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This book provides the opportunity to explore the variety of meanings, undertones and contextual connotations that currently pertain to the expressions of "virtual (or digital) restoration" and "reconstruction".The book focuses on the latest applications of virtual restoration and reconstruction in different areas of Cultural Heritage through the presentation and discussion of several case studies. The goal is to provide a broad perspective on the subject.The sample presented in this book has been indeed selected and evaluated referring to different disciplinary fields such as archaeology, architecture, and conservation while encompassing a variety of cultural and chronological contexts

This book provides the opportunity to explore the variety of meanings, undertones and contextual connotations that currently pertain to the expressions of "virtual (or digital) restoration" and "reconstruction". The book focuses on the latest applications of virtual restoration and reconstruction in different areas of Cultural Heritage through the presentation and discussion of several case studies. The goal is to provide a broad perspective on the subject. The sample presented in this book has been indeed selected and evaluated referring to different disciplinary fields such as archaeology, architecture, and conservation while encompassing a variety of cultural and chronological contexts

The area of Virtual Organizations as a main component of the new discipline of Collaborative Networks has been the focus of research globally. The fast evolution of the information and communication technologies and in particular the so-called Internet technologies, also represents an important motivator for the emergence of new forms of collaboration. However, the research in many of these cases is highly fragmented, considering that each project is focused on solving specific problems. As such, there is no effective consolidation/harmonization among them in order to have an effective impact and facilitate the interaction among the involved experts. This book represents a contribution to the consolidation of the already vast amount of empirical knowledge and practical experience. A synthesis of results collected from the analysis of numerous projects and industry case studies is presented, with focus on: Principles and models, ICT infrastructures and tools, Implementation issues, and Case studies.

Augmented reality (AR) allows the real and digital worlds to converge and overlap in a new way of observation and understanding. The architectural field can significantly benefit from AR applications, due to their systemic complexity in terms of knowledge and process management. Global interest and many research challenges are focused on this field, thanks to the conjunction of technological and algorithmic developments from one side, and the massive digitization of built data. A significant quantity of research in the AEC and educational fields describes this state of the art. Moreover, it is a very fragmented domain, in which specific advances or case studies are often described without considering the complexity of the whole development process. The article illustrates the entire AR pipeline development in architecture, from the conceptual phase to its application, highlighting each step's specific aspects. This storytelling aims to provide a general overview to a non-expert, deepening the topic and stimulating a democratization process. The aware and extended use of AR in multiple areas of application can lead a new way forward for environmental understanding, bridging the gap between real and virtual space in an innovative perception of architecture.

The present study argues that political communication on social media is mediated by a platform's digital architecture – the technical protocols that enable, constrain, and shape user behavior in a virtual space. A framework for understanding digital architectures is introduced, and four platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat) are compared along the typology. Using the 2016 U.S. elections as a case, interviews with three Republican digital strategists are complimented with social media data to qualify the study's theoretical claim that a platform's network structure, functionality, algorithmic filtering, and datafication model affect political campaign strategy on social media.

The present article is an ethnographic journey into the universe of techniques and rituals undertaken by companies geared to the demolition of architectural constructions. Viewed by many, more often than not, as merely brutal and even outrageous, the task of destroying is herein discussed in its material and symbolic complexity. Just as the act of building assumes a way of understanding and qualifying space in accordance with a set of social norms, the act of demolishing is, in and of itself, ruled by beliefs and cosmologies that vary a great deal from one context to the other. It will be suggested that the destroyer of walls and his sledgehammer may just as well unveil "history" and "heritage", hidden in the midst of bricks, that even the most seasoned preservationist would not have even dreamt possible.

"The authors address Agile/Virtual Enterprises as a new organizational paradigm, highly dynamic reconfigurable agile networks of independent enterprises sharing all resources, including knowledge, market, customers, etc., and using specific organizational architectures that introduce the enterprises' true virtual environments"--Provided by publisher

