiers. Thus, each membership relation indicates the participation of a connected user to a specificSession of a collaborative application (once connected to the SuperSession, a user can concurrently take part in none, one or more specificSessions of different collaborative applications); SSat is a list of attributes characterizing the SuperSession. These attributes describe information like session context (name, purpose, etc.), scheduling (if scheduled or not, duration, etc.), accessibility type (open or closed), role association type (how users are associated to a general role) and maximum number of connected users. A specificSession regards a conventional collaborative session of a collaborative application. The role of the specificSession entity (spSi.m), wich is formally represented by the tuple: spSi.m = (Sidi.m, sRli.m, pUidi.m, Rsi.m, spSati.m) is not to precisely describe each aspect of a collaborative task. Instead, it captures relevant elements like the specific roles defined for this session (sRli.m), the users participating to this session (pUidi.m.) and the shared resources accessed by these users (Rsi.m). A specific role is a tuple, sRli.m.o = (sRlidi.m.o, sRlati.m.o), where sRlidi.m.o is a specific role identifier and sRlati.m.o is a list of attributes characterizing the specific role (description and maximum number of simultaneous users). A resource is also a tuple Rsi.m.p= (urli.m.p, Rsati.m.p ), where urli.m.p is a resource locator and Rsati.m.p is a list of attributes characterizing the resource. The purpose of the resource element is simply to allow the implementation of an inter-application access control mechanism. LEICA will not need to keep the state of each resource. Thus, resources attributes just describe its type (file, device, virtual object, interface widget, etc.) and the read/write access type (exclusive or concurrent). SuperSession Configuration In order to create a SuperSession, a two step configuration process is carried out: (i) Session Management configuration and (ii) Collaboration Policy configuration. In the first configuration step, two groups of information should be specified: General Session Management information (GSMinfo): It carries management information such as scheduling, membership and general user roles.; Integrated Applications information (IAinfo): It defines the list of integrated applications to be used during this SuperSession; for each collaborative application, a list of specificSessions is defined, where specific data required by this application for creating sessions is provided (e.g. a videoconference application will be provided with an IP multicast address). Once Session Management configuration is completed, the Collaboration Polic

Domestic Violence Against Asian Women Social Work Essay

Domestic Violence Against Asian Women Social Work Essay This report is based on a Chief Executive Officer with unlimited budget to improve mental health services in London Borough of Ealing. The following neighbourhood study will focus on a proposal for change to improve services. It will focus on the changes necessary in the  services provided for Asian Women experiencing domestic violence with mental health issues. An understanding of social and cultural diversity will be discussed and their impact on healthcare. In addition, these issues will be compared to the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. Domestic violence has come to the forefront as an important issue that affect many people in our society. DH, (2005) define domestic violence as any violence, abuse or threatening behaviour between current or former partners. It stipulate that any attempt to exercise control over an intimate partner or family members regardless of gender, sexuality constitutes domestic violence; the violence can include physical, psychological, sexual, financial and emotional abuse. Domestic violence can also include honour base violence, female genital mutilation and force marriages. According to Home Office, (2004), women are more likely to become victim of domestic violence than men; children are also affected and can be traumatised by the incidences they have seen. Research has shown that one in four women experience domestic violence over their lifetime and one in ten women experience it annually and 32% of children (Walby and Allen, 2004). Williamson, (2000) outlined that ethnic minority women are well known to be victims of domestic violence particularly Asians. However (DH, 2005) highlighted that the affects of domestic violence can result in women experiencing isolation, loss of job and income, low self esteem and self worth; It can lead to mental health issues in women causing the victims to suffer from mental health problems including, anxiety disorder, eating disorder, depression and self harm which could lead to suicide. Experience of domestic violence can also exacerbate an existing mental health condition. Womensaid, (2009) highlighted that a large number of women accessing mental health services have experienced domestic violence, and at least 20% of service users are still experiencing the abuse. It further suggests that 50% of Asian women who have attempted suicide or self harm are survivors of domestic violence. The London Borough of Ealing consists of 23 wards. It is the third largest borough in London with a population of 300,948 of which 151,200 of the residents are females and 22,200 are of Asian background (Neighbourhood statistics, 2006). When compared to Hammersmith and Fulham borough, they have a population of 165,242 Nationally Domestic Violent rate for Asian women. However, 58% of these women view themselves to be white British and only 25% declares to be Asians (Ealing Council, 2009) (appendix 1). The motivation for this proposed