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Item A Case Based Reasoning Knowledge Based System for Type II Diabtes Management: Case of Desire Referral Hospital(Addis Ababa University, 2011-11-01) Zewditu Sisay; Getachew JemanehDiabetes mellitus (DM) is a common chronic disease around the world in which the boas not produce insulin (type I diabetes) or does not properly use insulin (type II diabetes ) the study investigated the potential of case-based reasoning (CBR)approach for type II DM treatment CBR is an approach to artificial intelligence that is intended to mimic an approach that people typically use to solve problems this is the use of past experiences to reason about new situations In order to acquire the knowledge the researcher conducted unstructured interviews with domain experts selected through expert sampling and other relevant documents then the knowledge is modeled using tree like structure called ladders patient history cards from dessie referral hospital in outpatient department (OPD)were the primary sources of cases. case attribute identification and weight assignment were done with the help of domain experts the case-based contained 42 type II DM cases and stored in plain text file (attribute value pair vector) the prototype is built using Jcolibri a software artifice that promotes software reuse for building CBR systems JCOLIBRI employed nearest neighbor retrieval algorithm for retrieval and propose the most similar cases for reuse manual revision is by the domain expert in order to adapt a stored case’s solution for a new case there is always incremental learning through retaining newly solved cases The prototype performance is evaluated through statistical analysis and user feedbacks recall and precision were the main statistical performance measures using leave-one-out cross validation testing proportion the retrieval performance of the prototype showed average value of 69% recall and 46% precision domain experts were also evaluating the prototype using certain criteria The main objective the research is to design and build CBR knowledge based system that retrieves relevant previously stored cases and proposes appropriate solution the developed prototype scores promising performance and user acceptanceItem A Case Based Reasoning Knowledge Based System For type II Diabtes Management: Case of Dessie Refreal Hospital(Addis Ababa University, 2011-11) Zewditu Sisay; Getachew JemanehDiabetes mellitus (OM) is a common chronic disease around the world in which the body does not produce insulin (Type I diabetes) or does not properly use insulin (Type II diabetes). The study investigated the potential of case-based reasoning (CBR) approach for type II DM treatment. CBR is an approach to Artificial Intelligence that is intended to mimic an approach that people typically use to solve problems. This is the use of past experiences to reason about new situations. In order to acquire the knowledge, the researcher conducted unstructured interviews with domain experts selected through expert sampling and other relevant documents. Then the knowledge is modeled using tree like structure called ladders. Patient history cards from Dessie Referral Hospital in outpatient department (OPD) were the primary sources of cases. Case attribute identification and weight assignment were done with the help of domain experts. The case-based contained 42 type II DM cases and stored in plain text file (attribute value pair vector). The prototype is built using jCOLIBRI, a software artifact that promotes software reuse for building CBR systems. jCOLlBRl employed Nearest Neighbor Retrieval algorithm for retrieval and propose the most similar cases for reuse. Manual revision is done by the domain expert in order to adapt a stored case's solution for a new case. There is always incremental learning through retaining newly solved cases. The prototype performance is evaluated through statistical analysis and user feedbacks. Recall and precision were the main statistical performance measures using leave-one-out cross validation testing proportion. The retrieval performance of the prototype showed average value of 69% recall and 46% precision. Domain experts were also evaluating the prototype using certain criteria. The main objective the research is to design and build CBR knowledge based system that retrieves relevant previously stored cases and proposes appropriate solution. The developed prototype scores promising performance and user acceptance.Item A Framework for Near Real-Time SIMbox Fraud Detection: the Case of Ethio Telecom(Addis Ababa University, 2023-12) Kaleab Abebaw; Million MesheshaTelecom fraud is a major concern for telecom operators as well as for governments especially in Africa and Asia. Bypass fraud is one of the most fertile and costly frauds in today’s mobile industry making mobile operators and telecom regulators face a staggering annual revenue losses due to these fixed/VoIP to GSM/CDMA/Fixed line gateway equipment’s, which are used to terminate international inbound calls to local calls to local Subscribers by deviating traffic away from the legal interconnect gateways. Bypass fraud is more rampant in the countries where the cost of terminating international call exceeds the cost of a national call by a considerable margin or the countries where government carriers monopolize international gateways. Fraudsters through the use of different bypass mechanisms, sell capacity to terminate calls cheaply in these countries, on the open market or through direct connections with interconnect operators. Operators sending outbound international traffic are then attracted by these interconnect operators with lower interconnect rates. This leads to lost revenue for terminating network operators. While several attempts have been made to fight against Bypass Frauds the common approaches have been the use of monitoring calling patterns and profiles through Fraud Management Systems and the use of Test Call Generators. Both approaches have their own set of limitations coping up on frequently changing fraudster’s techniques and have short shelf life. In addition, those approaches took couple of months to detect a single