Julio Reis
email: julio.dosreis@ic.unicamp.br

Edemar Rodrigo Bonacin
email: rodrigo.bonacin@cti.gov.br

Mendes Perciani

Maria Baranauskas

Julio Cesar Dos Reis

Edemar Mendes Perciani
email: edemar.mendes.perciani@gmail.com

Maria Cecília
email: cecilia@ic.unicamp.br

Calani Baranauskas

Analysis and Representation of Illocutions from Electronic Health Records

Keywords: Intentions, Illocutions, Pragmatics, Ontologies, Semantic Web, Pragmatic Web, Knowledge Representation, EHRs, Medical data

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Information and communication technologies are essential in complex contexts of medicine and clinical research. These domains are knowledge intensive and require appropriated methods and artifacts for enabling computational representation of knowledge. In this context, Electronic Health Records (EHRs) describe and store patients' information with a great volume of unstructured text. This hinders adequate integration, retrieval of information, as well as access to medical research data.

Aiming to deal with this problem, various studies have devised how to give welldefined meaning to information [START_REF] Berners-Lee | The Semantic Web[END_REF], emphasizing the construction of mechanisms for interpreting digital content through knowledge representation artifacts [START_REF] Hendler | From the Semantic Web to Social Machines: A research challenge for AI on the World Wide Web[END_REF]. However, the communicated intentions affect the understanding of information content.

We understand "intention" as the effects of meanings with a determined purpose in a social context (e.g., a feeling or a judgment), as aligned with the discipline of Organizational Semiotics (OS) [START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF]. We argue that dealing with both semantic and intentions (as part of pragmatics 1 ) allow to improve medical knowledge management and sharing. Our assumption implies having an underlying model suited to formally represent and link semantic and pragmatic aspects of knowledge.

This model might support both human and machines to interpret and process information. Our research remains under the Semantic Web (SemWeb) vision, which suggests modeling the information in Web ontologies for enabling knowledge interpretation by artificial agents and people [START_REF] Berners-Lee | The Semantic Web[END_REF]. While considering the formal meaning of information may already improve several types of systems, in particular machine-to-machine interoperability, complex settings of medical information systems entail open issues related to human factors. Even simple concept representations may have their interpretation affected by contextual aspects such as intention, users' background and time. Complementarily, the Pragmatic Web (PragWeb) studies meaning negotiation [START_REF] Singh | The Pragmatic Web[END_REF], however, there are still open issues on knowledge representation techniques suited to model meanings in a social context with the implied intentions.

Although literature has examined the evolution of meanings and intentions in collaborative problem solving [START_REF] Bonacin | Pragmatic Aspects of Collaborative Problem Solving: Towards a Framework for Conceptualizing Dynamic Knowledge[END_REF], several difficulties still exist to achieve the representation of a complete computer-interpretable model, including alternatives to define the way that intentions are manifested in domain-specific contexts. Moreover, there is a lack of experimentally grounded studies with the focus on investigations of how existing theoretical frameworks can be useful to deal with this issue.

This article proposes an original empirical analysis of dimensions and intention classes in real EHRs data. This investigation relies on Semiotic-based theories and frameworks that structure and classify intentions according to different dimensions of illocutions [START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF]. The work also contributes with the definition and refinement of an ontology model, specified with SemWeb technologies. The goal of this model is to represent the illocutions materialized in the domain.

This research collected and selected a set of EHRs, which were manually examined to classify the illocution dimensions in their content. On this basis, we performed quantitative and qualitative analyses, which were used as input to the design of a representation model. Our findings reveal the way that illocutions are expressed in the domain-specific text-based content of the medical field. This allows the extraction of commonly used domain terms to represent the illocution dimensions. The proposed model enables to formally explore intentions, in a structured way, in analytics tasks, as well as by information recovery systems. Our investigation demonstrates the potentiality of considering domain-specific terminologies for identifying and classifying illocutions, which represent relevant language expressions of the domain.

The remainder of the paper is organized as follows: Section 2 reviews methods for representing meanings and intentions, and describes the adopted theories, frameworks and technical languages; Section 3 describes the methods and materials of the study; Section 4 presents and discusses the obtained results; Section 5 draws conclusion remarks and points out future work.

Background

The Web has progressively evolved towards the SemWeb standing for an extension of the current Web that enables richer information share [START_REF] Berners-Lee | The Semantic Web[END_REF]. The SemWeb aims at making data more accessible and detectable by people and machines. SemWeb has predominantly focused on: (1) turning data machine-interpretable and making the semantic of information explicit at different degrees of expressivity, via formal representations; (2) providing metadata; and (3) integrating well-structured data.

Within the SemWeb proposition, ontology consists of a concrete syntactic structure that models the semantics of a domain [START_REF] Uschold | Where are the semantics in the semantic web?[END_REF]. In this paper, we adopt the term "Web Ontology" to refer to ontologies within the SemWeb field. This concept differs from the ontology concept used in OS field. Web Ontologies have specifically been designed to provide rich machine-decidable semantic representations and refers to a formal specification of some domain interpretable by machines. It specifies a conceptualization in terms of classes of domain objects, properties and relationships between classes [START_REF] Gruber | A translation approach to portable ontology specifications[END_REF]. This enables knowledge interpretation by artificial agents supporting the correct understanding of shared data. At the core of the SemWeb technology, computational languages, based on logic for knowledge representation and inference, have been designed specifically to define Web ontologies. In particular, according to the SemWeb architecture [START_REF] Berners-Lee | The Semantic Web[END_REF], there exists the Web Ontology Language (OWL), which relates to other Web languages, such as Resource Description Framework (RDF).

While semantics concerns the study of the meaning, independent of use and context, pragmatics regards the study of the meaning use in context and its purpose. In this perspective, PragWeb has originally been proposed as an extension or a complement of the SemWeb. PragWeb addresses shortcomings and challenges that purely SemWeb approaches fail to tackle with the aim of serving user's needs by making content more accessible. PragWeb emphasizes the relevance of context and purpose of information. Thus, it deals with research issues such as context and meaning negotiation between agents (human or artificial) [START_REF] Singh | The Pragmatic Web[END_REF] and issues related to intentions, interests and participation.

Few studies have attempted to represent and recognize intentions and other pragmatic aspects in computer systems. Our investigation indicates studies in natural language processing and computational linguistics that address pragmatic aspects. In the context of discourse analysis, Poesio and Traum [START_REF] Poesio | Conversational Actions and Discourse Situations[END_REF] have studied a discourse model and different kinds of structure that play a role in conversation. They proposed a theory about the discourse situation, shared by the participants in a conversation, centered on information about the occurrence of speech acts [START_REF] Searle | A Classification of Illocutionary Acts[END_REF]. Dam-Jensen and Zethsen [START_REF] Dam-Jensen | Pragmatic patterns and the lexical system -A reassessment of evaluation in language[END_REF] have conducted a linguistic corpus analysis considering pragmatic aspects via patterns. They investigated the relations between lexical meaning and the context where these meanings are inserted.

In addition to modeling pragmatics at the level of natural language, existing researches also emphasize the intentions modeling in other frames. The initial propositions examined logic-based models of intention formation applied to the multiagent task [START_REF] Grant | A logic-based model of intention formation and action for multi-agent subcontracting[END_REF]. They focused on the evolving intentions of agents and the conditions under which an agent can adopt and keep an intention. In contrast, Hawizy et al. [START_REF] Hawizy | Intention Modeling: A semiotic view[END_REF] argue that the design of a model to produce clear representations of human intentions requires the incorporation of communication studies, such as Semiotics, which encompasses verbal and non-verbal communication.

Some studies have focused on specific domains, e.g., health. Shahar et al. [START_REF] Shahar | An intention-based language for representing clinical guidelines[END_REF] have studied the representation of clinical guidelines, where intentions referred to action patterns or patient states that a system must maintain, achieve or avoid. Other investigations aim at analyzing the users' behaviors in collaborative environments using SemWeb technologies. Kanso et al. [START_REF] Kanso | Representing Author's Intentions of Scientific Documents[END_REF] present an approach to model intentions by analyzing the authors' acts, focusing on detecting intentions in scientific documents, while Angeletou et al. [START_REF] Angeletou | Modelling and Analysis of User Behaviour in Online Communities[END_REF] have proposed a method to represent and compute behavior by inferring roles in online communities. Nevertheless, these behavior roles are not explicitly linked to intentions.

Our previous work proposed a semiotic approach to design ontologies [START_REF] Reis | A Semiotic-based Approach to the design of Web Ontologies[END_REF]. The investigation adopted OS' concepts and methods to enrich the representation aspects of traditional Web ontologies. In particular, we used the notion of Agents, Affordances and Ontological Dependences from the Semantic Analysis Method (SAM) described as OWL classes. That proposal did not enable representation of intentions, which was initially proposed as a general ontology model to represent pragmatic aspects in a computational way [START_REF] Bonacin | An ontological model for supporting intention-based information sharing on collaborative problem solving[END_REF]. It encoded the main concepts of the Pragmatics Communication Framework [START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF] using the OWL language, which included classes, and object and data properties to describe the model.

Although the achieved results already allow correlating the representation of communication acts with ontologies, which demonstrates the initial feasibility of the preliminary model, they have brought up theoretical and practical limitations, which are addressed in the current article. Our research aims to further explore the process of describing the terms by which illocutions are expressed in the domain content. In addition, we contribute with empirical analyses and an extension of the model, encompassing additional classes, terms and instances.