Place is characteristically imbued with a multiplicity of meanings contingent on the specificities of the society, time and space in which place is perceived. It is essentially subjective, relational and differential. As such, virtual multiplicity is the main characteristic of place where the virtual is understood as the sum of the real, a subjective mental act, and a motive or confusion. Space, conversely, is that which has no virtuality in it; it is objective. Accordingly, at least in theory, it is hard to distinguish between virtual and actual places. Outside of theory, virtual place typically suggests a system of representations that aims to convey through the senses an imagined or illusionary reality. Virtual place is mostly associated with places constructed using computational technology; most popular among them are massive multiuser online games (MMOGs). Lately, scholars are increasingly using such MMOGs to virtually construct or reconstruct historic places. The interpretation of such historic places depends on the affordances of the medium through which place is perceived and the ways in which such a medium is socially deployed and interpreted. This dissertation explores (1) the ways in which MMOGs are perceived and (2) the formative effect virtual reconstructions of historic places using gaming technology exercise on the interpretation of such places.Using two popular MMOGs as a case study, this dissertation shows that the perception of such places is conditioned by the suggestive technical affordances of the medium in addition to complex socio-historical forces. These conditions predispose expert users of MMOGs to perceive these virtual places in ways different than new users. New users perceive virtual environments in ways similar to the ways they perceive the actual environment: They assume an isomorphic relationship between the virtual reconstruction of a given place and its actuality. They value the formal and multi-sensory aspects of the environment. Expert users, on the other hand, perceive the virtual environment from a structural and functional perspective and pay less attention to its formal and sensory qualities. They seek novel and interesting social activities, increased technical knowledge and improved social status.This dissertation also uses the ancient settlement of Sirkap, located in modern-day Pakistan, as a case study, to demonstrate that the use of gaming technology to virtually reconstruct a historical place may entail a change in the interpretation of archaeological records. Most conventional historical accounts of Sirkap use two-dimensional site maps and city plans as the primary media to represent the urban fabric of the ancient settlement. The medium lends itself to interpret the Block D Apsidal Temple complex as the dominant socio-religious structure in the affluent northern parts of the settlement. When the author developed an interactive three-dimensional reconstruction of Sirkap using gaming technology--a medium that allows users, through their avatars, to explore the settlement from the standpoint of a pedestrian--it was immediately obvious that the aforementioned Block D Apsidal Temple complex did not demand such an interpretation. Instead, this study argues that, at least in the affluent northern parts of the settlement, the northern gate, its adjacent fortifications, and the Block A stupa court were the dominant structures. Such an interpretation leads the authors to question the canonical understanding of the role of the state and its military apparatus in the socio-religious life of Sirkap.

Abstract Recent perspectives on domestication have emphasized the importance of technical objects and other environmental elements as mediators of the relations between humans, animals and the many landscapes they inhabit. Using the concept of "architecture of domestication", proposed by Anderson and others (2017), this article investigates the role of alambrados (wire and wooden fences) in the context of animal husbandry in the Brazilian-Uruguayan Pampa, the technical processes involved in their construction, as well as the new configurations and uses for these structures that have emerged along with the biological invasion of European wild boars (Sus scrofa) in the region. I will show that the alambrados are key elements in the difference between positive direct action and negative indirect action in relation to the animals of the herd within the Pampeano system of domestication.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to describe a virtualisation model of RFID enabled infrastructure incorporating non‐standard radio frequency identification (RFID) components. The model is implemented as a software service that draws upon other sources of internet services.Design/methodology/approachIn a global supply chain environment, circumstances at different locations may not allow RFID system to be used. Some supply chain members do not have compatible network infrastructure in place. These include RFID frameworks such as China's National Product Codes and Japan's ubiquitous identification which are utilised around the world. There is also a reachability problem for consignments going offsite. The paper introduces a service abstraction layer (SAL) in the RFID architecture to remove dependency on specific RFID framework. From this principle, the paper introduces a new virtual infrastructure that interfaces with emerging identification technologies.FindingsThe model bridges the gaps that exist between various RFID standards, as well as utilising various technologies to emulate data capture devices so that the information chain remains intact across the global network. The resulting system significantly reduces the costs of commissioning and operating costs of existing RFID infrastructures.Research limitations/implicationsThe new system has been tested in real industry environment with defined scope and coverage. The implication due to full roll out of the technologies in global supply chains still requires further investigation.Practical implicationsUsability of the virtualised RFID infrastructures depends on the cooperation among partners in the supply chain rather than the technology level. New business rules are required when special stakeholders such as customs are included in this virtualised infrastructure.Originality/valueThe concept of virtualisation has been used in operating systems, but its application to supply chain has not been explored before. Introduction of the SAL allows interoperability of systems handling goods tracking events through the supply chain.