fraudulent service number. The general approach used to perform this research is a design science research methodology. The proposed system works on processing the near real-time data using Spark Streaming. The objective is to build features to process the near real time data with Spark Streaming to reduce the workload on the node(s), achieve low latency to provide a better execution plan for a scalable and fault-tolerant processing of data. The Proposed framework targeted to improve response time and to give real-time solution to real time problem. Domain experts made evaluation In order to assure the proposed system has met the requirement needed. In this work, we intended to create a fraud detection framework, which detects frauds based on big data technology, precisely Apache spark and using its Machine learning libraries in order to minimize the latency and to process transactions in a real-time.Item An Academic Resource Centre in the University of Malawi: It’s Need and a Plan for Its Development, Together With Prototype Databases(Addis Ababa University, 1993-06) Duncan Vote; Neelameghan A. (Professor)The Academic Resource Centro (ARC) discussed in this thesis is an information facility designed to provide information support for the efficient and effective performance of the statutory and public service functions of the University of Malawi and its associated institutions and organizations including related government departments, pastorals, research centers etc. It is conceived as an information center forming an integral part of the university college and institutions associated with higher learning and research in Malawi. The ARC will utilize viable information technology in conjunction with manual methods. Pr-planning studies undertaken include: a review of trends in information technology (IT), a survey of a accessibility to IT in \ Malawi, an assessment of the existing information support systems of the University of Malawi and their inadequacies in relation to the information and data needs of the variety of users of the academic and research community and the related government and para statal organizations . Based on the findings, plans to develop the ARC and steps to implement the plans are proposed. The ARC is conceived as a networking of -viiinformation systems within the university and the associated institutions as well as of appropriate institutions in the country and abroad. The ARC plan outlines the requirements in terms of manpower, systems design and implementation. Libraries and information centers which could participate in the ARC network are mentioned. A set of integrated databases consisting of : bibliographic records; information on . \ curriculum development, academic prospectus etc; profiles of experts and institutions; of databases and information systems; of ongoing projects and researches in the university of Malawi, Government and other selected research institutions, is presented as prototypes for the databases to be developed at the ARC. Data entry guidelines are also provided. Training facilities for IT personnel are not adequate in the country and it has led to under utilization of equipment and heavy reliance on vendor service support for the systems. Some suggestions are made in overcoming this problem. Introduction of IT in libraries, documentation and information centres in the country is slowly gaining ground and currently is largely being applied in special -viiilibraries and to a certain extent in academic libraries as well. However, IT applications to generate information products and services is currently limited to word processing and in-house bibliographic database management. Emerging its, such as CD-ROM, networking and desktop publishing, are yet to be widely used in Malawi. The need for developing national databases to capture and disseminate information generated in the country is emphasized.Item An Academic Resource Centre in the University of Malawi: It’s Need and a Plan for its Development, Together with Prototype Databases.(Addis Ababa University, 1993-05) Duncan, Vote; Neelameghan, A. (Prof.)The Academic Resource Centre (ARC) discussed in this thesis is an information facility designed to provide information support for the efficient and effective performance of the statutory and public service functions of the University of Malawi and its associated institutions and organizations including related government departments, parastatals, research centres etc. It is conceived as an information centre forming an i ntegral part of the university college and institutions associated with higher learning and research in Malawi. The ARC will utilize viable information technology in conjunction with manual methods. Pre-planning studies undertaken include: a review of trends in information technology (IT), a survey of accessibility to IT in Malawi, an assessment of the existing information support systems of the University of Malawi and their inadequacies in relation to the information and data needs of the variety of users of the academic and research community and the related government and parastatal organizations. Based on the findings, plans to develop the ARC and steps to implement the plans are proposed. The ARC is conceived as a networking of i nformat ion systems wi thi n t he university and the associated institutions as · well as of appropriate institutions in the country and abroad. The ARC plan outlines the requirements in terms of manpower, systems design and implementation. Libraries and information centres which could participate in the ARC network are mentioned. A set of integrated databases consisting of: bibliographic records; information on curriculum development, academic prospectus etc; profiles of experts and institutions; of databases and information systems; of ongoing projects and researches in the University of Malawi, Government and other selected research institutions, databases to is be presented developed as prototypes for the at the ARC. Data entry guideliness are also provided .Training fa c ilities for IT personnel are not adequate in the country and it has led to underutilization of equipment and heavy reliance on vendor service support for