In our study, we adopt an OS view of intentions, which is based on Peircean Semiotics, aiming to represent and study intentions present in EHRs using an interpretant dependent communication model. In order to classify and structure types of intentions, this investigation relies on Liu's conceptual framework of Pragmatics Communication [START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF], which proposes classifying illocutions using three dimensions. Liu's proposal considers communication acts as the minimal unit of human communication. A complete communication act is defined as a structure consisting of three components: performer, addressee, and message. A message contains two parts:

1. The content part of a communication act manifests the meaning of the message.

The meaning is determined by social construct or human behavior performed by the performer and by the addressee. 2. The function part of a communication act specifies the illocution, which corresponds to the intention of the performer.

One dimension distinguishes between descriptive and prescriptive "invention". If an illocution has an inventive or instructive effect, it is prescriptive, otherwise descriptive. Another dimension consists of affective and denotative "mode". If an illocution is related to the performer's personal modal state mood, we call it affective, otherwise denotative. The last one is the "time" dimension, namely past/present and future. The classification of the "time" dimension is based on when the social effects of the message are produced, i.e., in the future or the present/past. The three dimensions result in eight different classes of illocutions including: Proposal, Inducement, Forecast, Wish, Palinode, Contrition, Assertion and Valuation.

Study Design

In this study, we conducted a five-step procedure to attain our objectives as follows:

1. Collect a set of real patients EHRs from hospitals. To make this research viable, we selected from the initial set of EHRs a subset according to a specific disease diagnosis. We only considered this subset of EHRs in our analysis. 2. Perform manual analysis of the EHRs according to the dimensions of illocutions, as proposed by our theoretical frame of reference. This step was performed by the researchers involved in this work with support of physicians.

We assign the illocution dimensions to the sentences (messages) of the EHRs content. For this purpose, we consider Zero as past/present (time), description (invention) and denotative (mode); we denote One as future (time), prescription (invention) and affective (mode) (cf. Table 1). 3. Execute a quantitative and qualitative analyses over the illocutions. In general, we analyzed the occurrences of the dimensions (cf. Table 1) and the frequency of illocution classes detected (cf. Table 2). Furthermore, we examined the representative terms and keyphrases for each illocution class based on the EHR content (cf. Table 3). This allows us to state the domain terms that frequently represent the illocution dimensions. 4. Define an ontology model (cf. Section 4.2) based on previous analysis. This model represents illocutions related to domain terminologies. To this end, we rely on the reuse of previous models proposing further extensions and refinements. 5. Instantiate the model with the EHRs contents. This research considers a set of EHRs available in a public hospital from "Águas de Lindóia" in São Paulo State, Brazil. The total amount of EHRs accounts ~10.200 and all patients' data are anonymous. Our manual analysis effectively used 26 cases regarding the diagnosis of "Dengue fever" disease. We considered free-text notations in pre-consultation and patient's history case, where physicians report on symptoms according to patients' statements, exams results, and suggest treatments.

Results and Discussion

In this section, we first present the results concerning the conducted analysis of illocutions in EHRs (Section 4.1). Afterwards, we describe a Web Ontology model for representing the expression of illocutions from EHRs content (Section 4.2). The results are then discussed in Section 4.3.

4.1

Analysis of illocutions in EHRs

Table 1 presents the occurrence of the values Zero and One of each dimension according to defined methods (cf. Section 3.1). The analysis of 26 EHRs resulted in the identification of 201 illocutions. The results point out that around ninety percent of the illocutions are in present/past tense, are descriptive and are denotative. The affective mode is present in less than eight percent of the messages. Table 3 presents terms and keyphases used in the messages that indicate their illocution classes. The terms "Refers", "Exhibits" and "Reports" are present in the total of 66 assertions. From a qualitative view, typically, these terms were used to confirm patients' symptoms, characteristics or disease, which are important for medical diagnosis. The terms "Denies" and "Lacks" are present in the total of 85 assertions. Physicians frequently used these terms to report the absence of symptoms or diseases related to the diagnosis. Time related keyphases/expressions (e.g., "There is 'x' hours/days") are present in 24 assertions. The time expressions are frequently used to refer to the presence or absence of a symptom or disease in the days or hours prior to the consultation. Other terms are present in 7 assertions (one occurrence each).

As presented in Table 3, the terms "Requests" and "Advices" are present in 15 proposals. Typically, physicians use these terms to give instructions for the patients. The term "Refers", "Complaints" and "Improves" are present in 7 valuations that consist in subjective judgments about the patients' symptoms, characteristics and conditions (e.g., to say that they are feeling better or to complain about a symptom). The term "Denies" is also present in 2 valuations, which refers to subjective judgments about patients' conditions. The term "Advises" was used in 3 inducements made by physicians to warn patients.

Web Ontology for representing domain-related illocution terminologies

Our Web Ontology representation is based on previous studies and the Communication Act Ontology (CactO) [START_REF] Bonacin | An ontological model for supporting intention-based information sharing on collaborative problem solving[END_REF]. The first version of CactO was constructed in OWL using the Protégé tool3 with the objective of representing aspects related to intentions in messages of collaborative problem-solving systems. This Web ontology was evaluated in information retrieval scenarios from discussion forums. Despite the promising results substantiated by overall good objective measures of evaluation, the first version of CactO is limited when we consider the complexity of medical texts. Thus, based on our reported analyses, we propose a new version of CactO, which we named MedCactO. This version of the CactO aims at representing intentions in text from EHRs. In MedCactO, the function part of a communication act is more detailed, including the specification of dimension values and terms used to express these dimensions. The MedCactO also links behaviour patterns to standard medical terminologies and existing Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS).

Fig. 1 presents an overview of MedCactO, including the classes inherited from CactO. The Agent class comprises who (HumanAgent) performs (or is the addressee) a communication act. Physicians and Patients might be subclasses of HumanAgent. The Behaviour_Pattern class represents patterns that delineate the actions performed by an agent (including meaning interpretation). The communicationAct is performed when an agent write a text. One communicationAct has a message, which has the function and content parts (cf. Section 2).

In MedCactO, a Behaviour_Pattern is linked to concepts modeled in existing medical KOSs (terminologies, taxonomies, ontologies, etc.) (top of Fig. 1). The MedCactO also includes the FunctionAct class. This class is associated with an illocution type, which has the Dimensions of time, invention and mode. Each Dimension is described with a value (between 0 and 1) and it is expressed by a Behaviour_Pattern, which is linked to terms specified by the existing medical KOSs. As shown in Figure 2, the communication act (c_act4) was performed by an agent (uid_2) and this act has a message (m_act4). Such message has the content part linked to a behaviour pattern (b_pattern5053), which is related, for instance, to an UMLS 4Concept Unique Identifier (C0003862). The message also contains a function (illoc_4), which has an illocution type (assertion) and three dimensions (mode and invention dimensions were omitted in the figure for reliability purposes). The "time" dimension (me_illoc_4) has the value 0 (i.e., present/past) and is expressed by a behaviour pattern (b_pattern51), which is modeled externally in UMLS (for instance) by the concept C0449238. The value associated to this concept is two days.

Discussion

The analysis of the EHRs revealed interesting aspects of free-text annotations regarding illocutions in medical records. In general, the analyzed texts are concise and impersonal. This can be observed by the higher incidence of assertions, and the mode 0 (denotative) in more than 90 percent of the messages. The majority of the analyzed texts also remains descriptive and in the present/past tense. These characteristics differ from our previous studies [START_REF] Bonacin | Pragmatic Aspects of Collaborative Problem Solving: Towards a Framework for Conceptualizing Dynamic Knowledge[END_REF] in "special education domain", in which there are a wider range of incidence of other illocutions types, including the affective mode.

The analysis also revealed the importance of the terms or expressions that indicate the dimensions of an illocution. For instance, a coughing for one day is a different indicator that a coughing for one month. The modeling and computational interpretation of these aspects may result in improvements of medical information tools, including information retrieval tasks and applications for analytical purposes.

Inspired by these results, we proposed the MedCactO, which aims at representing the illocutionary acts and linking them to standard terminology and models of the medical field. This Web ontology was constructed using the OWL language, which enables the use of reasoning tools and other Semantic Web technologies that can be used to develop several integration and information retrieval tools.

Neverhteless, this study is limited in terms of size and scope. It was restricted to 26 EHRs of a specific disease (dengue fever). EHRs of other areas of the medical field must be investigated to verify the incidence of illocutions types. RDF/OWL models, as the adopted in this article, are also limited for representing Agents, Affordances and Ontological Dependences. Other methods from OS, such as, the Semantic and Norm Analysis may produce additional and relevant results. Despite these limitations, this study represents a promising and novel initiative for understanding and managing intentions in text-based content of medical records. In a long-term perspective, this might be useful and effective in the definition of further computational tools for supporting clinical research and better medical treatment plans.

Conclusion

Medical information, as text described in EHRs, requires adequate computational representation of meanings and intentions. This might be crucial to several organizational and computer supported tasks, including decision making and medical research. However, literature lacks formal methods and models to relate meanings and intentions systematically. Meaning representation and interpretation cannot be considered without context and intention, which can be classified according to several Fig. 2. Example of a communication act modeled using MedCactO dimensions. In this article, we made explicit how domain terms are used in illocutions related to intention classes. We conducted an analysis to investigate how illocutions are expressed in EHRs using domain terms. This was the basis to expand and refine a model, which formally describes illocution types using standard Web ontology languages. Our findings indicated relevant domain-specific expressions that refer to illocution dimensions and their adequate computer-interpretable representation.