change is necessary as services for ethnic minority women experiencing domestic violence in various areas in the country are under-funded or non-existence (Williamson, 2000). Mainstreaming Gender and Womens Mental Health (DH, 2002) identify experiences of violence and abuse as a core theme in womens mental health difficulties. Todays mental health system manages diagnosis and accepts long-term disability consequently offering a label as an explanation for suffering instead of permitting service users to share their stories, experiences and their feelings. The level of domestic violence amongst women has increased significantly in Ealing Borough. Recent figures revealed that Ealing is the ninth highest borough for reporting domestic violence between April 2007 to January 2008 Ealing Council (2009). It was highlighted that 41% of reported cases were of white European whereas the second highest reported cases were from Asian background (see appendix 3). It was also suggested that domestic violence is the highest crime reported nationally to the police, and 89% of domestic violence victims are women (Ealing Council, 2009). The cost of domestic violence on the UK economy is enormous; recent figures reported to be  £23 billion annually for the UK and  £280 million for London Borough of Ealing respectively (Ealing Council, 2009). Furthermore, it is estimated that on average women are assaulted 35 times before they report to the police however; most women do not report and suffer in silence. This may be due to the psychological state known as battered women syndrome identified by (Walker, 2000) in which the victim feels powerless to change the situation. Baggot (2004) argued that ethnic minority groups are faced with poorer health conditions than the rest of the population; people from certain ethnic background may be denied timely access to healthcare or offered lower standards of care than the rest of the population. 55% of Ealings population is predominately ethnic minority groups. The total South Asian population in Ealing is 41% compared to 24.7% in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham. This significant difference in ethnic profile has a key impact on the overall health of the community. According to Kandola Fullerton (1998), diversity is the difference in ethnic origin, religion and other factors which cause people to have different perspectives on the same set of facts or issues. The culture amongst Asian communities makes it difficult for married women to disclose that they are victims of domestic violence; breakdown of marriages is often seen as the womens fault hence they are likely to be rejected by family members and their community. It is culturally accepted that women should be abuse consequently becoming victims of domestic violence. Additionally, Some Asian women may be subject to immigration control. This can influence their decision to take action against their husbands because of deportation from the UK. Moreover, most of these women do not speak English and finds it difficult to communicate. Womens National Commission, (2009) report outlined that many of the victims are of insecure immigration status, having limited leave or no leave to remain within the country and are therefore subject to no recourse to public funds therefore are unable to obtain state benefits, hence limiting their access to services, social housing, legal advice and support. Ealing Council, (2009) report, emphasised that currently Ealing has only two organizations offering emergency accommodation services. These services are limited as there are only eighteen adult bed places, the places available for counselling and advocacy services do not have adequate staff to provide support to accommodate the number of victims identified by the Council. (WHO, (1997) cited in DH, (2006) states that violence against women is a public health issue which could be prevented. The Department of Health published a manual aimed at healthcare professionals in 2000 who contacted victims of domestic violence; the purpose was to focus on the need to treat vulnerable women with compassionate and holistic approach. These opinions were echoed by the participants of two surveys who identified the flaws in their treatment as being lack of advocacy and follow up interventions. An individuals ethnicity and cultural group remain useful points for understanding the motives behind domestic violence and the impact it has on their mental health. It can be argued that attending to the specific needs and conditions of Asian women by providing integrated culturally and gender-sensitive services highlights good practice. Hence, it becomes important that the individuals perceptions of self care are identified in the context of their culture. Addressing issues of domestic violence in relation to mental health, health inequalities and other social problems which lead most women to social disadvantages would be easily addressed. APPENDIX 1 The table below gives an indication of the different offences in the borough of Ealing and the UK National Average. Of the offences committed violence against the person is the highest in the borough. Ealing Council English Average Population 305,000 Households 121,000 Violence against the person 25.0 15.0 Sexual offences 1.0 0.9 Robbery offences 4.4 1.0 Burglary dwelling offences 9.1 4.3 Theft of a motor vehicle offences 3.4 2.3 Theft from a vehicle offences 11.6 6.3 Source: Ealing Council, (2009). APPENDIX 2 The diagram below gives an analytical breakdown of ethnicity for domestic violence victims in the Borough Ealing. It shows that 41% were of white European origin. The highest of all the ethnic groups as defined by police were those of Asian backgrounds at 28% and thirdly Afro-Caribbean groups with 22%.