The paper addresses three concepts namely enlightenment, humanism and collaboration in the context of a human being’s quest for new knowledge and perennial values. Established relationships among people and their evolution are impacted by Artificial Intelligence associated with other main technology drivers of the digital transformation such as the Internet and Big Data analytics. The basic aspects that characterize the three above concepts are reviewed and a brief and up-to-date technical account of the Artificial Intelligence domain is provided together with the steps envisaged toward a trustworthy and anthropocentric schema. The current beneficial as well as detrimental impacts of the current usage of the Internet, Big Data and Artificial Intelligence are reviewed together with various opinions of influential scientists and industry leaders and the updated concepts of the enlightenment, humanism, and collaboration in the digital context are eventually presented.

This is a book about how management and control decisions are made by persons who collaborate and possibly use the support of an information system. Thedecision is the result of human conscious activities aiming at choosing a course of action for attaining a certain objective (or a set of objectives). The act of collaboration implies that several entities who work together and share responsibilities to jointly plan, implement and evaluate a program of activities to achieve the common goals. The book is intended to present a balanced view of the domain to include both well-established concepts and a selection of new results in the domains of methods and key technologies. It is meant to answer several questions, such as: a) How are evolving the business models towards the ever more collaborative schemes?; b) What is the role of the decision-maker in the new context? c) What are the basic attributes and trends in the domain of decision-supporting information systems?; d) Which are the basic methods to aggregate the individual preferences? e)What is the impact of modern information and communication technologies on the design and usage of decision support systems for groups of people?.

The aim of this paper is to explore how efficient is the \textit{Fish School Search} (FSS) algorithm in building a \textit{Decision Support System (DSS)} for healthcare facility managers in order to optimize both the number of beds in their facilities and their budget. We have used a finite capacity queueing model with phase-type service distribution combined with a compartmental model and associated cost model. The \textit{Fish School Search} algorithm was used to optimize the queueing model. To illustrate the proposed approach, we used the available data reported by a department of geriatric medicine of a hospital. Our findings showed that by encoding the whole information provided by the queueing system and the cost model in a fish, the Fish School Search is a potentially beneficial tool for optimizing healthcare resources and the facility's budget. The model can be extended to different medical facilities with respect to the objective parameters.

Collaboration means that several entities such as humans, computers, robots, enterprises and so on jointly perform a certain task instead of working individually so that a good result could be obtained. Decision-making is a specific form of activity that is meant to eventually select a certain course of action which is expected to result in attaining a desired result by using the available. The chapter is meant to present a concise and balanced view of the basic concepts, methods, and main classes of supporting information and communication tools and systems regarding decision-making processes carried out by several collaborating agents called participants. The reasons for collaboration are briefly explained followed by an exposure of collaboration application in the multi-participant decision-making settings. Having presented the classification of decision problems and decision-making units, the main phases of a specific multi-participant form of Herbert Simon’s decision process model are described followed by the presentation of two main forms of close and soft collaboration, namely consensus building and crowdsourcing, respectively. The need for technology support offered to collaborating participants is justified and two main classes of decision supporting systems, namely Decision Support Systems and collaboration platforms, are addressed. Three practical examples are briefly presented to illustrate the collaborative activities in public sector institutions, manufacturing, and culture economy, respectively. Open questions about the further role the information and communication tools in decision-making processes are eventually formulated from two perspectives, digital humanism and dataism, respectively.

Although videoconferencing platforms were a growing market even before the Covid-19 pandemic, they became very popular and widely used within weeks of the beginning of the pandemic. The compulsion of social distancing, lockdown, the need to work from home have led to an exponential demand for videoconferencing applications and an adaptation of the way we carry out our current activities such as work, decision-making, communicating with family and colleagues, or education. With the diversification of the categories of users of videoconferencing systems and the contexts in which they were used, many other needs have emerged and the demand to adapt these platforms, both in terms of ease of use and functionality, as well as security. Videoconferencing systems are no longer meant only for decision-makers or trainers, but also for general public. This paper reviews various data regarding the use of videoconferencing systems in recent years, a number of problems encountered by users, and expected trends in the future.

The set of traditional characteristic features of large-scale complex systems (LSS) included the large number of variables, structure of interconnected subsystems, and other features that complicate the control models, such as nonlinearities, time delays, and uncertainties. The advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and the modern business models have led to important evolution in the concepts and the corresponding management and control infrastructures of large-scale complex systems. The last three decades have highlighted several new characteristic features, such as networked structure, enhanced geographical distribution associated with the increased cooperation of subsystems, evolutionary development, higher risk sensitivity, presence of more, possibly conflicting, objectives, and security and environment concerns. This chapter aims to present a balanced review of several traditional well-established methods (such as multilevel and decentralized control) and modern control solutions (such as cooperative and networked control) for LSS together with the technology development and new application domains, such as smart city with heating and water distribution systems, and environmental monitoring and protection. A particular attention is paid to automation infrastructures and associated enabling technologies together with security aspects.

