As the Information Systems discipline covers a wide range of research topics, the ERCIS tries to focus on several distinct aspects bundled in ERCIS competence centers. Find out about our competence centers and their work.
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Conceptual Modeling
Nowadays, conceptual modeling supports a variety of business tasks aimed to improve the productivity of companies among different industries. Conceptual models capture various aspects of a company’s structure and behavior, such as business processes, business data, and organization. By documenting these aspects through diagrammatic representations provided by conceptual models, business analysts can gain a quick overview of how the company works in detail.
Hence, conceptual models serve not only to document but also to analyze specific aspects of corporate reality to support economic decision-making. For instance, the use of conceptual models supports Business Process Improvement, Benchmarking, Software Customizing, Workflow Management, and Compliance Management. Due to their considerable potential to support decision-making, many companies have created large collections of conceptual models. This makes it difficult for analysts to analyze conceptual models in order to support their business tasks. Hence, the Competence Center of Conceptual Modeling focuses on the development of novel methodologies, providing automatic support for the design and analysis of conceptual models in different business domains.
Main Topics
- Model Query Languages
- Patterns for Query Languages
- Process Mining
- Semantic Technologies in Business Process Management
- Standardization
Contact
Prof. Dr. Patrick Delfmann
Academic Director
Mail: delfmann@uni-koblenz.deProf. Dr. Dennis Riehle
Managing Director
Mail: riehle@uni-koblenz.deWebsite
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Crisis Management
The Competence Center for Crisis Management (C3M), founded in 2013, integrates the research efforts of the ERCIS network in the domain of crisis management and humanitarian logistics. The main objective is to identify relevant challenges and gaps in current practices of humanitarian organizations and to find adequate solutions in the area of information systems and supply chain management research.
Main Topics
- Vizualization: The research field visualization elaborates on the modeling of humanitarian supply chains.
- Analysis: The C3M’s analysis research area concentrates on performance measurement and management.
- IT Support: In this area basic research is conducted within the development and application if an IT requirements profile.
- Assessment: The assessment research area focuses the design and development of assessment tools for humanitarian logistics planning that play a particular role in crisis management.
- Optimization: Referring to the best allocation of resources, the research area on optimization deals with the investigation and adjustment of appropriate operations research approaches for humanitarian logistics.
- Coordination: The coordination research area is concerned with the governance of ad-hoc networks in crisis management. The development of mechanisms for information sharing and coordination for humanitarian supply chains evaluates for example the governance approaches for ad hoc coordination in the humanitarian context.
Contact
Prof. Dr.-Ing. Bernd Hellingrath
Academic Director
Mail: bernd.hellingrath@wi.uni-muenster.deAdam Widera, M. A.
Managing Director
Mail: adam.widera@wi.uni-muenster.deWebsite
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Digital Transformation in Small and Medium Enterprises
The Digital Transformation in SMEs Competence Center (DT in SMEs CC) is a joint effort of several ERCIS institutional members, namely University of Agder, University of Luleå, University of Münster, University of Turku, University of Twente, University of Minho, Wroclaw University of Science and Technology. The Competence Center aims at encouraging research and providing expertise on the digital transformation of SMEs.
Main Topics
- Digital business strategies and processes, building capabilities, governance channels, change management skills and digital operations.
- Assessing the transformative potential of emerging technology from a societal, organizational and individual perspective.
- Automation of organizational processes: choosing the right processes, defining automation goals, engaging people and nurturing continuous improvement.
- Resilience and innovation in the digital age: sustainable and adaptive SME´s architectures and clusters.
- Personalization, engagement and data protection: identifying drivers and overcoming barriers.
- The empowered workforce: developing future-proof skills in the volatile SMEs labour market by releasing their co-creative potential.
- Ecosystems and networks for digital success: collaboration and co-creation between businesses, government and academia.
- Managing the collective attention in the digital age: focusing the core stimuli, avoiding attention overflow and protecting from misinformation.
- Knowledge creation and application by using artificial intelligence.
- Ethics of the digital transformation: promoting a culture that values the security of data and users, trust and integrity, and the continuous search for the bias embedded in digital tools and processes
Contact
Isabel Ramos, University of Minho, Portugal
Mail: iramos@dsi.uminho.ptNiels F. Garmann-Johnsen, University of Agder, Norway
Mail: niels.f.garmann-johnsen@uia.noWebsite
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E-Government
The E-Government Competence Center, which was founded in 2004, has a long tradition in process management both within governments as well as between governments and further organizations. Additionally, the research focus of the center considers the relationship between governments and the citizens. Within our research we combine aspects of process management with questions of operating efficiency, related to the front office as well as to the back office of Public Administrations and face these challenges from a conceptual and a technical perspective.
