Assignment 9(MIS) Information Environment

Identify an information environment of your choice and write an essay to address the following questions:(3000words)

• What should be your role within this environment?
• How can the principles of information organization and representation help you in performing this role?

Representation is a system for extracting or highlighting some aspects of an original concept or object, together with some explanation of how the system does this. That is, we have some form of sign (in its broadest sense), which is generated from some original referent, by means of some code. .. The purpose of the representation will strongly influence which attributes are highlighted or selected as representative.
information organization can be understood from four perspectives:
o a data perspective
o a relationship perspective
o an operating system (OS) perspective
o an application architecture perspective
• What are the challenges facing you in performing the role? How will you address these challenges?

Information Environment

There is now a critical mass of digital information resources that can be used to support researchers, learners, teachers and administrators in their work and study. The production of information is on the increase and ways to deal with this effectively are required. There is the need to ensure that quality information isn’t lost amongst the masses of digital data created everyday. If we can continue to improve the management, interrogation and serving of ‘quality’ information there is huge potential to enhance knowledge creation across learning and research communities. The aim of the Information Environment is to help provide convenient access to resources for research and learning through the use of resource discovery and resource management tools and the development of better services and practice. The Information Environment aims to allow discovery, access and use of resources for research and learning irrespective of their location.
Reference: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/themes/informationenvironment.aspx
Contribution of the information environment to self-care

A wide range of information innovations exist to assist individuals and families with self-care, from devices and technologies through to complex, tailored initiatives spanning the patient and the primary care practice team. They also range from relatively low-tech simple interventions through to integrated e-health initiatives. Devices and technologies: These include self-care support devices, such as smart inhalers, information kiosks, mobile texting support, and consumer health portals, and complex telehealth initiatives. Trials of texting support has been shown in New Zealand have been effective in increasing smoking quit rates, for both Maori and non-Maori populations. A review of patient-focused interventions found home-based telecare can reduce patients’ sense of isolation and improve self-efficacy, quality of life, patient empowerment and psychological outcomes. Information: Patient reminders of appointments for health checks and screening are a simple yet effective form of support to self-care. Decision aids are interventions designed to help people make choices about their health care by providing information about the options and outcomes that are relevant to a person's health status. A Cochrane review of decision aids (many of which were internet-based) found they can improve people's knowledge of the options, create realistic expectations of their benefits and harms, reduce difficulty with decision making, and increase participation in the process (O'Connor et al 2007). Skills training: Provision of information and skills to individuals to better manage long-term illness has long been part of health services to varying degrees. Patients' abilities to care for themselves are enhanced by services that teach skills needed to carry out medical regimens, guide health behaviour change, and provide emotional support. Self-care support networks: One of the simplest information interventions is finding out what is available locally and linking patients to the wide array of support organisations for people with long term conditions as a way of encouraging increased physical activity, socialisation and mutual support. Group-based learning, such as for diabetes self-management education groups, provide further tools for self-care. Another area of growing interest is the emergence of online ‘communities’ and online support groups that fulfil similar functions, and providing online environments for people to share stories.
Personalised self-care plans: Individual care plans are developed by health professionals for their patients in ways that are tailored to their own circumstances. A Cochrane review in 1999 concluded that ‘optimal asthma self-management interventions led to reduced health care utilisation, days off work and nocturnal asthma when compared to usual care’, and that interventions without a written action plan were less efficacious (Bycroft 2004). The Flinders Model of Chronic Condition Self-Management provides a structured approach to care planning; it is being adopted by many practices in Australia and is generating interest in New Zealand. Electronic care plans provide a more rapid means of developing patient-centred care plans, but which are still intended to reflect the needs and realities of individual patients. Professional education: Relatively few GPs or practice nurses have specific training in behaviour change techniques, yet for long-term care such skills are highly desirable. Psychological tools and techniques in motivational interviewing, structured problem-solving, goal setting, cognitive behaviour therapy and brief structured interventions are some of the skills worth developing. There remain many gaps in our understanding of self-care interventions. A review of evaluations of self-care interventions found that despite the large number of studies carried out, the evidence base still has large gaps. Long term outcomes, cost effectiveness, the comparative effectiveness of different self care support strategies, and which components of complex interventions provide the greatest benefit, have not been adequately evaluated. (Coulter & Ellins 2006, Coulter & Ellins 2007).