Future work involves experimentally investigating the use of the proposed model in larger scale and in specific computing applications such as information retrieval.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Overview of the MedCactO

Table 1 .

 1 Distribution of occurrences regarding dimensions of time, invention and mode.

		#Time	#Invention	#Mode
	Zero	182 (90.55%)	182 (90.5%)	186 (92.54%)
	One	19 (9.45%)	19 (9.45%)	15 (7.46%)

Table 2

 2 presents the frequency of illocution classes in the EHRs' texts. The majority of the illocutions are assertions within 84.58% of the messages. Proposals (7.96%), valuation (5.97%) and inducements (1.49%) classes are also present in the analyzed messages. Nevertheless, forecast, wish, palinode and contrition did not occur in the analyzed EHRs.

Table 2 .

 2 Frequency of illocution classes

	Illocution classes	Frequency (Percentage)
	Assertion	170 (84.58%)
	Proposal	16 (7.96%)
	Valuation	12 (5.97%)
	Inducement	3 (1.49%)

Table 3 .

 3 Analysis of representative terms and keyphases by the illocution classes2

	Terms	#Assertion	#Proposal	#Valuation	# Inducement
	"Refers"	48	-	3	-
	"Denies"	82	-	2	-
	"Exhibits"	12	-	-	-
	"Reports"	6	-	-	-
	"Requests"	-	12	-	-
	"Advises"	-	3	-	3
	"There is 'x' hours/days"	24	-	2	-
	"Lacks"	3	-	-	-
	"Complain"	-	-	2	-
	"Improves"	-	-	2	-
	Others	7	1	2	-

In the context of this work, pragmatics is understood as described in the pragmatic layer of the semiotic framework[START_REF] Liu | Organisational Semiotics for Business Informatics[END_REF].

A same illocution can be related to more than one term/keyphase.

protege.stanford.edu

Unified Medical Language System -Available in <www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls>

Acknowledgments. We thank the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) (Grant #2014/14890-0), and the CNPq (Grant # 308618/2014-9). The opinions expressed in this work do not necessarily reflect those of the funding agencies.


João Rosas
email: jrosas@uninova.pt

Luis Camarinha-Matos

Assessment of the Willingness to Collaborate in Enterprise Networks

Keywords: organization's behavior, willingness to collaboration, collaborative networks, Theory of the Planned Behavior

The success of a partnership depends fundamentally on the partners' active and vigorous participation in the achievement of the common goals. The commitment to these goals is associated to each partner's attitudes and intentions. These intentions, in turn, are linked to the partner's beliefs concerning the expected outcomes of a collaboration opportunity. This work proposes an approach to assess organizations' willingness to collaborate. This approach follows a behavioral perspective, which is based on the Theory of the Planned Behavior. A tool named Intentions Query Mechanism selects a number of appropriate questions from a knowledge-base, from which the answers allow to estimate the level of an organization's willingness to collaborate.

Introduction

Willingness to collaborate in a networked organization is related to the partner's attitudes and intentions towards concrete collaboration situations. It is dependent on a variety of aspects, which are basically related to the expected outcomes of a collaboration opportunity, such as increased profits, achieving new markets, or obtaining some competitive advantages. When a partner perceives a collaboration opportunity as beneficial, its intention or willingness to collaborate increases, otherwise it decreases. Other aspects which account for willingness to collaborate are the perceived risks, external incentives, or the presence of a fierce competition.

This work proposes an approach to assess organizations' willingness to collaborate. It follows a behavioral perspective, based on the Theory of the Planned Behavior [START_REF] Ajzen | The theory of planned behavior[END_REF]. The approach involves the assessment of an organization's attitudes towards collaborating, the external influences, or social incentive/pressure to collaborate, and the perceived control over factors that might facilitate/impede the partner's ability to collaborate. Assessing the willingness to collaborate helps to foresee how well an organization is likely to perform in a partnership.

Contribution to Technological Innovation

In spite of its value, this subject has not been well explored yet. An innovative aspect of this work is that it bases the notion of collaboration willingness on the idea of behavioral beliefs, attitudes and intentions concerning collaboration opportunities. Additionally, a systematic approach for collaboration willingness assessment, with automatic inquiring selection, is also proposed. This concept of collaboration willingness is part of a larger collaboration readiness model [START_REF] Rosas | An approach to assess collaboration readiness[END_REF], as illustrated in Fig. 1.

Each component of the readiness model is characterized as follows:

• Preparedness -is based on the concept of organization's character. It aims at assessing whether an organization is likely to display reliable behavior inside partnerships [START_REF] Rosas | Modeling collaboration preparedness assessment[END_REF]. The greater this likelihood, the greater the preparedness level. • Competences fitness -This concept is seen as a soft versus hard competencies dichotomy. Hard competencies are associated to the achievement of concrete or "physical" outcomes, while soft competencies are more associated to more abstract or intangible ones. Competencies fitness aims at assessing how well an organization uses its hard competencies in a partnership. Their effective use might also require the exercise of certain soft competencies, such as the ability to share knowledge [START_REF] Rosas | An Organization's extended (Soft) Competencies Model[END_REF]. • Willingness -It corresponds to the topic of this paper, and aims at assessing partners' attitudes and intentions to participate in a collaboration opportunity.

Similarly to willingness, an innovative aspect of this collaboration readiness model is that it assumes a behavioral perspective aiming at assess partners readiness to collaborate, helping to increase the likelihood of partnerships success. The establishment of this conceptual basis is fundamental for the development of a new generation of tools to support partner's selection for collaborative networks.

Related Research

At first sight, willingness to collaborate should have taken much attention by collaborative networks researchers, given its potential importance for partnerships success. As a matter of fact, a more generic problem, which can be referred as willingness to perform a particular behavior is already a common subject in human behavior studies [START_REF] Ajzen | From intentions to actions: A theory of planned behavior[END_REF]. However, such is not the case for the area of collaborative networks, as research works addressing organizations' willingness to collaborate are scarce. An example of such a research is [START_REF] Anderson | Decision-making collaboration scale: Tests of validity[END_REF] where willingness to collaborate is defined as a new communication trait. As such, willingness to collaborate is positively related to a number of traits, such as willingness to communicate, argumentativeness, verbal aggressiveness, interpersonal communication competency, and a relaxed, friendly and attentive communicator style. In [START_REF] Claudia | Philipps[END_REF] it is analyzed the influence of organization's corporate culture, and perceived culture of a particular partner, in order to undertake a shift from a transactional buyer-seller relationship to an intensified collaboration. If there is fitness between own and peer's culture, then willingness to cooperate increases. Other works could be mentioned here, but are not related to collaboration. The research from [START_REF] Corral | Explaining and predicting the innovative behaviour of the firm: a behavioural approach[END_REF] is concerned with a firm's willingness to engage in innovation. The research in [START_REF] Montalvo Corral | Sustainable production and consumption systems-cooperation for change: assessing and simulating the willingness of the firm to adopt/develop cleaner technologies. The case of the In-Bond industry in northern Mexico[END_REF], addresses a firms' willingness to adopt cleaner technologies.

The topic of willingness to collaborate seems to be an unexplored subject in the field of collaborative networks.

Modeling Willingness to Collaborate

As mentioned before, willingness to collaborate is concerned with assessing a partner's attitudes and intentions towards concrete collaboration situations. A theory that seems to be useful here is the Theory of the Planned Behavior (TPB) proposed by Ajzen [START_REF] Ajzen | The theory of planned behavior[END_REF]. Therefore, before introducing the proposed approach, a brief introduction to TPB is made.

The Theory of the Planned Behavior. Many works from social sciences aiming at predicting people's behavior are based on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This theory aims at predicting the people's willingness to engage in a particular behavior. According to this theory, human action is guided by three kinds of considerations:

• Behavioral beliefs, which correspond to beliefs about the likely outcomes from performing such behavior, and the evaluation of these outcomes. • Normative beliefs, which correspond to beliefs about the normative expectations of the surrounding environment (other people, the group, or society) and the motivation to comply with these expectations. • Control beliefs, which correspond to beliefs about the presence of factors that may facilitate or impede the performance of the behavior, and the perceived power of these factors.

In their respective aggregates, the behavioral beliefs produce a favorable or unfavorable attitude towards the behavior in question; normative beliefs result in perceived social pressure or subjective norm towards performing the behavior; and control beliefs give rise to perceived behavioral control. In combination, these factors lead to the formation of a behavioral intention. According to TPB, this intention is assumed to be the immediate antecedent or predictor of the behavior [START_REF] Ajzen | The theory of planned behavior[END_REF]. The adopted assumption is that TPB can also be considered suitable for predicting the organizations' behaviors. This suitability lies in the assumption that organizations behave like rational agents, making systematic use of the available information, in order to decide which goals to pursuit. These goals are achieved through corresponding business processes, usually established at a strategic level. Assuming that organization's strategic planning is based on goals to be achieved suggests that these goals can be seen as organizations' intentions to perform the corresponding behaviors. In other words, they correspond to the organizations' planned behavior [START_REF] Corral | Explaining and predicting the innovative behaviour of the firm: a behavioural approach[END_REF]. As a result, if an organization's intentions are based on goals to be achieved, and if organization's behaviors are in turn a consequence of these intentions, then the TPB can be applied to organizations in order to predict their behavior. Consequently, TPB can be used to assess organizations' willingness to collaborate.