the systems. Some suggestions are made in overcoming this problem. Introduction of IT in libraries, documentation and information centres in the country is slowly gaining ground and currently is largely being applied in special libraries and to a certain extent i n academic libraries as well. However, IT applications to generate information products and services is currently limited to word processing and in-house bibliographic database management. Emerging Its, such as CD-ROM, networking and desktop publishing, are yet to be widely used in Malawi. The need for developing national databases to capture and disseminate information generated in the country is emphasized.Item Accessibility and Usability Evaluation of Ethiopian Airlines Website(Addis Ababa University, 2023-06) Berhan Deribew; Rahel BekeleThe development of user-friendly and accessible digital platforms is crucial for the airline's success the airline's website, as its major digital platform, serves as a means for customers to access information, make bookings, and interact with the brand. It is critical for airlines to provide high- quality website usability and accessibility to meet customer expectations, create business development, and retain a competitive advantage in the market. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the usability and accessibility of the Ethiopian Airlines website, identifying areas for improvement and providing insights to enhance the user experience and address accessibility challenges. To achieve this objective, a mixed-method approach is used, the study integrates an online questionnaire, user-based testing utilizing Morae software, and automatic evaluation tools such as Accessibility Checker, WAVE, GTmetrix, and Google Lighthouse. The participant sample comprised 10 individuals which are members of sheba miles and who completed seven tasks using Morae, while an online questionnaire was administered to additional 32 Ethiopian Airlines customers who had utilized the website for flight bookings and were enrolled in the Sheba Miles frequent flier loyalty program. The findings of the study indicate there is the need for improvements in the website’s usability and accessibility those are significant accessibility issues within the Ethiopian Airlines website, which hinder users with impairments to access the information and services provided. Additionally, the research uncovers various usability concerns, including difficulties in locating relevant information, slow page loading times, a lack of user friendliness, navigation challenges, and decreased user satisfactionItem Accounting Information Support System with Particular Reference to Agency for the Administration of Rented Houses(Addis Ababa University, 1995-06) Tessema Geda; Tadesse, Taye (PhD)The management process can be defined as the process of planning, organizing, staffing and cont r olling . The performance of a business can be measured on how well these func tions are being carried out. The main thing to be made is that better quality information which helps management in the process of managing a business. Accounting information, in this regard , plays a great role in: 1) Planning, because reporting information on past periods helps t he user to make predictions about future events . 2) Controlling , because budgets and standards are set, and performances are measured against these budgets and standards . 3) Decision making , because the reporting of possible outcomes based on alternative input allows the decision makers to select the best alternatives. The accounting function also acts as an over all control device for external consti cuent s such as external auditors , Inland Revenue Administra t ion and Other Government bodies . The result of the study reveals that accounting system of A. A. R.H. currently used is not capable of supporting t he management in r elation to investment and economic policy. Therefore , this thesis aims to furnish in prototype computer based accounting information to different level ofmanagers and to interested external users. The proposed computer-based accounting system for the accounting information system of A. A.R.H. emanates from the fact that : a) The existing semi-automated accounting system of A.A .R. H. has not been presented in a suitable form to help management. b) The traditional batch oriented processing of accounting creates a delay to provide timely information. Thus, using the database approach attempts have been made to design prototype accounting information system to be suitable for management in a timely fashi on . The thesis holds Accounting Concept, six chapters, t he Exist i ng the Int roduction part, Accounting Sy stem of A.A . R.H., the Proposed Accou~ t i n g System, System Operation and Implementation Plan and lastly Conclusion and Recommendations .Item Accounting Information Support System with Particular Reference to Agency for The Administration of Rented Houses (A.A.R.H)(Addis Ababa University, 1995-06) Geda, Tesema; Tadesse, Taye (PhD); Chowdhury, G.G. (PhD)The management process can be defined as the process of planning, organizing, staffing and controlling. The performance of a business can be measured on how well these functions are being carried out . The main thing to be made is that better quality information which helps management in the process of managing a business. Accounting information, in this regard , plays a great role in: 1) Planning , because reporting information on past periods helps the user to make predictions about future events. 2) Controlling, because budgets and standards are set, and performances are measured against these budgets and standards. 