Conclusion

The information environment has the potential to be a critical underpinning of self-care, supporting the actions of primary health care teams and empowering consumers or patients to minimise disease progression, improve their quality of life and to be more in control of their lives through the course of their conditions. An important theme that runs across the literature is that information does not stand alone in supporting self-care; rather, the ongoing provision of support and monitoring from the primary health care team, families and community networks are critical to the success of self-care strategies. The ongoing involvement of the primary health care team is also important to assist with the selection of information tools. Health researchers and technology companies will continue to develop new technologies and innovations, but is the appropriate targeting of these tools towards people’s needs that is likely to deliver the strongest health benefits.

Reference: http://www.moh.govt.nz/moh.nsf/pagesmh/6501/$File/role-of-information-self-care.pdf
In the context of an evolving information society, the term information ecology or environment on between ecological ideas with the dynamics and properties of the increasingly dense, complex and important digital informational environment and has been gaining progressively wider acceptance in a growing number of disciplines. "Information ecology/environment” said as metaphor, viewing the informational space as an ecosystem. information ecology draws on the language of ecology - habitat, species, evolution, ecosystem, niche, growth, equilibrium, etc - to describe and analyze information systems from a perspective that considers the distribution and abundance of organisms, their relationships with each other, and how they influence and are influenced by their environment. The virtual lack of boundaries between information systems and the impact of information technology on economic, social and environmental activities frequently calls on an information ecologist to consider local information ecosystems in the context of larger systems, and of the evolution of global information ecosystems.

What should be your role within this environment?

As Information Technology student, it is a big question about my role in this environment. Many “chikas” nowadays said that because of technology our world has been damage little by little. That because of existing and improving technologies nowadays we are getting destructive to our environment. This statement is all false, the truth is that only human are using the technology falsely, here is a short quote that I get from a movie about the earth and the environment… “Technology is not a problem, only human using it is a problem”, environment lies upon our hands. Technology has the capability to improve, develop and beautifies the environment. As an information Technology student my role to the environment is to care for it. Proper waste disposal is one of the most important things to remember of caring the environment. I have already attended many symposiums about technological waste proper disposal or in short proper waste disposal. It is the most effective way of caring our nature, our environment. When we said caring the environment is to preserve the nature, abusing it is also a way of destroying it. As an information technology student I would implement first to myself the proper way or the proper relationship between human and our environment. Second, make yourself as a model to every on how a small thing make a big thing to our environment.
How can the principles of information organization and representation help you in performing this role?