The collaboration willingness model. The assessment of the willingness to collaborate depends on the perception of an organization's intentions concerning a particular collaboration opportunity (CO) and other factors, named as background factors, which are illustrated in Fig. 2. These intentions in turn depend on the organization's attitudes, social influence or incentives, and the perceived control over the collaboration opportunity and these factors. The proposed model for willingness to collaborate follows a structure that is compliant with TPB. In order to keep the presented model as generic as the TPB in the definitions below, we consider not only the "willingness to collaborate" behavior, but also other behaviors related to collaboration, as illustrated on the right side of Fig. 2. Additionally, in order to illustrate the definitions below, some examples of queries are presented near each definition. These examples aim at assessing an organization's willingness to "engage in a partnership".

Definition 1 (Background factors) -Are the aspects relevant to the perception of an organization's intentions to collaborate in a specific collaboration opportunity.

Definition 2 (Organization's Behavioral beliefs) -Correspond to beliefs that a behavior (e.g. engaging in a partnership) will provide a number of expected outcomes (e.g. higher profit or the access to an extended market). Each behavioral belief is specified by a subjective probability that the corresponding outcome will be achieved. It can be specified as a set of tuples {(bb i , v i ) | bb i ∈ BB, v i ∈ [0,1]}, in which:

• bb i -identifies a belief about an outcome from the behavior in question.

• v i -corresponds to a belief strength, or subjective probability, of the corresponding outcome being achieved. Definition 4 (Attitude towards a behavior) -It is the degree 'A b ' to which the performance of a behavior b is positively or negatively valuated by the organization. This value is determined as a composite of the behavioral beliefs (Definition 2) and corresponding evaluations (Definition 3). Specifically, the strength of each belief bb i is weighted by the appraisal oa i of the outcome, and then aggregated using the following equation:

[ ] [ ] ∑ = × × × = n i i i i i b v oa v bb scale n A 1 2 2 2 ) , ( ) , ( ) (# 1 π π (1)
The first part of the above equation, and for the next ones, transforms the result into a percentage format. The symbol (#scale) stands for the size of the used scale. For instance, if the scale is defined as scale={1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7}, then (#scale)=7. Additionally, π 2 stands for the algebraic projection, which retrieves the second element of the corresponding tuple given as argument.

Definition 5 (External stimulus or influences) -Are used to represent external influences, which favor or disfavor the performance of the behavior in question, such as engaging in a partnership. It can be specified as a set {(es i , v i ) | es i ∈ ES, v i ∈ [0,1]}, in which for each tuple:

• es i -identifies an external stimulus for the behavior in question • v i -specifies the degree of belief in that stimulus.

• ES={es 1 , es 2 , …} -represents the external stimulus or influences, which potentially influence the organization in the performance of the considered behavior.

Will the organization receive support for investing abroad? Not likely X Quite likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Definition 6 (Motivation to comply) -Establishes the degree or strength of motivation to which an organization complies with the external influences (Definition 5) over the performance of the behavior. It can be specified as a set {(mc i , Definition 7 (Social influence) -It corresponds to the composite aggregation of each external stimulus with the corresponding motivations to comply. Specifically, the strength of each external stimulus es i is weighted by motivation to comply mc i , using the following equation:

v i ) | mc i ∈ MC, v i ∈ [0,1]},
[ ] [ ] ∑ = × × = n i i i i i b v mc v es scale n SI 1 2 2 2 ) , ( ) , ( ) (# 1 π π (2)
Definition 8 (Organization's control beliefs) -It is concerned with the beliefs an organization has got on the factors that may facilitate or impede the performance of the behavior. It can be specified as a set {(cb i , v i ) | cb i ∈ CB, v i ∈ [0,1]}, in which for each tuple:

• cb i -identifies a control factor that may facilitate, or impede, the performance of the behavior. • v i -the subjective probability that the corresponding factor is present.

• CB={cb 1 , cb 2 , …} -The identified control beliefs set associated to the performance of the behavior.

Is the organization prepared to operate abroad? Not likely X Quite likely 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Definition 9 (Perceived power) -Corresponds to the perceived value of each control factor, as specified in Definition 8. It can be specified as a set {(pp i , v i ) | pp i ∈ PP, v i ∈ [0,1]}, in which for each tuple:

• pp i -identifies the perceived power for the control factor in the corresponding control belief cb i specified in Definition 8. • v i -the value for the corresponding pp i .

• PP={pp 1 ,pp 2 , …} -The identified perceived power set associated to the performance of the behavior.

Is preparedness to operate abroad a main concern? much X Not much 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Definition 10 (Perceived behavioral control) -It refers to the organization's perceptions on its capability to perform the behavior. This element is determined by the aggregation of the control beliefs with the perceived power of each one. Specifically, the strength of each control belief cb i is weighted by the perceived power pp i , and the products are aggregated using the following equation:

[ ] [ ] ∑ = × × = n i i i i i b v pp v cb scale n PBC
Assuming the weight values as w 1 =0.33, w 2 =0.33 and w 3 =0.33, the level of the willingness to collaborate is W~I engage in the partnership = 0.33*(0.41 + 0.37 + 0.49)=42% (6)

The Intentions Query Mechanism. In order to provide a systematic way of assessing the willingness to collaborate, a tool named Intentions Query Mechanism (IQM) was developed. From the description of a collaboration opportunity, this tool selects the a set of possible questions to be asked, in order to assess willingness to collaborate. The approach used to develop the IQM is based on a Prolog knowledge-base, which manages an experts' repository of questions. These questions are used to enquire partners' attitudes towards collaboration-related behaviors and expected outcomes.

From the text description of a given collaboration opportunity, the tool detects the semantic relationships between the terms used in the CO description and the questions stored in the repository. Each time the tool finds a match, the corresponding term is highlighted, as illustrated in Fig. 3. The discovery of the semantic relationships is performed with using WordNet, a large network of semantic relations between English words [START_REF] George | WordNet: a lexical database for English[END_REF]. An example of a semantic relationship is between the words "listen" and "perceive", for which WordNet stores the fact that "to perceive" is a hypernym of "to listen". The highlighted terms are subsequently used to select the specific questions from the knowledge-base, which is presented to a concerned user for the necessary answers, as illustrated in Fig. 4. These questions are specified according to the definitions presented in previous section. As they aim at evaluating subjective behavioral beliefs, the corresponding answers do not require strict crisp values. Finally, these values are provided as input to the TPB part and the result is a number, which represents the organization's willingness level to collaborate, as specified in Definition 11. Using this definition, the willingness to collaborate level for the organization in the example is 50.96%, as shown in Fig. 5. An interpretation of this result for a concrete organization could be that this organization's willingness to engage in a given collaboration opportunity is not appreciably high.

Conclusions and Future Work

In spite of the importance for collaborative networks, research works concerning willingness to collaborate are scarce, particularly those following a behavioral perspective. This work formalized this concept of collaboration willingness, and introduced a corresponding assessment approach, based on the Theory of the Planned Behavior. A tool named Intentions Query Mechanism provides a way to systematically assess this willingness to collaborate.

The preliminary results show that this assessment approach is feasible and promising. Nevertheless, further research is needed to improve it into a more complete assessment model.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. The collaboration readiness concept.

Fig. 2 .

 2 Fig. 2. Willingness to collaborate model.

4 )

 4 Definition 11 (Organization's willingness to collaborate) -According to TPB, intention to collaborate can be taken as a direct measure of the willingness to collaborate. Intention is based on the attitude toward the behavior (Definition 4), the social influences (Definition 7), and perceived behavioral control (Definition 10). Each of these factors is weighted or adjusted taking into consideration the behavior or situations. Its value can be computed by a functionI= F(ATB, SI, PBC) = w 1 *ATB + w 2 *SI + w 3 *PBC.W~I (The weights w 1 , w 2 and w 3 represent correlation coefficients. They indicate to which extent the values of ATB, SI and PBC influence the willingness to collaborate level. Their determination requires a separated pilot study, in which a questionnaire sent to organizations, which participated in previous partnerships, would allow determine the correlation between these values and the the willingness to collaborate level. This determination is typically made using correlation or regression analysis. The values of attitude A b , social influence SB b and perceived behavioral control PCB b for the provided examples can be obtained, using the above definitions, as following:

Fig. 3 .

 3 Fig. 3. Describing the collaboration opportunity.

Fig. 4 .

 4 Fig. 4. Selected questions for the willingness assessment.

Fig. 5 .

 5 Fig. 5. Estimation of willingness to collaborate.

•

  BB={bb 1 , bb 2 , …} -represents the set of identified behavioral beliefs concerning collaboration behaviors. Definition 3 (Outcome appraisal) -It represents how an organization values the outcome associated to each behavioral belief in Definition 2. It can be specified as a set {(oa i , v i ) | oa i ∈ OA, v i ∈ [0,1]}, in which for each tuple:• oa i , -specifies the outcome associated to the behavioral belief bb i in Definition 2. • v i -represents a subjective appraisal of the expected outcome.• OA={oa 1 , oa 2 , …} -represents the set of outcomes, each related one-by-one to a behavioral belief specified in Definition 2.

	The organization believes that engaging in the partnership will allow growing abroad.
	Extremely unlikely				X		Extremely likely
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7
	The organization thinks growing abroad is
	Not important				X		Very important
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7

  in which for each tuple:• mc i -identifies a motivation to comply with the external stimulus es i specified in Definition 5. • v i -Its corresponding motivation strength.• MC={mc 1 ,mc 2 , …} -The motivators associated to the performance of a behavior.

