@phdthesis{Hirth2016,
  author    = {Hirth, Matthias Johannes Wilhem},
  title     = {Modeling Crowdsourcing Platforms - A Use-Case Driven Approach},
  issn      = {1432-8801},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-14072},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-140726},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Computer systems have replaced human work-force in many parts of everyday life, but there still exists a large number of tasks that cannot be automated, yet. This also includes tasks, which we consider to be rather simple like the categorization of image content or subjective ratings. Traditionally, these tasks have been completed by designated employees or outsourced to specialized companies. However, recently the crowdsourcing paradigm is more and more applied to complete such human-labor intensive tasks. Crowdsourcing aims at leveraging the huge number of Internet users all around the globe, which form a potentially highly available, low-cost, and easy accessible work-force. To enable the distribution of work on a global scale, new web-based services emerged, so called crowdsourcing platforms, that act as mediator between employers posting tasks and workers completing tasks. However, the crowdsourcing approach, especially the large anonymous worker crowd, results in two types of challenges. On the one hand, there are technical challenges like the dimensioning of crowdsourcing platform infrastructure or the interconnection of crowdsourcing platforms and machine clouds to build hybrid services. On the other hand, there are conceptual challenges like identifying reliable workers or migrating traditional off-line work to the crowdsourcing environment. To tackle these challenges, this monograph analyzes and models current crowdsourcing systems to optimize crowdsourcing workflows and the underlying infrastructure. First, a categorization of crowdsourcing tasks and platforms is developed to derive generalizable properties. Based on this categorization and an exemplary analysis of a commercial crowdsourcing platform, models for different aspects of crowdsourcing platforms and crowdsourcing mechanisms are developed. A special focus is put on quality assurance mechanisms for crowdsourcing tasks, where the models are used to assess the suitability and costs of existing approaches for different types of tasks. Further, a novel quality assurance mechanism solely based on user-interactions is proposed and its feasibility is shown. The findings from the analysis of existing platforms, the derived models, and the developed quality assurance mechanisms are finally used to derive best practices for two crowdsourcing use-cases, crowdsourcing-based network measurements and crowdsourcing-based subjective user studies. These two exemplary use-cases cover aspects typical for a large range of crowdsourcing tasks and illustrated the potential benefits, but also resulting challenges when using crowdsourcing. With the ongoing digitalization and globalization of the labor markets, the crowdsourcing paradigm is expected to gain even more importance in the next years. This is already evident in the currently new emerging fields of crowdsourcing, like enterprise crowdsourcing or mobile crowdsourcing. The models developed in the monograph enable platform providers to optimize their current systems and employers to optimize their workflows to increase their commercial success. Moreover, the results help to improve the general understanding of crowdsourcing systems, a key for identifying necessary adaptions and future improvements.},
  subject      = {Open Innovation},
  language  = {en}
}
@phdthesis{Schwartz2016,
  author    = {Schwartz, Christian},
  title     = {Modeling and Evaluation of Multi-Stakeholder Scenarios in Communication Networks},
  issn      = {1432-8801},
  doi       = {10.25972/OPUS-13388},
  url       = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-133887},
  school      = {Universit{\"a}t W{\"u}rzburg},
  year      = {2016},
  abstract  = {Today's Internet is no longer only controlled by a single stakeholder, e.g. a standard body or a telecommunications company. Rather, the interests of a multitude of stakeholders, e.g. application developers, hardware vendors, cloud operators, and network operators, collide during the development and operation of applications in the Internet. Each of these stakeholders considers different KPIs to be important and attempts to optimise scenarios in its favour. This results in different, often opposing views and can cause problems for the complete network ecosystem. One example of such a scenario are Signalling Storms in the mobile Internet, with one of the largest occurring in Japan in 2012 due to the release and high popularity of a free instant messaging application. The network traffic generated by the application caused a high number of connections to the Internet being established and terminated. This resulted in a similarly high number of signalling messages in the mobile network, causing overload and a loss of service for 2.5 million users over 4 hours. While the network operator suffers the largest impact of this signalling overload, it does not control the application. Thus, the network operator can not change the application traffic characteristics to generate less network signalling traffic. The stakeholders who could prevent, or at least reduce, such behaviour, i.e. application developers or hardware vendors, have no direct benefit from modifying their products in such a way. This results in a clash of interests which negatively impacts the network performance for all participants. The goal of this monograph is to provide an overview over the complex structures of stakeholder relationships in today's Internet applications in mobile networks. To this end, we study different scenarios where such interests clash and suggest methods where tradeoffs can be optimised for all participants. If such an optimisation is not possible or attempts at it might lead to adverse effects, we discuss the reasons.},
  subject      = {Leistungsbewertung},
  language  = {en}
}