The notion of information representation and organization traditionally means creating catalogs and indexes for publications of any kind. It includes the description of the attributes of a document and the representation of its intellectual content. Libraries in the world have a long history in recording data about documents and publications; such practice can be dated back to several thousand years ago. Indexes and library catalogs are created to help users find and locate a document conveniently. Records in the information searching tools not only serve as an inventory of human knowledge and culture but also provide orderly access to the collections. Just like every other business and industry, the representation and organization of information in the network era has gone through dramatic changes in almost every stage of this process. The changes include not only the methods and technology used to create records for publications, but also the standards that are central to the success and effectiveness of these tools in searching and retrieving information. Today the library catalog is no longer a tool for its own collection for the library visitors; it has become a network node that users can visit from anywhere in the world via a computer connected to the Internet. The concept of indexing databases is no longer just for newspapers and journal articles; it has expanded into the Web information space that is being used for e-publishing, ebusinesses, and e-commerce. The heart of such a universal information space lies in the standards that make it possible for different types of data to be communicated and understood by heterogeneous platforms and systems. We all know that TCP/IP allows different computer systems to talk to each other and to understand different dialects of networking language; in the world of organizing information content, the content is represented by terms either in natural or controlled language or both. The characteristics of its container (book, journal, film, memo, report, etc.) will be encoded in certain format for computer storage and retrieval. Libraries in the world have used MAchine Readable Cataloging (MARC) (Library of Congress, 1999) to encode information about their collections. In conjunction with cataloging rules, such MARC format standardized the record structure that describes information containers, i.e., books, manuscripts, maps, periodicals, motion pictures, music scores, audio/video recordings, 2-D and 3-D artifacts, and microforms. The Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) in Dublin, Ohio is the largest and the busiest cataloging service in the world. Almost 33,000 libraries from 67 countries now use OCLC products and services and more than 8,650 of them are OCLC members. As e-publishing thrives and Web information space grows, libraries have expanded conventional cataloging of their collections into organizing the information on the Web. In the early 1990s, OCLC started the Internet cataloging project, in which librarians from all types of libraries volunteered to contribute MARC records they created for Gopher servers, listserves, ftp and Web sites, and other net- worked information resources (OCLC, 1996). Another major undertaking in organizing information on the Web is OCLC's Metadata Initiative (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, 1999) inaugurated in 1995, which proposed a metadata scheme containing 15 data elements. Among them are title, creator, publisher, subject, description, format, type, source, relation, identifier, and rights. The metadata scheme was named after the city where OCLC is located: Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (Dublin Core for short). Since its debut, it has become an important part of the emerging infrastructure of the Internet. Many communities are eager to adopt a common core of semantics for resource description, and the Dublin Core has attracted broad ranging international and interdisciplinary support for this purpose.

