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NextPort vCoE INC empowers researchers to independently publish open science publications regardless of their institutional affiliations. NextPort vCoE INC also allows them to retain their intellectual property and engage with broader audiences, including government agencies and society.

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A Current Revision of Prompt Engineering in Business Operations

July 2025

International Journal of Combinatorial Optimization Problems and Informatics

16(3), 334–344

DOI: https://doi.org/10.61467/2007.1558.2025.v16i3.746

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.


Prompt engineering in the context of operations emerges as a key discipline to optimise artificial intelligence (AI) models for specific operational tasks. Considering the importance of this field, our group offers a current revision on designed prompts using language models in business operations. At this stage, the study focuses on confirming the advancement of prompts in response to their precise formulation and applicability in real-world scenarios and different engineering approaches. We use the gold-hunting problem to evaluate prompt techniques such as Few-shot, Chain-thought, and Tree of thoughts (ToT) in LLMs. The results show the importance of adapting the prompts to the type of technique and the characteristics of the problem at hand. Our research also offers theoretical and practical fundaments for their integration with AI models highlighting the importance of prompt engineering to enhance automation and decision-making in business environments


Reads 34

An Agent-based Methodology for Seaport Decision Making

July 2021

DOI: 10.1201/9781003137993-10

In book: Engineering Analytics

Edition: 1st Chapter: 9

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.1201/9781003137993-10/agent-based-methodology-seaport-decision-making-ana-halabi-echeverry-nelson-obreg%C3%B3n-neira-hugo-ni%C3%B1o-vergara-juan-aldana-bernal-milton-baron-perico


This chapter presents considerations to develop an agent-based methodology invoking a collaborative environment for seaport authorities. Seaport authorities as decision makers must base their standpoints on different scenarios (e.g., through simulations) suitable to show outputs against empirical decisions. The agent-based modeling allows for the generation of a simulated emergent behavior, which could be observed in the dynamics of the seaport given its consideration as a complex socio-technical system. Key properties to investigate are agents’ active or passive behavior, as well as their autonomous capability and jurisdictional heterogeneity. We state that two possible frameworks to support agents’ interaction and communication (i.e., the knowledge level to support the dynamic behavior needed in the system) are IEEE-FIPA and BSPL. Finally, we provide an example of how to represent the agent’s knowledge visually through output functions of the agent-based system for seaport authorities’ collaboration, considering a declarative formalism that can be represented in a universe of discourse that semantically contributes to the identification of decision-making choices.


Citated 1

Associations among Variables in Technology-Enhanced Phonological Awareness Programmes Based on a Meta-Analysis

March 2024

Education Sciences 14(4):343

DOI: 10.3390/educsci14040343

LicenseCC BY 4.0

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/14/4/343


This article presents a quantitative approach of a systematic literature review, namely a meta-analysis, using 19 technology-based phonological awareness interventions carried out over the last decade, aiming at technology-mediated reading acquisition and focusing specifically on the capabilities of phonological awareness. The study showed consistent positive effects when compared with non-technological intervention programmes in preschoolers. The selected interventions fall into quasi-experimental designs with post-intervention measurements, and experimental and control groups. Aspects related to the participants, intervention or programme, methodology, and external factors to the research itself were coded and controlled. Associations found for the moderating variables were the type of technology used, the age of the participant, and the duration of the programme. We conclude by recognising the usefulness of a meta-analysis as an appropriate method that is capable of distinguishing among the various studies on the presence of effective factors in the development of phonological awareness instruction.


Citated 16

Litter Content of Colombian Beaches and Mangrove Forests: Results from the Caribbean and Pacific Coasts

January 2023

Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (JMSE) 11(2):250

DOI: 10.3390/jmse11020250

LicenseCC BY 4.0

mdpi.com/2077-1312/11/2/250


Litter abundance and typology were investigated at different beaches and mangrove forests at nine sites on the Colombian Caribbean and Pacific coasts. Average litter abundance on the Caribbean Sea beaches (1.42 items/m2–12.21 g/m2) and in mangrove forests (1.29 items/m2–28.72 g/m2) were greater than that of the Pacific Ocean beaches (0 items/m2–0 g/m2) and mangrove forests (1.13 items/m2–79.41 g/m2). The most abundant litter material was plastic, which represented 93.61% of the total litter content. According to the Clean Coast Index, the sites analyzed in the Caribbean Sea were “Moderate” to “Extremely Dirty”, while those in the Pacific Ocean were “Clean” to “Moderate Dirty”. The Magdalena River is considered the main source of litter on the Caribbean Sea coast, while on the Pacific Ocean coast, litter is essentially associated with the mismanagement of solid wastes. This study constitutes a baseline on the litter content of beaches and mangrove forests, and is useful for establishing sound strategies for their protection, restoration and conservation.


