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Information

Information is a scientific, peer-reviewed, open access journal of information science and technology, data, knowledge, and communication, published monthly online by MDPI.
The International Society for the Study of Information (IS4SI) is affiliated with Information and its members receive discounts on the article processing charges.
Quartile Ranking JCR - Q2 (Computer Science, Information Systems)

All Articles (5,527)

A Crowd Simulation Framework in Special Natural Environments

  • Xunjin Zou,
  • Yunqing Ye and
  • Tianxia Feng
  • + 1 author

This study introduces a novel crowd simulation framework tailored for special natural environments, such as earthquakes, landslides, and hunting scenarios. The framework integrates continuous dynamics with agent-based mechanisms to model diverse biological cluster interactions effectively. By combining global path planning and local collision detection, it enhances crowd-driven interactions through innovative strategies for path finding, motion, and crowd management. A lightweight 3D reconstruction approach ensures a balance between large-scale simulations, high-fidelity scenarios, and computational efficiency. This framework allows each agent to maintain individual initiative and behavioral diversity, making it highly suitable for large-scale simulations. The proposed model can simulate crowd behavior realistically across various natural scenarios and adapt seamlessly to different environments, offering a robust solution for crowd simulation.

4 January 2026

Crowds (biological clusters) in different natural environments.

Design and Evaluation of a Low-Code/No-Code Document Management and Approval System

  • Constantin Viorel Marian,
  • Mihnea Neferu and
  • Dan Alexandru Mitrea

This paper presents the design, implementation, and evaluation of a low-code document management and approval system developed on the Microsoft Power Platform. The solution integrates Power Apps, Power Automate, SharePoint Online, and Azure Active Directory to enable secure, traceable, and device-independent workflows for managing organizational documents. By combining graphical interfaces, automated approval logic, and enterprise-grade identity management, the system supports real-time collaboration and compliance with records’ governance standards. A comparative analysis with traditional enterprise content management and open-source web architectures demonstrates substantial advantages in deployment speed, scalability, and auditability. Empirical results from a six-week pilot involving multiple users indicate a reduction in approval cycle time, high user satisfaction, and strong cost-efficiency relative to conventional development models. The findings highlight how low-code ecosystems operationalize digital transformation by empowering non-technical users to automate complex workflows while maintaining security and governance integrity. This work contributes to the understanding of information system democratization, showing that low-code platforms can extend digital participation, improve organizational agility, and support sustainable operational efficiency across distributed environments.

4 January 2026

  • Systematic Review
  • Open Access

This study presents a systematic review of ontology–AI integration for construction image understanding, aiming to clarify how ontologies enhance semantic consistency, interpretability, and reasoning in AI-based visual analysis. Construction sites involve highly dynamic and unstructured conditions, making image-based hazard detection and situation assessment both essential and challenging. Ontology-based frameworks offer a structured semantic layer that can complement deep learning models; however, most existing studies adopt ontologies only as post-processing mechanisms rather than embedding them within model training or inference workflows. Following PRISMA 2020 guidelines, a comprehensive search of the Web of Science Core Collection (2014–2025) identified 587 publications, of which 152 met the eligibility criteria, and 16 explicitly addressed construction image data. Topic modeling revealed five functional objectives—regulatory compliance, hazard reasoning, decision support, knowledge reuse, and sustainability—and four primary data modalities: BIM, text, image, and sensor data. Two dominant integration patterns were observed: training-stage and output-stage enhancement. While quantitative performance improvements were modest, qualitative gains were consistent across studies, including reduced false positives, improved interpretability, and enhanced situational understanding. Persistent gaps were identified in standardization, scalability, and real-world validation. This review provides the first structured synthesis of ontology–AI research for construction image understanding and offers an evidence-based research agenda that links observed limitations to actionable directions for semantic AI in construction.

4 January 2026

Lightweight One-to-Many User-to-Sensors Authentication and Key Agreement

  • Hussein El Ghor,
  • Ahmad Hani El Fawal and
  • Ali Mansour
  • + 2 authors

The proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) deployments demands Authentication and Key Agreement (AKA) protocols that scale from one initiator to many devices while preserving strong security guarantees on constrained hardware. Prior lightweight one-to-many designs often rely on a network-wide secret, reuse a single group session key across devices, or omit Perfect Forward Secrecy (PFS), leaving systems vulnerable to compromise and traffic exposure. To this end, we present in this paper a lightweight protocol, named Lightweight One-To-many User-to-Sensors Authentication and Key Agreement (LOTUS-AKA), that achieves mutual authentication, PFS, and per-sensor key isolation while keeping devices free of public-key costs. The user and gateway perform an ephemeral elliptic-curve Diffie–Hellman exchange to derive a short-lived group key, from which independent per-sensor session keys are expanded via Hashed Message Authentication Code HMAC-based Key Derivation Function (HKDF). Each sensor receives its key through a compact Authenticated Encryption with associated data (AEAD) wrap under its long-term secret; sensors perform only hashing and AEAD, with no elliptic-curve operations. The login path uses an augmented Password-Authenticated Key Exchange (PAKE) to eliminate offline password guessing in the smart-card theft setting, and a stateless cookie gates expensive work to mitigate denial-of-service. We provide a game-based security argument and a symbolic verification model, and we report microbenchmarks on Cortex-M–class platforms showing reduced device computation and linear low-constant communication overhead with the number of sensors. The design offers a practical path to secure, scalable multi-sensor sessions in resource-constrained IoT.

4 January 2026

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Test and Evaluation Methods for Human-Machine Interfaces of Automated Vehicles II
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Test and Evaluation Methods for Human-Machine Interfaces of Automated Vehicles II

Editors: Frederik Naujoks, Yannick Forster, Andreas Keinath, Nadja Schömig, Sebastian Hergeth, Katharina Wiedemann
Big Data and Artificial Intelligence
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Big Data and Artificial Intelligence

Volume III
Editors: Miltiadis D. Lytras, Andreea Claudia Serban

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Information - ISSN 2078-2489