Reference: http://inform.nu/Articles/Vol3/v3n2p83-88.pdf

2. Information Organization
• information organization can be understood from four perspectives:
o a data perspective
o a relationship perspective
o an operating system (OS) perspective
o an application architecture perspective
2.1. The data perspective of information organization
• the information organization of geographic data must be considered in terms of their descriptive elements and graphical elements because
o these two types of data elements have distinctly different characteristics
o the have different storage requirements
o they have different processing requirements
2.1.1. Information organization of descriptive data
• for descriptive data, the most basic element of information organization is called a data item
o a data item represents an occurrence or instance of a particular characteristic pertaining to an entity (which can be a person, thing, event or phenomenon)
 it is the smallest unit of stored data in a database, commonly referred to as an attribute
 in database terminology, an attribute is also referred to as a stored field
 the value of an attribute can be in the form of a number (integer or floating-point), a character string, a date or a logical expression (e.g. T for 'true' or 'present"; F for 'false' or 'absent')
 some attributes have a definite set of values known as permissible values or domain of values (e.g. age of people from 1 to 150; the categories in a land use classification scheme; and the academic departments in a university)
• a group of related data items form a record
o by related data items, it means that the items are occurrences of different characteristics pertaining to the same person, thing, event or phenomenon (e.g. in a forest resource inventory, a record may contain related data items such as stand identification number, dominant tree species, average height and average breast height diameter)
o a record may contain a combination of data items having different types of values (e.g. in the above example, a record has two character strings representing the stand identification number and dominant tree species; an integer representing the average tree height rounded to the nearest meter; and a floating-point number representing the average breast height diameter in meters)
 in database terminology, a record is always formally referred to as a stored record
 in relational database management systems, records are called tuples
• a set of related records constitutes a data file
o by related records, it means that the records represent different occurrences of the same type or class of people, things, events and phenomena
 a data file made up of a single record type with single-valued data items is called a flat file
 a data file made up of a single record type with nested repeating groups of items forming a multi-level organization is called a hierarchical file
o a data file is individually identified by a filename
o a data file may contain records having different types of data values or having a single type of data value
 a data file containing records made up of character strings is called a text file or ASCII file
 a data file containing records made up of numerical values in binary format is called a binary file
o in data processing literature, collections of data items or records are sometimes referred to by other terms other than "data file" according to their characteristics and functions
 an array is a collection of data items of the same size and type (although they may have different values)
 a one-dimensional array is called a vector
 a two-dimensional array is called a matrix
 a table is a data file with data items arranged in rows and columns
 data files in relational databases are organized as tables
 such tables are also called relations in relational database terminology
 a list is a finite, ordered sequence of data items (known as elements)
 by "ordered", it means that each element has a position in the list
 an ordered list has elements positioned in ascending order of values; while an unordered list has no permanent relation between element values and position
 each element has a data type
 in the simple list implementation, all elements must have the same data type but there is no conceptual objection to lists whose elements have different data types
 a tree is a data file in which each data item is attached to one or more data items directly beneath it (Figure 4)
 the connections between data items are called branches
 trees are often called inverted trees because they are normally drawn with the root at the top
 the data items at the very bottom of an inverted tree are called leaves; other data items are called nodes
 a binary tree is a special type of inverted tree in which each element has only two branches below it
 a heap is a special type of binary tree in which the value of each node is greater than the values of its leaves
 heap files are created for sorting data in computer processing --- the heap sort algorithm works by first organizing a list of data into a heap
 a stack is a collection of cards in Apple Computer's Hypercard software system
• the concept of database is the approach to information organization in computer-based data processing today
o a database is defined as an automated, formally defined and centrally controlled collection of persistent data used and shared by different users in an enterprise (Date, 1995 and Everest, 1986)
 above definition excludes the informal, private and manual collection of data
 "centrally controlled" does not mean "physically centralized" --- databases today tend to be physically distributed in different computer systems, at the same or different locations
 a database is set up to serve the information needs of an organization
 data sharing is key to the concept of database
 data in a database are described as "permanent" in the sense that they are different from "transient" data such as input to and output from an information system
 the data usually remain in the database for a considerable length of time, although the actual content of the data can change very frequently
o the use of database does not mean the demise of data files
 data in a database are still organized and stored as data files
 the use of database represents a change in the perception of data, the mode of data processing and the purposes of using the data rather than physical storage of the data
o databases can be organized in different ways known as database models
 the three conventional database models are: relational, network and hierarchical
 relational --- data are organized by records in relations which resemble a table
 network --- data are organized by records which are classified into record types, with 1:n pointers linking associated records