Reads 139

Metadata for Complementing Standards and Formalisation of the Technical Reserve Calculation

February 2023

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-90387-9_21

Enterprise Interoperability IX

Interoperability in the Era of Artificial Intelligence

Conference proceedings

© 2023

Part of the book series: Proceedings of the I-ESA Conferences

((IESACONF,volume 10, pp 253–264))

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-90387-9_21


The Colombian health sector is comprised among other entities by Health Promoting Entities (EPS) which currently face several challenges given the complexity of the activities they carry out with their insurance role. Innumerable problems with the service promise and poor-quality information used for analysis, management and decision-making treat their sustainability. The information processes of the EPS are focused on collecting the information for the calculation of the Technical Reserve (provisions) according to a regulated period. The formalisation of the information the EPS produced from several repositories is often mislead or deceived. This paper presents a rudimentary metadata for complementing standards and formalisation of the Technical Reserve calculation, underlying one of the most recurrent standards for this aim ‘the HL7 FHIR standard (release 4)’. Conclusions point to an evidence that the Colombian health system is in the early stages of data management. It is important to begin by associating standards such as the HL7-FHIR with the local requirements allowing harmonised and seamless communication between the parts of the system. Similarly, opportunities exist to make available the HL7-FHIR standard to facilitate the calculation of the Technical Reserve in Colombia and other countries of the region.


Citated 5

Blockchain for data sharing in the rational use of coastlines and seaport demands in inter-organizational networks: Development of a new intelligent decision support system

November 2020

DOI: 10.1109/CITISIA50690.2020.9371837

Conference: 2020 5th International Conference on Innovative Technologies in Intelligent Systems and Industrial Applications (CITISIA)

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9371837


This paper presents a new concept of an intelligent decision support system (i-DMSS) which special relevance to the blockchain technology and guides into the data sharing construction defined for a specific strategic business process in which a seaport is concerned with the ability to share information with a seaport partner belonging to the same inter-organisational system. Rules of the i-DMSS can be used as the seaport boundaries of the decision-making system, for the purpose of the rational use of coastlines and their demands. By developing a new concept for an i-DMSS, this paper makes a significant contribution to the literature in the areas of i-DMSS and blockchain.


Reads 34

Towards Business Process Intelligence to Port2Port Governance Responsibility based on Learning Algorithms

November 2021

DOI: 10.1109/CITISIA53721.2021.9719989

Conference: 2021 6th International Conference on Innovative Technology in Intelligent System and Industrial Applications (CITISIA)

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/9719989


This paper provides an approach to Port2Port Business Process Intelligence (BPIs) helping decision makers in tackling constant changes in governance responsibilities. This consideration leads to the need for Port2Port technological solutions among ports and development of capabilities on sharing information, planning and execution in a collaborative way. It is offered three Port2Port BPIs: 1) Control process for greenhouse gas emissions coming from ships, 2) The process for monitoring ballast Waters, 3) Sanitation Performance Compliance under COVID19 situation. The identification and selection of learning tasks have been integrated into the conceptualisation scheme, suggesting the exploitation of Deep reinforcement Learning (RL) to capture important aspects of the real problem facing the learning agents interacting with its environment to achieve the proposed goals.


Reads 34

A Qualitative Systematic Literature Review on Phonological Awareness in Preschoolers Supported by Information and Communication Technologies

May 2022

Education Sciences 12(6):382

DOI: 10.3390/educsci12060382

LicenseCC BY 4.0

https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7102/12/6/382


This review is a systematic literature review (SLR) with the aim of advancing the state of the art in Phonological Awareness in preschoolers (4–6 years) by means of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT). The SLR provides an important guide to newcomers to this domain and researchers who seek a structured body of knowledge in the subject for gaining new, important insights. Searches were carried out in the indexed database Scopus© between June and July 2020. Among the inclusion and exclusion criteria were studies reported in English, Spanish and Portuguese, updated electronic documents from the last ten years and studies cited by others at least once, except for those with publication acknowledgement after 2017. To complete the task, a triangulation assessment was made among three researchers using the same tool developed in Microsoft Excel©, in which the search terms, the search strings, inclusion and exclusion criteria and the study collection process were systematized along with a word cloud of keywords to improve the systematic feature of the SLR. Fifty-nine (59) scientific articles were selected and from those, 24 articles met the experts’ criteria. The method included: (1) search and selection of terms; (2) inclusion and exclusion criteria; (3) the searching process; and (4) reporting study collection. The SLR synthesis reported in this paper is a novel contribution built on two conceptual categories: Computer assisted learning systems (CAL) and Computer assisted instruction systems (CAI) which frame works on Phonological Awareness processes with Preschoolers and provide an appraisal of the results to advance knowledge of systematic reviews of preschoolers’ phonological awareness strictly supported by ICT.


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Reads 34