Biodiversity data is characterized by its cross-disciplinary character, the extremely broad range of data types and structures, and the plethora of different data sources providing resources for the same piece of information in a heterogeneous way. Since the web inception two decades ago, there are multiple initiatives to connect, aggregate, share, and publish biodiversity data, and to establish data and work flows in order to analyze them. The European program LifeWatch aims at establishing a distributed network of nodes implementing virtual research environment in Europe to facilitate the work of biodiversity researchers and managers. LifeWatchGreece is one of these nodes where a portal was developed offering access to a suite of virtual laboratories and e-services. Despite its strict definition in information technology, in practice "portal" is a fairly broad term that embraces many web architectures. In the biodiversity domain, the term "portal" is usually used to indicate either a web site that provides access to a single or an aggregation of data repositories (like: http://indiabiodiversity.org/, http://www.mountainbiodiversity.org/, http://data.freshwaterbiodiversity.eu), a web site that gathers information about various online biodiversity tools (like http://test-eubon.ebd.csic.es/, http://marine.lifewatch.eu/) or a web site that just gathers information and news about the biodiversity domain (like http://chm.moew.government.bg). LifeWatchGreece's portal takes the concept of a portal a step further. In strict IT terms, LifeWatchGreece's portal is partly a portal, partly a platform and partly an aggregator. It includes a number of biodiversity-related web tools integrated into a centrally-controlled software ecosystem. This ecosystem includes subsystems for access control, traffic monitoring, user notifications and web tool management. These subsystems are shared to all the web tools that have been integrated to the portal and thereby are part of this ecosystem. These web tools do not consist in external ...

Cloud computing provides the opportunity to migrate virtual machines to "follow-the-green" data centres. That is, to migrate virtual machines between green data centres on the basis of clean energy availability, to mitigate the environmental impact of carbon footprint emissions and energy consumption. The virtual machine migration problem can be modelled to maximize the utility of computing resources or minimizing the cost of using computing resources. However, this would ignore the network energy consumption and its impact on the overall CO2 emissions. Unless this is taken into account the extra data traffic due to migration of data could then cause an increase in brown energy consumption and eventually lead to an unintended increase in carbon footprint emissions. Energy consumption is a key aspect in deploying distributed service in cloud networks within decentralized service delivery architectures. In this paper, the authors address an optimization view of the problem of locating a set of cloud services on a set of sites green data centres managed by a service provider or hybrid cloud computing brokerage. The authors' goal is to minimize the overall network energy consumption and carbon footprint emissions for accessing the cloud services for any pair of data centres i and j. The authors propose an optimization migration model based on the development of integer linear programming (ILP) models, to identify the leverage of green energy sources with data centres and the energy consumption of migrating VMs.

[ES] We will highlight the use of virtual simulation programmes and their application in the representation of the building project. An analysis of Architecture's websites and building professionals will be carried out, analysing the graphic expression thereof, in order to provide a line of future action. Courageous López, M.; Martínez Borrell, E.; Anta Fernández, I. (2008). Web pages in architecture. EGE Review of Graphic Expression in Buildings. 0 (5): 100-107. https://doi.org/10.4995/ege.2008.12545 ; 100 107 0 5 ; [ES] We will highlight the use of virtual simulation programmes and their application in the representation of the building project. An analysis of Architecture's websites and building professionals will be carried out, analysing the graphic expression thereof, in order to provide a line of future action. Courageous López, M.; Martínez Borrell, E.; Anta Fernández, I. (2008). Web pages in architecture. EGE Review of Graphic Expression in Buildings. 0 (5): 100-107. https://doi.org/10.4995/ege.2008.12545 ; OJS ; [ES] We will highlight the use of virtual simulation programmes and their application in the representation of the building project. An analysis of Architecture's websites and building professionals will be carried out, analysing the graphic expression thereof, in order to provide a line of future action. Courageous López, M.; Martínez Borrell, E.; Anta Fernández, I. (2008). Web pages in architecture. EGE Review of Graphic Expression in Buildings. 0 (5): 100-107. https://doi.org/10.4995/ege.2008.12545 ; [ES] Vamos a poner de manifiesto, el uso de los programas de simulación virtual y su aplicación en la representación del proyecto de Edificación. Se realizará un análisis de las páginas web de Arquitectura y de los profesionales de la edificación, analizando la expresión gráfica de las misma, para ofrecer una línea de futuras actuaciones. Valiente López, M.; Martínez Borrell, E.; Anta Fernández, I. (2008). Las páginas web en arquitectura. EGE Revista de Expresión Gráfica en la Edificación. ...