 hierarchical --- data are organized by records on a parent-child one-to-many relations
 the emerging database model is object-oriented
 data are uniquely identified as individual objects that are classified into object types or classes according to the characteristics (attributes and operations) of the object
2.1.2. Information organization of graphical data
• for graphical data, the most basic element of information organization is called a basic graphical element
o there are three basic graphical elements
 point
 line, also referred to as arc
 polygon, also referred to as area
o these basic graphical elements can be individually used to represent geographic features or entities
 for example: point for a well; line for a road segment and polygon for a lake)
o they can also be used to construct complex features
 for example: the geographic entity "Hawaii" on a map is represented by a group of polygons of different sizes and shapes
• the method of representing geographic features by the basic graphical elements of points, lines and polygon is said to be the vector method or vector data model, and the data are called vector data
o related vector data are always organized by themes, which are also referred to as layers or coverages
 examples of themes: geodetic control, base map, soil, vegetation cover, land use, transportation, drainage and hydrology, political boundaries, land parcel and others
o for themes covering a very large geographic area, the data are always divided into tiles so that they can be managed more easily
 a tile is the digital equivalent of an individual map in a map series
 a tile is uniquely identified by a file name
o a collection of themes of vector data covering the same geographic area and serving the common needs of a multitude of users constitutes the spatial component of a geographical database
o the vector method of representing geographic features is based on the concept that these features can be can be identified as discrete entities or objects
 this method is therefore based on the object view of the real world (Goodchild, 1992)
 the object view is the method of information organization in conventional mapping and cartography
• graphical data captured by imaging devices in remote sensing and digital cartography (such as multi-spectral scanners, digital cameras and image scanners) are made up of a matrix of picture elements (pixels) of very fine resolution
o geographic features in such form of data can be visually recognized but not individually identified in the same way that geographic features are identified in the vector method
o they are recognizable by differentiating their spectral or radiometric characteristics from pixels of adjacent features
 for example, a lake can be visually recognized on a satellite image because the pixels forming it are darker than those of the surrounding features; but the pixels forming the lake are not identified as a single discrete geographic entity, i.e. they remain individual pixels
 similarly, a highway can be visually recognized on the same satellite image because of its particular shape; but the pixels forming the highway do not constitute a single discrete geographic entity as in the case of vector data
• the method of representing geographic features by pixels is called the raster method or raster data model, and the data are described as raster data
o the raster method is also called the tessellation method
o a raster pixel is usually a square grid cell but there are there are several variants such as triangles and hexagons (Peuquet, 1991)
o a raster pixel represents the generalized characteristics of an area of specific size on or near the surface of the Earth
 the actual ground size depicted by a pixel is dependent on the resolution of the data, which may range from smaller than a square meter to several square kilometers
o raster data are organized by themes, which is also referred to as layers
 for example, a raster geographic database may contain the following themes: bed rock geology, vegetation cover, land use, topography, hydrology, rainfall, temperature
o raster data covering a large geographic area are organized by scenes (for remote sensing images) of by raster data files (for images obtained by map scanning)
o the raster method is based on the concept that geographic features are represented as surfaces, regions or segments
o this method is therefore based on the field view of the real world (Goodchild, 1992)
o the field view is the method of information organization in image analysis systems in remote sensing and geographic information systems for resource- and environmental-oriented applications
• in the past, the vector and raster methods represented two distinct approaches to information systems
o they were based on different concepts of information organization and data structure
o they used different technologies for data input and output
• recent advances in computer technologies allow these two types of data to be used in the same applications
o computers are now capable of converting data from the vector format to the raster format (rasterization) and vice versa (vectorization)
o computers are now able to display vector and raster simultaneously
o the old debate on the usefulness of these two approaches to information organization does not seem to be relevant any more
o vector and raster data are largely seen as complimentary to, rather than competing against, one another in geographic data processing
2.2. The relationship perspective of information organization
• relationships represent a important concept in information organization --- it describes the logical association between entities
o relationships can be categorical or spatial, depending on whether they describe location or other characteristics
2.2.1. Categorical relationships
• categorical relationships describe the association among individual features in a classification system
o the classification of data is based on the concept of scale of measurement
o there are four scales of measurement:
 nominal --- a qualitative, non-numerical and non-ranking scale that classifies features on intrinsic characteristics
 for example, in a land use classification scheme, polygons can be classified as industrial, commercial, residential, agricultural, public and institutional
 ordinal --- a nominal scale with ranking which differentiates features according to a particular order
 for example, in a land use classification scheme, residential land can be denoted as low density, medium density and high density
 interval --- an ordinal scale with ranking based on numerical values that are recorded with reference to an arbitrary datum