1 Research Centre on Fictitious Economy & Data Science, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (100190), China 2 Key Lab of Big Data Mining and Knowledge Management, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (100190), China 3 Romanian Academy, Calea Victoriei 125, Sector 1, Bucharest (010071), Romania 4 School of Economics and Management, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing (100190), China 5 College of Information Science and Technology, University of Nebraska at Omaha, Omaha, NE (68182), USA * Correspondence: iaitqm@163.com

Digital humanism (DH) aims to empower people to do something they never thought were feasible or to reimagine how they would achieve their goals. Virtual exhibitions (VE) represent one of the numerous possible deployments of IT (Information Technology) that is congruent with the main ideas of DH, which can be viewed as a concept about the contribution of IT to facilitate attaining human high aspirations. The paper aims at presenting the concepts, technologies of VE with particular emphasis on the evolutions caused by the current pandemic.

In this paper, an equivalence theorem is given, that is, in a weighted graph, the maximum value of the minimum edge weights of all minimal edge cut sets between two points is equal to the minimum value of the maximum edge weights of all paths between the two points.On this basis, the recovery time between two points in the network is defined from the perspective of the minimal edge cut set and the path, respectively, and the equivalence of the two definitions is shown.Two models are established to optimize the partial recovery of network functions, by taking the damaged road network after the earthquake as the scene, based on the definition of the network recovery time and the total network time.Model 1 includes three objective functions, which are the sum of the failure levels between all pairs of the demand points and the facilities serving them, the total network time and the total cost.Different priorities were set for solving these three objectives.Since such a hierarchical model is not conducive to the optimization of the objective functions with lower priorities, model 1 is modified appropriately.The sum of the failure levels is combined with the total network time into an integrated objective function by weighting, and the minimization of this new function is taken as the highest-priority objective and the minimization of the total cost is taken as the secondary-priority objective, in order to achieve the balance between the sum of the failure levels and the total network time.Thus, model 2 is obtained.A case study is used to test the two models and verify their effectiveness.

Collaboration means in substance that several entities such as humans, computers, robots, enterprises and so on jointly perform a certain task instead of working individually so that a better result could be obtained. Decision-making is a specific form of activity, commonly carried out by human agents, which is meant to eventually select a certain course of action which is expected to result in attaining a desired result. The chapter is meant to present a concise and balanced view of the basic concepts and main classes of supporting information and communication tools and systems regarding decision-making processes carried out by several collaborating human agents called participants. The reasons for collaboration are briefly explained followed by an exposure of collaboration application in the multi-participant decision-making settings. Having presented the classification of decision problems and decision-making units, the main phases of a specific multi-participant form of Herbert Simon’s decision process model are described followed by the presentation of two main forms of close and soft collaboration, namely consensus building and crowdsourcing, respectively. The need for technology support offered to collaborating participants is justified and two main classes of decision supporting systems, namely Decision support systems and the ever more largely used platforms, are addressed. A practical example of an open ended and evolving platform is presented. Open questions about the further role the information and communication tools in multi-participant decision-making processes are eventually formulated from two perspectives, digital humanism and dataism, respectively.

Sudden disasters may damage facilities, transportation networks and other critical infrastructures, delay rescue and bring huge losses. Facility selection and reliable transportation network play an important role in emergency rescue. In this paper, the reliability level between two points in a network is defined from the point of view of minimal edge cut and path, respectively, and the equivalence of these two definitions is proven. Based on this, a multi-objective optimization model is proposed. The first goal of the model is to minimize the total service distance, and the second goal is to maximize the network reliability level. The original model is transformed into a model with three objectives, and the three objectives are combined into one objective by the method of weighting. The model is applied to a case, and the results are analyzed to verify the effectiveness of the model.

In 2021, the International Journal for Computers, Communications and Control (IJCCC) entered its 16th year of existence. The first issue of the sixteenth volume of IJCCC was planned to be a special one dedicated to pay a tribute to the exceptional work and results of Lotfi Zadech, a great scientist born in 1921, who in uenced an immense number of the scholars all over the world. That special issue was thought and organized by Ioan Dzitac who wrote the Editorial. Several outstanding scholars were invited and accepted to publish in the intended special issue. It was Ioan Dzitac's last paper. Unfortunately, on 6th February, when the special issue was almost ready to be published, the heart of Ioan Dzitac suddenly stopped beating. Now, it is our sad duty of honour to propose to collaborators and readers of our journal a special issue meant to commemorate and pay a tribute to Ioan Dzitac, an honest and generous person, a talented and hardworking scientist and professor, an effective and empathic manager, a close and dear colleague and friend.

The paper presents several practical issues concerning the multi-participant decision-making processes with emphasis on the crowdsourcing approach. The development of effective modern telecom systems that enable effective operations of multi-participant decision units are detailed. System scalability and operator’s agility to incorporate continuous changing technologies chal-lenge further research.