	How important is receiving support to invest aboard for this organization?
	Not important					X	Very important
	1	2	3	4	5	6	7

The scale used in this example is inverted to ensure that the right side always reflects a positive attitude.

Acknowledgments. This work was supported in part by the Portuguese "Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia" through PhD scholarship.


Ana Inês Oliveira

Luis M Camarinha-Matos

Negotiation and Contracting in Collaborative Networks

Keywords: collaborative networks, negotiation, agreement, virtual organization creation, virtual organization breeding environment, agility, reliability

ou non, émanant des établissements d'enseignement et de recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires publics ou privés.

Introduction

Due to the persistent market instability it is increasingly mandatory that companies and organizations increase their agility and promptly react and respond to business or collaboration opportunities that occur. Occasionally, they might not be able to react and respond by themselves, and consequently, have to collaborate with their peers. For that, the topic of collaborative networks (CNs) appears significantly promising. If the enterprises or the organizations share a common interoperable infrastructure, common operating principles, common cooperation agreements, and a base of trust among them, then their ability to rapidly form a virtual organization (VO) is increased [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | ECOLEAD and CNO Base Concepts[END_REF]. Nevertheless, to form a VO, besides the important mission of selecting the adequate partners with the most suitable competencies to respond to the collaboration opportunity (CO) characteristics, it is also of extreme importance to have a robust and reliable negotiation mechanism that enables the possible VO partners to negotiate in order to achieve a consensus VO agreement during the VO creation process. This VO agreement will then be the basis for the governing principles of the VO during its operation phase.

Furthermore, depending on the different domains or on the different objectives, CNs, and specifically, VOs may appear in a variety of forms with a variety of behavioral patterns [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Collaboration Forms[END_REF]. Thus, it is also important to have into account that each environment must be treated accordingly to its context and to its fundamental characteristics. This also applies to the negotiation process that will also have to be adaptable to each specific case. Therefore, although significant work has already been carried out in the area of CNs and in the area of electronic contracting, one gap still exists that leaves space for additional research work, that is:

How can different collaborative environments be characterized in terms of their negotiation space, and how can the electronic negotiation process for consortia creation be handled to increase agility and reliability?

Contribution to Technological Innovation

Whenever a business or collaboration opportunity appears, if the interested entities are clustered into VO Breeding Environments (VBEs), the chance of acquiring the business opportunity is higher. Nevertheless, although the mechanisms and models provided by the VBE to its members already facilitate the VO formation, one important stage that is specific for each case is the negotiation between possible VO partners due to the numerous differences that those partners might have, for example, cultural differences. Thus, having into account this background, the motivation of this work is on the negotiation process that happens during the VO creation phase, which certainly has a relevant impact on the agility and reliability of the process, and can ensure the proper functioning of the VO during its operation phase. From this negotiation process the main outcome will be the VO consortium agreement that will represent the governing rules and principles of the consortium during its operation phase and it can include negotiation of rights and duties of all partners involved, but also can include for example, some sections on intellectual property rights, partners' benefits and shared risks.

For this significant topic on collaborative networks, proper technological support must be provided. For that, this work contributes with an identification and preliminary characterization of technological tools that can be related to the topic and for the consolidation of important characteristics of the negotiation process in the formation of collaborative consortia.

Related Work

As mentioned in the previous sections, the most important fields of this work are: the collaborative networks, in particular virtual organization creation and its related environment; and the negotiation and contracting. Therefore, in the next two subsections a brief outline and discussion on these areas is described.

Virtual Organization Creation and its Related Environment. The Virtual Organization (VO) paradigm constitutes one of the first manifestations of the collaborative networks. Being the concept developed and applied in several domains and areas, many contributions for the characterization and modeling of the paradigm can be found in the literature, as exemplified by [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Related work on reference modeling for collaborative networks[END_REF] and [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | ECOLEAD and CNO Base Concepts[END_REF]. The main idea behind this concept is basically of a temporary consortium of enterprises and/or organizations, geographically dispersed, that strategically join their competencies to rapidly respond to a business or collaboration opportunity. Typically VOs are supported by computer networks [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Elements of a base VE infrastructure[END_REF] [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Towards a Framework for Creation of Dynamic Virtual Organizations[END_REF]. Nevertheless, to enable the rapidness in the VO creation process, it is necessary that enough information is available about potential partners and that they are ready and prepared to participate in such collaboration. This readiness includes the existence of common models and infrastructures that can be achieved if the VO creation happens in the context of a VO Breeding Environment (VBE). Contrary to the VO that is a temporary collaboration, the VBE is a long-term alliance of the member organizations that provides the necessary means for the VO creation [3] [9]. Therefore, the VO creation process, that is triggered by a CO during the operation phase of a VBE, is well identified and characterized, including its structure, requirements, working flow, actors involved, and technological tools that can be used for each phase [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | VO Creation Assistance Services[END_REF].

For most of the phases of the VO creation, a negotiation process might be required, for example to settle on agreements among possible VO partners. In this context, negotiation and agreement establishment appears as a major issue for VO, namely during its creation phase, but also potentially in its evolution phase, for example if during the VO operation phase a VO partner might need to be added or replaced [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | Contract Negotiation Wizard for VO Creation[END_REF] or to resolve some conflicts among network participants, that are inevitable [START_REF] O'leary | A Manager's Guide to Resolving Conflicts in Collaborative Networks[END_REF].

Negotiation and Contracting.

Negotiation is an interactive communication and decision-making process between two or more parties who seek a consensus decision and cannot apply unilateral actions to achieve their objectives [START_REF] Turel | User Acceptance of Web-Based Negotiation Support Systems: The Role of Perceived Intention of the Negotiating Partner to Negotiate Online[END_REF].

As negotiation processes involve a transversal, multi-and inter-disciplinary approach, it is necessary to have a holistic view of the problem, making use of multiple methodologies and paying attention to the practical details [START_REF] Gimpel | Negotiation, Auctions, and Market Engineering. International Seminar[END_REF]. So, a negotiation process can rely on several mechanisms such as: auctions, game theory, intelligent agent mechanisms, etc. [START_REF] Rocha | An Electronic Market Architecture for the Formation of Virtual Enterprises[END_REF]. Nevertheless, such process if often conducted by human actors that in the last instance are the ones responsible for decision-making. Although some works try to insert some automation into the negotiation process [START_REF] Jennings | Autonomous Agents for Business Process Management[END_REF], this continues to be a rather difficult issue. The main obstacle is to produce a contextindependent solution [START_REF] Angelov | An Approach to the Construction of Flexible B2B E-Contracting Processes[END_REF], and thus only partial and very specific solutions and prototypes with practical relevance are available, as is for example the case of the eLegal project [START_REF] Carter | The eLegal project: specifying legal terms of contract in ICT environment[END_REF] where the main goal was to develop solutions to legal issues related to VOs in the area of the civil construction. Nevertheless this framework would be prepared specifically for each project. Furthermore, the legal and contractual issues associated to each contract/agreement concentrated on the ICT perspective can be found in [START_REF] Shelbourn | Legal and Contractual Framework for the VO[END_REF].

Focusing on the contract or agreement being established among the partners that will form a VO, that is, the internal consortium agreement, its relevance is to establish the necessary clauses to regulate the consortium behaviour during the VO operation phase. In this way, special attention should be put into e-contracting forms as they can capture and describe the rights and duties of all VO partners [START_REF] Rocha | Contributions to an electronic institution supporting virtual enterprises' life cycle[END_REF], as well as specification of penalties to apply to those that do not satisfy the agreement.

Computer assisted negotiation and e-contracting is expected to provide a faster and cheaper solution than traditional contracting for geographically distributed consortia formation. Several significant characteristics of the e-contracting process can be found in [START_REF] Angelov | Foundations of B2B Electronic Contracting[END_REF]. Moreover, an electronic contract can have both a machine readable and human readable representation, that is usually required when the contract creation and management involves the participation of human beings.

Moreover, the advances in the negotiation domain stem from the use of information systems and communication media to support negotiation processes and decisions. Negotiation Support Systems (NSS) are interactive, computer-based tools intended to support negotiating parties in reaching agreements. These systems provide varying levels of structured communications and decision support; and offer both dispute resolution mechanisms (i.e. dealing with infringements of existing contracts) as well as contract formation services (i.e., creating new agreements) [START_REF] Turel | User Acceptance of Web-Based Negotiation Support Systems: The Role of Perceived Intention of the Negotiating Partner to Negotiate Online[END_REF].

Progress in this area during the last years has highlighted a number of important topics that need to be considered when developing processes and methodologies for negotiation and e-contracting, including Contract Models, Ontology, Contract Framework, Electronic Institutions, and Digital Signature.

Procedures for e-contracting and negotiation are also important in relation to the ISO 9000 certification as they can ensure clearly defined and repeatable procedures within the CN as a whole and not only within the companies that are members of a collaborative network [START_REF] Oliveira | Agreement Negotiation Support in VO Creation[END_REF].

However, further research in this area is mandatory due to the evolution on technology and new requirements that are constantly challenging the current processes. Some of these challenges are related to communication channels, use of artificial intelligence methods, intellectual property rights, electronic institutions, etc.

Research Contribution and Innovation

The rapid formation of VOs to respond to a business opportunity is crucial in order to enable organizations and companies to survive in turbulent market conditions. Nevertheless various empirical studies still show a very high percentage of failures in collaborative consortia. If they succeed it is then an indicator of agility and reliability that are two factors that are increasingly more important. It is thus in the VO creation process that additional effort has to be done if organizations / companies want to be successful. For that, among other factors the consortium negotiation process among partners is essential since it is where partners reach agreements and commitments to regulate the future collaboration.