 for example, temperature readings in degrees centigrade are measured with reference to an arbitrary zero (i.e. zero degree temperature does not mean no temperature)
 ratio --- an interval scale with ranking based on numerical values that are measured with reference to an absolute datum
 for example, rainfall data are recorded in mm with reference to an absolute zero (i.e. zero mm rainfall mean no rainfall)
• categorical relationships based on ranking are hierarchical or taxonomic in nature
o this means that data are classified into progressively different levels of detail
 data in the top level are represented by a limited broad basic categories
 data in each basic category are then classified into different sub-categories, which can be further classified into another level if necessary
o the classification of descriptive data is typically based on categorical relationships
2.2.2. Spatial relationships
• spatial relationships describe the association among different features in space
o spatial relationships are visually obvious when data are presented in the graphical form
o however, it is difficult to build spatial relationships into the information organization and data structure of a database
 there are numerous types of spatial relationships possible among features
 recording spatial relationships implicitly demands considerable storage space
 computing spatial relationships on-the-fly slows down data processing particularly if relationship information is required frequently
• there are two types of spatial relationships
o topological --- describes the property of adjacency, connectivity and containment of contiguous features
o proximal --- describes the property of closeness of non-contiguous features
• spatial relationships are very important in geographical data processing and modeling
o the objective of information organization and data structure is to find a way that will handle spatial relationships with the minimum storage and computation requirements
2.3. The operating system (OS) perspective of information organization
• from the operating system perspective, information is organized in the form of directories
o directories are a special type of computer files used to organize other files into a hierarchical structure
 directories are also referred to as folders, particularly in systems using graphical user interfaces
o a directory may also contain one of more directories
 the topmost directory in a computer is called the root directory
 a directory that is below another directory is referred to as a sub-directory
 a directory that is above another directory is referred to as a parent directory
o directories are designed for bookkeeping purposes in computer systems
 a directory is identified by a unique directory name
 computer files of the same nature are usually put under the same directory
 a data file can be accessed in a computer system by specifying a path that is made up of the device name, one or more directory names and its own file name
 for example: c:\project101\mapdata\basemap\nw2367.dat
o the concept of workspace used by many geographic information system software packages is based on the directory structure of the host computer
 a workspace is a directory under which all data files relating to a particular project are stored
2.4. The application architecture perspective of information organization
• computer applications nowadays tend to be constructed on the client/server systems architecture
• client/server is primarily a relationship between processes running in the same computer or, more commonly, in separate computers across a telecommunication network
o the client is a process that requests services
 the dialog between the client and the server is always initiated by the client
 a client can request services from many servers at the same time
o the server is a process that provides the service
 a server is primarily a passive service provider
 a server can service many clients at the same time
• there are many ways of implementing a client/server architecture but from the perspective of information organization, the following five are most important
o file servers --- the client requests specific records from a file; and the server returns these records to the client by transmitting them across the network
o database servers --- the client sends structured query language (SQL) requests to the server; the server finds the required information by processing these requests and then passes the results back to the client
o transaction servers --- the client invokes a remote procedure that executes a transaction at the server side; the server returns the result back to the client via the network
o Web server --- communicating interactively by the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) over the Internet, the Web server returns documents when clients ask for them by name
o groupware servers --- this particular type of servers provides a set of applications that allow clients (and their users) to communicate with one another using text, images, bulletin boards, video and other forms of media
• from the application architecture perspective, the objective of information organization and data structure is to develop a data design strategy that will optimize system operation by
o balancing the distribution of data resources between the client and the server
 databases are typically located on the server to enable data sharing by multiple users
 static data that are used for reference are usually allocated to the client
o ensuring the logical allocation of data resources among different servers
 data that are commonly used together should be placed in the same server
 data that have common security requirements should be placed in the same server
 data intended for a particular purpose (file service, database query, transaction processing, Web browsing or groupware applications) should be placed in the appropriate server
o standardizing and maintaining metadata (i.e. data about data) to facilitate the search for the availability and characteristics of existing data

Reference: http://www.ncgia.ucsb.edu/giscc/units/u051/


What are the challenges facing you in performing the role? How will you address these challenges?

There are many things to face in performing my main role to the environment. As a model to every one, my performance should be flawless and most nearly perfect because you provide an idea or information to everybody watching your performances. As an Information technology student I should be aware about my environment. Many principles shown above as a sample of the information representation and organization. Those principles are challenging to me to face the role of myself to the environment.