Main Topics
- Acceptance and Adoption of eGovernment ICT
- (Domain Specific) Business Process Management
- Social Media Research in the field of E-Government
- Open Government
Contact
Prof. Dr. Jörg Becker
Mail: joerg.becker@ercis.uni-muenster.deProf. Dr. Sara Hofmann
Mail: sara.hofmann@uni-bremen.deDr. Michael Räckers
Mail: michael.raeckers@ercis.uni-muenster.deWebsite
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IT Security of User-centric Systems
The integration of digital technologies into life opens many great opportunities and yields manifold threats to security. The increase and variety of threats calls for a holistic perspective of modern cyber security on technology and users. Topics are:
- Security of user systems in information technology
- Data privacy and anonymity
- Authentication and authorization
- Thread detection and incident response
- Security awareness
Contact
- Thomas Hupperich, University of Münster, IT Security, Institute for Information Systems
- Frank Köhne, viadee GmbH, Münster
- Julian Varghese, University of Münster, Institute for Medical Informatics
- Pavel Laskov, University of Liechtenstein, Data and Application Security
Website
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Service Science
The emergence and proliferation of the Service Economy has changed the way in which the creation of value is perceived throughout various industry sectors and societies. Some current manifestations are integrating industrial machinery with customized service offerings (customer solutions, product-service systems), offering aircraft turbines (power by-the-hour) or software applications (as-a-service) without selling physical goods, or providing content on mobile platforms. Theories and artifacts related to service are reflected in the emerging academic discipline of Service Science, Management and Engineering (SSME). Research in SSME is focused on understanding and facilitating the creation of value in service systems, involving interactions of service providers and service customers.
Website
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Smarter Work
The Competence Center Smarter Work (CCSW) was founded to analyze the influence of current technologies on the working environment. The central question of CCSW is: “How can the future workplace be designed by information and communication technologies?” Our findings are generated along with partners from the economy and have a high relevance for the practice. Our research results are merchandised product-oriented and can constitute additional values straightforwardly and transparently. We perceive us as a scientific co-operation partner, who implements established research results as practical solutions. The Competence Center Smarter Work was launched by an initiative of the practice of Siegfried Schallenmüller, Prof. Dr. Stefan Klein and has grown into a wide cooperation network.
Main Topics
- Mobile Enterprise
- Social Media Governance
- Social Media Analytics
- Unified Communication and Collaboration
Contact
Prof. Dr. Stefan Klein
Academic Director
Mail: klein@smarter-work.deSigried Schallenmüller
Head of Advisory Board
Mail: schallenmueller@smarter-work.deWebsite
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Social Media Analytics
Identification and Analysis of Disinformation, Propaganda, and Manipulation via Online Media
Nowadays, people worldwide discuss and comment societal and political developments on the Internet, for instance on social media platforms or on news websites. Not only journalists rely on social media as a source for ‘trending topics’ or offer their users the possibility to state their opinion publicly on the Net.
Beyond the desired space for free expression of public opinions, such Internet offerings also provide options for large-scaled concerted manipulations. Trolls (malicious human actors) as well as semi- to fully automatized systems (“social bots”, using technical access routes to social media infrastructure) attack online media. Their activities can result in a distorted image of the digital public opinion and may influence the single user, societal debates, news coverage, or commercial success of products and companies. In the end, this can cause severe societal or monetary damage.
The Competence Center Social Media Analytics strives to lay the foundation for a new and interdisciplinary research area on the rise. Current public discussions on manipulation and disinformation via social or online-media often rely on preliminary assumptions, partial insights, and simple analytic techniques with limited general significance.
In this competence center, computer scientists, statisticians, social scientists, journalists, economists as well as practitioners from media and industry combine their expertise in order to
- Investigate the nature of propaganda and manipulation characteristics in online media;
- Develop or advance detection techniques for manipulation, disinformation, and propaganda;
- Suggest countermeasures to ensure transparency and fair participation in social media.
Contacts
- Christian Grimme (christian.grimme@ercis.de)
- Heike Trautmann (heike.trautmann@ercis.de)
Website