When a VO is created in the context of a VO Breeding Environment (VBE), most of these aspects are agreed at the VBE level prior to any consortia formation. On the VOs perspective, negotiation mechanisms might be applied in different stages, namely: (i) during VO creation either for negotiating with the potential customer, or to negotiate an internal VO agreement; or (ii) for VO agreement amendment, meaning that it can be used for partners' inclusion or replacement, and changes of roles. The establishment of internal agreements is one of the foremost negotiation needs as they will determine the behavior of the networks, and thus represents an issue of special relevance during the VO creation process [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | A framework for computer-assisted creation of dynamic virtual organisations[END_REF]. Table 1 summarizes the main phases of VO creation, highlighting the ones that require some negotiation level when a CO is already guaranteed. The case when there has to be a quotation process can be found in [START_REF] Camarinha-Matos | A framework for computer-assisted creation of dynamic virtual organisations[END_REF]. Due to the geographical distribution of potential participants in a VO, various attempts have been made to use some form of electronic support to the negotiation processes. Nevertheless past experiences demonstrate that the willingness of some parties to participate in online negotiations is difficult to achieve [START_REF] Turel | User Acceptance of Web-Based Negotiation Support Systems: The Role of Perceived Intention of the Negotiating Partner to Negotiate Online[END_REF]. As a first step, it is important to ensure to all involved negotiating parties that by the introduction of electronic negotiation mechanisms no full automation is aimed but rather some computerized assistance. Furthermore, when the electronic negotiation fails, meeting face-to-face will still have to be considered as an option. So, in an electronic negotiation context, performance improvement includes enhancement of efficiency and effectiveness of both the process and the outcome, together with the flexibility of human intervention in decisions. Moreover, with the rapid growth of web-based services and global trade, there is also some commercial potential for web-based Negotiation Support Services (WNSS), as already supported by [START_REF] Turel | User Acceptance of Web-Based Negotiation Support Systems: The Role of Perceived Intention of the Negotiating Partner to Negotiate Online[END_REF].

Negotiation Services. Becoming clear that the negotiation plays an important role in the process of the formation of collaborative consortia, it is important to create an environment that is the more explicit and traceable as possible.

To build a system capable of performing such negotiation during VO creation, the current work proposes some areas that need to be considered, namely the interaction with other systems and the negotiation support modules. In terms of interaction with other systems, a robust negotiation process will have to directly interact with the VBE information system to have access mainly to the VBE members profile and competencies as well as collaboration history. Regarding negotiation support modules, the ones identified (so far, more will appear during the accomplishment of this research work) are the following:

• Agreement editor that will enable: agreement templates generation; agreements templates instantiation; agreement configuration to current situation/context;

• Virtual negotiation room (VNR) that is a virtual space (online) where each participant will be able to negotiate and/or discuss certain issues/clauses of the agreement; and • Support for notary services to guarantee on one hand the authenticity and validity of the agreements, and on the other hand to provide a safe deposit for documentation. The functionality to support auditing and supervision is also foreseen.

Fig. 1 illustrates the negotiation modules represented by the described application services together with a characterization of a CO and a partner's search engine. Also data bases services have to be considered in the process. Moreover, Fig1. also represents the main interactions with the VBE information system and with the relevant actors involved (the VBE members that will be the potential VO partners and the VO planner). All of the users can have access to negotiation services with correct authentication means through their web browsers. Negotiation Model. With regards to the identified modules and interactions, it is necessary to reflect on new models of negotiation agreements since many different environments and participants might be considered. For that it is important to characterize those differences and model them. By doing this, it will be possible to instantiate the proper mechanisms for negotiation depending on different contexts. Thus, fundamental topics emerge, such as:

• Identifying network members whose agreement is necessary;

• Identifying the scope and (legal) jurisdiction of the network;

• Addressing issues of the network's legitimacy;

• Negotiating the ground rules;

• Discussing administration and allocation of responsibilities;

• Negotiating the decision rules for closure of an issue; • Identifying a system for resolving impasses; and negotiation topic is created a virtual negotiation room (VNR) is "opened" in the system, and it is associated to a specific section of the agreement where a link to the topic is kept. Several VNRs might be created to negotiate all the topics that require discussion. Once all topics are agreed by the participants, the composite agreement can be assembled into a document that represents a compilation or integration of the agreements reached on all VNRs. The actors involved in the process are therefore: VO planner who is responsible for the configuration and creation of the VO; and the VBE members that will act at this stage as potential VO partners. To assist the human actors in these processes, WizAN includes four main modules, namely: Contract Editor (CE), Virtual Negotiation Room (VNR), Support for Agreement Establishment (eNotary), and Assisted Contract Elaboration System (ACE). Table 2 illustrates the main functionalities of each of these modules.

Discussion of Results

. Although this research is still in its initial stage, the preliminary study that led to the tool described in the illustrative case was developed in the scope of an European project, ECOLEAD, and positively evaluated in a real scenario with a Swiss and a Chinese VBE supporting negotiations between partners from the two geographical areas [START_REF] Oliveira | Agreement Negotiation Support in VO Creation[END_REF]. As a result, it is possible to draw some positive conclusions, namely in terms of the focused negotiation process due to the usage of the VNRs and the possibility to use attached documents that also prevent misunderstandings, making the process more reliable. Moreover, a degree of authenticity is also guaranteed due to the existence of an eNotary service. Also, the system ensures the privacy of the information exchanged in the VNRs, guaranteeing that partners have access only to authorized information. Finally, by using such system, it is possible to reduce the negotiation time of the VO creation process, which increases the agility indicator.

Although the preliminary work has already developed some facilitates for the negotiation process in the VO creation, the process can still become more effective, but always depending on the availability of adequate information about the potential partners and their level of interestingness in the VO involvement. For instance, considering indicators of readiness of each partner to collaborate or their trustworthiness level can lead to a higher level of assistance during the negotiation process. Moreover, considering the three situations, already identified, in which negotiation can take place (during VO creation to negotiate with the potential customer, or to negotiate the internal VO agreement; and to do VO agreement amendments); it is necessary to investigate if it is possible to use the same negotiation methodology in all of them and how to evaluate the VO partners readiness and preparedness in each case. Depending on the results, a negotiation taxonomy can also be adjusted. Another research line of extreme importance is the eNotary service which is one of the key factors in this work mainly due to its safety and authenticity properties, and aim to extend its functionalities with support for auditing and supervision.

Another direction is to increase the level of intelligence of the negotiation wizard by analyzing some behavioral and emotional patterns (an aspect of affective computing) and reacting accordingly. On one hand, the patterns that may be analyzed are for example: delays in communication, language usage, etc., and on the other hand, the reactions that the system can have depending on the required automation level, could vary from alerts for human users of the system to automatic responses. In the last case (the more autonomous one), the multi-agent paradigm is one of the appropriated implementation directions.

Conclusions and Further Work

In collaborative environments, the process of consortium/team creation can become more agile and reliable if there is a framework that can rapidly create the appropriate conditions to electronically achieve a consortium agreement. This framework should consider the concepts already established in collaborative networks and create an environment that is customizable according to the different collaboration levels. The framework should also be able to let the involved participants clearly assume their duties, responsibilities and rights according to their defined roles.

Nevertheless, there are some areas where some research challenges remain. As an interesting topic for research is how to improve and better adapt the negotiation wizard to multidisciplinary and multicultural environments that are used by people and organizations with different business practices, languages, objectives and terminologies. Another promising direction is the application of machine learning and affective computing to take into account patterns of behavior and emotions of the involved parties. Thus, although several works already mention the negotiation phases and taxonomy, a research challenge is the definition and formalization of more specific negotiation protocols for collaborative networks. Negotiation with customer during the acquisition for a collaboration opportunity might also be considered in future. Nevertheless, through all of these conclusions, it is possible to assume that if the characteristics of a specific VBE are well defined, as well as its governance principles, the negotiation process can then be tuned accordingly and thus the agility in the VO creation process can increase.

Fig. 1 .

 1 Fig. 1. Negotiation modules and interactions.

Table 1 .

 1 VO creation phases.

	VO creation phase	Main focuses
	Preparatory planning	CO identification and characterization Rough VO planning	Who? Where and how? Which patterns of collaboration? How to structure the VO? Any initial template model?
	Consortia formation Partners search and suggestion	Who? Where? Which criteria? Which base information? Profiles? Decision support?
	VO launching	Detailed VO planning Contracting	Who? Negotiation process? Contracts, rules templates? Agreements? Common infrastructure? Governing
		VO setting up	principles? Detailed plans?

Acknowledgments. This work has been supported by the Collaborative Networks and Distributed Industrial Systems Research Group of Uninova.

• Identifying a decision process for ending the network.

In Fig. 2 it is then illustrated a negotiation process in VO creation that takes into account the previous topics. Experiment Case: WizAN. To support some of the previous concepts, an Agreement Negotiation Wizard (WizAN) was developed [START_REF] Oliveira | Agreement Negotiation Wizard[END_REF]. The assumption is to use the tool for the VO creation process to assist in the agreement establishment in the VBE context. Also, the tool is aimed at assisting the human users in their decision making; therefore, it was designed with computer-assisted functionalities and not as a fully automated system. The main outcome of WizAN is then the internal consortium agreement summarizing the results of the negotiations / discussions that are performed during the VO creation process. [START_REF] Oliveira | Agreement Negotiation Wizard[END_REF].

Table 2. WizAN's main functionalities

Functionality Description

Contract Editor (CE)

Users can find the base information regarding the agreements being established among the VO partners. Through CE the VO planner is able to initiate, conduct, and monitor the VO creation; as it deals with the general part of the agreement that is being established.

Virtual Negotiation Room (VNR)

Is a virtual 'place' where the negotiation takes place. Through the VNRs each participant can access the various negotiation topics and discuss with the other involved participants in order to reach agreements. For each negotiation topic one VNR is created.

Support for Agreement Establishment

Is a module that allows clients to exchange information with a warranty of authenticity and validity as well as providing them a safe repository to save and request documentation. Furthermore it provides the functionality for partners to (digitally) sign agreements.

Assisted Contract Elaboration System

Collection of contract and negotiation object templates to support the contracts creation.

The full negotiation process is guided by an agreement template composed of a number of sections where each one refers to a specific topic to be negotiated. When a


Angela Lacerda Nobre
email: angela.nobre@esce.ips.pt

From Heidegger Onwards -Why Data Science Is Social Semiotics? E-Leadership Takes the Lead

Keywords: Data science, Social semiotics, E-leadership, Organizational information systems, Techno-science

Bridging different worlds of meaning, overcoming disciplinary borders and expanding horizons of theoretical and practical knowledge is the task of semiotics, in general, and of social semiotics, in particular. The role of the present paper is to question the emergence of information sciences' new paradigms through the use of philosophically grounded constructs. The argument is: contemporary societies, and the organisations they host, are bounded by thought and action mind frames, which practical philosophy is able to address, to identify and to make explicit. Heidegger's mastery work has set in motion a tradition which enables the design and exploration of the bridges between three different worlds: first, data science and its computing science paradigms; second, social semiotics, and its contribution to the understanding of meaning-making; and third, e-leadership, as a practical application of the fundamental ideas and concepts that are transversal to diverse disciplinary areas and that capture business making fundamentals.

The present poster addresses the links between the business contexts that are being influenced by the emergence of the big data phenomenon and the need to master the potential of e-leadership to the full. This implies explaining how practical philosophy is able to promote a better understanding of the semiotic and language based processes of meaning-making, which are present in every practical circumstance of organisational reality. Three steps, as a summary: (i) To do business is to buy resources in order to sell an idea; (ii) Ideas come in words, which come in sentences that capture information fields; information fields reveal an excess of information, which is captured by sentences in context; consequently, texts leave room for infinite ways of expressing the same idea through a multitude of existent or newly created words; and (iii) Human existence, or human nature, is artificially, that is, culturally created through language, which, in its written form, acquires a life of its own; this means that others may adopt the lessons and insights from written texts and give them new meanings, different from, and richer than, the author's original intentions; meaning-making is constitutive of human nature; through language, new cultural paradigms emerge, which may be captured by ideas, which are transformed in resources that may then be used as a raw material for further ideas, that are the backbone of meaning-making; and such is the potential for development of all human made endeavours, including business organisations.

Heidegger's monumental contribution was triggered by a search for ontological and phenomenological quest for new meanings and new interpretations of contemporary societies. According to Heidegger's work, "technicity distorts human nature with an accompanying loss of meaning" [START_REF] Dreyfus | Further reflections on Heidegger, technology, and the everyday[END_REF]. The technological environment imposes complex questions on how to interpret meaning-making. Hegel's Phenomenology [START_REF] Hegel | Phénoménologie de l'esprit, Trad. Hyppolite, t. I[END_REF] enables addressing explicit directions for the design and development of IS, not as an isolated walled garden process, but incorporating end-to-end value creation processes involving the interests of all stakeholders. Ronald Stamper, developed the subfield of organisational semiotics in order to bridge the social world of organisational practices and norms, and the way information is represented through IS. Organized behaviour is norm-governed behaviour. Signs trigger the norms leading to more signs being produced [START_REF] Liu | Co-design of business and IT systems-introduction by guest editors[END_REF]. Semiotics, as the study of signs and of sign systems, has a wide range of applications and of perspectives to be explored. To examine the structural nature of theory in IS, Gregor [START_REF] Gregor | The nature of theory in information systems[END_REF] claims the need to address its form, types and purposes. He argues in favor of the building of integrated bodies of theory that encompasses all theory types. "In the age of big data, … the emphasis in industry has shifted to data analysis and rapid business decision making based on huge volumes of information." [START_REF] Chen | Business intelligence and analytics: from big data to big impact[END_REF]. Computing science uses practical philosophy in order to decode loose strings of meaning. Through this process, computing science continuously creates new cultural paradigms. "Many marketing researchers believe that social media analytics presents a unique opportunity for businesses to treat the market as a "conversation" between businesses and customers instead of the traditional business-to-customer, one-way "marketing"" [START_REF] Lusch | The phase transition of markets and organizations: the new intelligence and entre-preneurial frontier[END_REF]. Monod [START_REF] Monod | Methodological distinction and conditions of possibilities[END_REF] argues for the need for epistemological pluralism in IS research. He refers to the importance of the concept of "conditions of possibilities". Baskerville and Myers [START_REF] Baskerville | Action research in information systems: making IS research relevant to practice[END_REF] address the issue of the practical relevance of IS research, and argue in favour of a methodological option for action research as a basis for improved results.


Abel Pinto
email: abel.fnpinto@gmail.com

Isabel L Nunes

Rita A Ribeiro

Qualitative Model for Risk Assessment in Construction Industry: A Fuzzy Logic Approach

Keywords: Risk assessment, safety, fuzzy sets, construction industry

Risk Assessment for Health and Safety (RAH&S) of workers is a complex task that entails the consideration of many parameters which are, more often than not, difficult to quantify. RAH&S in the construction industry is rampant with inadequate data and/or imprecise and incomplete information, particularly in the design stage, for which traditional quantitative approaches do not give adequate answers. In this work we outline the basic aspects for a Qualitative Risk Assessment Model (QRAM) based on elicited data and using a fuzzy logic approach.

Introduction

Safety is a prominent feature to be taken into account in the construction industry, and Risk Assessment for Health and Safety (RAH&S) is a key step to achieve it, particularly to support decision-making in safety programs [START_REF] Ringdahl | Safety Analysis principles and pratice in occupational safety[END_REF].

In general, risk assessment is a complex process that entails the consideration of many qualitative parameters which are difficult to quantify. Risk assessment in the construction industry, due the specific nature of the sector [START_REF] Dedobbeleer | A Safety Climate Measure for Construction Sites[END_REF][START_REF] Ringen | Why construction is different[END_REF]Gillen et al, 1997;[START_REF] Laitinen | The validity of the TR safety observation method on building construction[END_REF][START_REF] Loosemore | Communication problems with ethnic minorities in construction industry[END_REF][START_REF] Tam | Identifying elements of poor construction safety management in China[END_REF], must deal with ill-defined and imprecise data and information. So far traditional approaches do not seem to provide adequate answers [START_REF] Ringen | Why construction is different[END_REF] to deal with this issue. Moreover, using probability (classical or Bayesian) or statistics theories may mask other aspects of incomplete and imprecise knowledge and can lead to a false sense of accuracy and precision, thus leading to inadequate and/or inefficient decisions.

To overcome some of the mentioned problems in assessing safety risks, we propose a qualitative model for risk assessment, hereinafter denoted QRAM (Qualitative Risk Assessment Model), which based on elicited data and using a fuzzy logic approach. The goal is to contribute to work safety by improving risk assessment in construction sites.

Contribution to Technological Innovation

The majority of quantitative traditional methods use probabilistic techniques and / or statistics to deal deal with the intrinsic uncertainty and imprecision in data and information. This implies some limitations, such as requiring analysts to estimate parameters, to ensure a sufficiently representative domain or make comparisons with other sites (which departs from the real system under study).

Recently, there are also qualitative approaches using fuzzy logic, proposed in the literature (see for example: [START_REF] Azadeh | Design and implementation of a fuzzy expert system for performance assessment of an integrated health, safety, environment (HSE) and ergonomics system: The case of a gas refinery[END_REF][START_REF] Gurcanli | An occupational safety risk analysis method at construction sites using fuzzy sets[END_REF], but they lack having a systematic survey of all parameters that should be taken into consideration, together with a general formulation to obtain a complete risk assessment measure.

Hence, the main contributions of the proposed QRAM are: to provide a framework for factors that need to be evaluated in construction sites; to propose a formula expressing the relationships between the parameters (risk factors), thus obtaining an overall risk measure; to provide a simple semantic scale to facilitate the elicitation of information about the parameters. The final aim of QRAM is to obtain an overall measure of risk for the construction site as well as to obtain partial risk calssifications for important parameters included in the overall measure.

QRAM will focus on elicited data, thus avoiding estimates to allow assessment of actual risks of the site. The data and information will be obtained by direct observation, interviews with workers and foremen and also from consultation and review of documentation of the site (health and safety plan, reporting accidents and incidents, records of meetings, work procedures...), among others. After we transform the collected data, using fuzzy logic techniques, and then aggregate it to obtain the risks level classification for the site.

Background on Risk Assessment for Health and Safety (RAH&S)

Traditional RAH&S methods are typically based on information, which is subject to uncertainty (usually handled by probability and/or statistics theories) or is just illdefined. Due to its intrinsic uncertainty and incompleteness traditional RAH&S methods present some limitations, as pointed by some authors [START_REF] Karwowski | Potential Applications of Fuzzy Sets in Industrial Safety Engineering[END_REF]; [START_REF] Cornell | Uncertainties in risk analysis: Six levels of treatment[END_REF] o Large number of assumptions, judgments and opinions are involved in a risk quantification process, hence, it requires considerable skills from a safety analyst to interpret results; o Construction projects are unique by definition. This reduces the relevance and reliability of statistical aggregates derived from probability-based analysis; o Humans are limited in their ability to encompass and process the full range of information required for holistic decisions; o Uncertainty and ignorance may be found in temporal aspects of the flow of knowledge, which are important in project planning; o Project parameters and outcomes must be communicated to others and the imprecision of our language is not good to express these. Considering all above statements, it is apparent that RAH&S in the construction industry is rampant with inadequate data and/or imprecise, ill-defined, and incomplete information, particularly in the design stage, for which traditional approaches do not give adequate answers. Fuzzy logic [START_REF] Zadeh | Fuzzy sets[END_REF][START_REF] Zimmerman | Fuzzy Set Theory and its Applications[END_REF] provides a natural way of modelling the intrinsic vagueness and imprecision of subjective assessments, while also allows the inclusion of human creativity and intuition, which is an essential ingredient for successful risk analysis [START_REF] Ru | Risk analysis modelling with the use of fuzzy logic[END_REF]. However, most qualitative approaches neither consider a systematic framework for all parameters that can influence the risk nor formalize the relationships between parameters (Liu et

Proposed Qualitative Model: QRAM

In this section we outline the basic aspects that a model for RAH&S in the construction industry should account for. The knowledge acquisition (i.e. data elicitation) should be obtained by observation of reality, interviews with workers, foreman and engineers, responsible and consultation of site documents (working procedures, reports of work accident investigation ....). The collected data shall be transformed using fuzzy sets [START_REF] Azadeh | Design and implementation of a fuzzy expert system for performance assessment of an integrated health, safety, environment (HSE) and ergonomics system: The case of a gas refinery[END_REF] and will be aggregated with specialized fuzzy operators, to obtain a ranking of risks in the construction site.

The starting point is the following formulation for risk assessment in construction sites, RAC, as shown in eq. 1.The risk is directly proportional to organizational inadequacies ( I O ), which are not related with a specific hazard, and other direct factors ( D F ), and additional factors ( A F ). The direct and additional factors are inversely proportional to safety barriers factors ( B S ), which are also dependent on some hazard.

B A D I S F F O RAC ⊕ ⊗ = (1)
D F are the main direct factors related with the hazard under analysis (for example, in falls from height, the factor is the height of the fall).

A F are additional factors; they also depend on hazards under analysis and include a variable number of parameters. Examples of aditional factors (for the same hazard) are: tidiness of workplace, inclination of work floor, friction level between shoe´s soles and soil.

Both direct factors and additional factors include a variable number of parameters, which will depend on the site being evaluated. The risk specialist will choose which factors will be evaluated for the specific site. In general the formulation will be:

N f f f F n A D / ) ,..., , ( 2 1 )
( ⊕ = ∪ (2)
Where N is the number of parameters that will be considered for any of the two factors.

N C P L S W S S O o o c I / ) , , , , , , ( ⊕ = (3)
with N being the number of parameters.

B S represent the Safety Barriers implemented in the site for controling the risk. Their effectiveness should be measured by:

N I S A M S B / ) , , , ( ⊕ = (4)
where [START_REF] Hollnagel | Accidents and barriers[END_REF]): o M -Material barriers physically prevent an action from being carried out or the consequences from spreading;

o A -Functional (active or dynamic) barriers work by impeding the action to be carried out, for instance by establishing a logical or temporal interlock. o S -Symbolic barriers require an act of interpretation in order to achieve their purpose, hence an "intelligent" agent that can react or respond to the barrier. o I -Immaterial barriers are not physically present or represented in the situation, but depend on the knowledge of the user to achieve their purpose. The proposed process to obtain the final RAH&S measure, RAC (eq 1), will use concepts and techniques from fuzzy set theory [START_REF] Zadeh | Fuzzy sets[END_REF][START_REF] Zadeh | The concept of a linguistic variable and its application to approximate reasoning-part I[END_REF][START_REF] Zadeh | Linguistic variables, approximate reasoning and dispositions[END_REF].

In this first work we use a single discrete fuzzy set for classifying the factors and their respective parameters. The proposed fuzzy classification can be used to elicit classifications from different sources (e.g. workers, engineers, safety experts), for all parameters in a user-friendly semantic form. Formally, the general fuzzy parameter classification membership function, to be used in this preliminary model is: At this stage, the terms and respective values considered are just indicative and in future work they will be validated and tuned. All parameters in eq. 2, eq. 3 and eq. 4 (e.g. material barriers M ) will be classified using the above discrete fuzzy set. To obtain the values for the respective factors (e.g. B S ) we plan to use an aggregation operator, ⊕ , such as arithmetic sum, average or any other compensatory operator [START_REF] Zimmerman | Fuzzy Set Theory and its Applications[END_REF]. Finally to obtain the overall risk measure for the construction site, we plan to use conventional arithmetic operators.

      = 001 . 0 / ,
At this stage of the research work we are not yet sure about which operators are more suitable for obtaining the risk assessment in the construction industry, but a study about them is foreseen in the near future. Here, as mentioned, we just focused on the conceptual model for determining the risk assessment.

Illustrative Example

In order to illustrate the applicability of the method, we will use a simple illustrative case for the risk that causes more deaths in Portugal, in the sector: falls from height.

In this example we only describe the calculations for additional factors, A F , because the process is similar for the other factors in eq. 1.

Consider a construction work on a scaffold with three meters high, thus the single direct factor, is 001 . The additional factors considered and the respective semantic classification, using the fuzzy membership semantic variables (eq. 5) are: (a little clean and tidy) = mediocre; (horizontal surface) = good; (foot boards, wood, presented in good repair) = satisfactory; (when dry, the material floor provides good traction on the sole of the shoe) = satisfactory; (lighting level well suited to work) = good, (irons waiting on the surface of the collision) = bad; (dry weather and no wind) = good ( scaffolding meet all legal and regulatory requirements, was well fitted and properly anchored) = good. Now, aggregating the classifications for the additional factors (eq. 2), using the membership values of eq. A F Notice that in this example we used arithmetic operators to aggregate the values, but in the future other operators will be tested to improve the method.

Although the six factors are appropriate, in various degrees: good (4) and satisfactory (2), there are two factors with inappropriate levels, one mediocre and another bad. Hence, the combination is only satisfactory (closest semantic level in the classification fuzzy set for the result 0.4375). This result means the site safety has to be improved, particularly to protect the irons on hold (bad) and clean and organize the workplace (mediocre).

Regarding the safety barriers B S , the scaffold has railings around the outside perimeter of the platforms, properly fitted, good and robust (very good), the inner side is 20 cm from the construction (very good), the access to work platforms is appropriate and also well protected (very good). The company implemented a procedure for working at heights which includes work on scaffolding, the procedure is well prepared and written in language appropriate to their users (very good). The company provides training to all workers on scaffolding, however, the training records do not show the knowledge acquired by trainees is properly understood, hence the company did not prove the effectiveness of training (mediocre). Following the above calculation for additional factors and using eq. [START_REF] Faber | Risk assessment for civil engineering facilities: critical overview and discussion[END_REF] Notice we used again arithmetic operators to improve clarity of method´ explanation. The final risk level in the construction site for the falling height, yields a value of very good (corresponding to the closest semantic variable).

Although the criteria for acceptability of risk is appropriate and very good there is room for improvements, namely implement new safety barriers and also improve some additional factors (e.g. improve some aspects related to training).

Conclusion and Further Work

Fuzzy approaches for human-centred problems seem to be quite flexible, hence in this work we introduce a preliminary version of a qualitative method for RAH&S, in the construction industry, using fuzzy logic concepts and techniques. From all pointed limitations and inadequacies of traditional RAH&S methods it seems that using this type of fuzzy approach, to evaluate work safety factors, yields a more realistic representation and solution for evaluation of risks in the construction industry.

The outlined qualitative model (QRAM) is still under development. It needs to be further improved and refined, such as identifying other types of hazards and further characterize all risks involved, as well as to set criteria for the tolerability of risk analysis in construction sites. After these improvements it needs to be tested and validated with real case studies to assess its suitability and generality for the construction sector.

  ; Wang et Ruxton. (1997); Pender (2001); Sii et al. (2001); Tixier (2002); Faber (2003); Nilsen (2003); Kentel et Aral. (2004)], such as: o Inherent imprecision in human-centered systems;o Difficult to generate a mathematical model due to intrinsic uncertainty in this type of problems. For instance, it is difficult to represent and describe the safety behavior, which causes work accidents involving operational procedures, human error and decisions taken by designer and management; o Difficult to quantify the effects and consequences of hazards because they involve many factors with a high level of uncertainty, even when the physical processes are clearly understood;

IO

  express organizational inadequacies and are a function of the lack (or poor): safety culture ( c S ), safety organisation ( o S ), work organisation ( o W ), supervision ( S ), leadership ( L ), personal factors and communications ( C ). Formally,

  al., 2001[START_REF] Tixier | Review of 62 risk analysis methodologies of industrial plants[END_REF][START_REF] Mure | Assessment of the risk of occupational accidents using a fuzzy approach[END_REF]