3) Decision making, because the reporting of possible outcomes based on alternative input allows the decision makers to select the best alternatives . The accounting function also acts as an over all control device for external constituents such as external auditors , Inland Revenue Administration and Other Government bodies . The result of the study reveals that accounting system of A.A . R. H. currently used is not capable of supporting the management in relation to investment and economic policy. Therefore , this thesis aims to furnish in prototype computer based accounting information to different level of managers and to interested external users. The proposed computer-based accounting system for the accounting information system of A.A.R.H. emanates from the fact that: a) The existing semi-automated accounting system of A.A.R.H. has not been presented in a suitable form to help management. b) The traditional batch oriented processing of accounting creates a delay to provide timely information. Thus, using the database approach attempts have been made to design prototype accounting information system to be suitable for management in a timely fashion. The thesis holds six chapters, the Introduction part, Accounting Concept , the Existing Accounting System of A.A.R.H. , the Proposed Accounting System, System Operation and Implementation Plan and lastly Conclusion and Recommendations.Item Adaptive E-Learning Design By Artificial Neural Network Techniques: A Case of Ethiopian Higher Learning Institution(Addis Ababa University, 2010-06) Beyene, Melkamu; Lamnew, Workshet (PhD)An e-learning system is expected to recognize the different learner characteristics, the complex learning process that can be influenced by learner characteristics such as previous knowledge, learning styles, background, etc. The system is also expected to analyze students need to use learning material and an order of presentation that depends upon their own characteristics and needs. More adaptivity is expected from e-learning systems since students need to be considered independent. The purpose of this study is to investigate and demonstrate the possibility of developing Adaptive e-learning model for Ethiopian higher learning institutions learners. In this research, an experiment was made to build a learner model for an adaptive e-learning model. Firstly, Information independent of the course like learner goals and background and experiences as well as domain dependent data like prior knowledge about the course and learner expectations from the course were assessed. Secondly, an experimental learning styles predictive model is built through neural network data mining modeling technique. From the analysis of the assessment in this study, Ethiopian higher learning institutions learners’ students have varying learning goals, learner background and experiences, preferences, learning styles as well as prior knowledge about the course and their expectations from the course. The learning style predictive model is experimented by neural network data mining technique from student learning style questionnaire that received from 1296 respondents. Fourteen variables were selected from the twenty variables for each model. From the total dataset, 80%, 10% and 10% of the data is used for training, validating and testing purpose respectively. Neural network model is built which can correctly classify 93.07%, 92.30%, 96.15% and 94.61% of the validation set for visual-auditory, sequential-global, activist-reflective, sensitive-intuitive and learning styles respectively. Lastly, an adaptive e-learning model prototype was designed.Item Adoption and Challenges of Mobile Banking [Hello-Cash] System in Ethiopia: The Case of Cooperative Bank of Oromiya(Addis Ababa University, 2017-06-07) Bayana Kumsa, Ebisa; Jemaneh, Ato GetachewThe incorporation of information system into an organization for the purpose of getting competitive advantage, easing workload, providing intangible (soft) work place and coping up with technological advancement has became an indispensable for organizations. Due to these many companies (for example banks) are getting advantage of information communication technology implementation like Mobile banking, Internet banking, ATM, etc. Accordingly Ethiopian commercial banks have implemented mobile banking system into their service system. However, with increased demand of users and technological advancements, the adoption of the mobile banking system has some challenges. This thesis aims to examine adoption of mobile banking system in the Ethiopia focusing on Cooperative bank of Oromiya with respect to the challenges which can influence the bank from taking advantage and expected benefits of mobile banking system derived by adopting the system. The study was conducted based on technology acceptance model (TAM) and innovative diffusion theory (IDT). Both qualitative and quantitative (mixed) research approach was used to answer the research questions that emerge through the review of existing literature and the context of the mobile banking system in Ethiopia and statistically analyzed data obtained from the survey questionnaire. The result of the study indicated that, drivers of mobile banking adoption are relative advantage, perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness. The study also identified the major challenges Ethiopian banking industry faces in the adoption of mobile banking system which are perceived risks, trust reliability, lack of legal frame and government support, lack of ICT infrastructure, electricity and telecommunications. The study suggests a series of measures which could be taken by the bank and government to address various challenges identified in the study. These measures were establishing a clear set of legal frame work on the use of technology in banking industry, supporting banking industry by investing on ICT, etcItem Adoption Of E-Commerce Framework For Ethiopian Banks(Addis Ababa University, 2017-06-08) Tefera Tekle, Emishaw; Mulugeta (PhD), WondwossenE-commerce, a relatively new concept for Ethiopian market, is giving competitive advantages across the globe in both developed and developing countries. This study is about adopting ecommerce framework for Ethiopian banks. The study has used technology organization environment (TOE) technology adoption model to identify the factors for e-commerce framework adoption for Ethiopian banks. It has also contextualized a questionnaire developed by Elizabeth and J. Michael (2004), in their research done for developing an e-commerce adoption model for developed countries Small and Medium Businesses. Following the survey results additional factors of e-commerce adoption are included on the TOE framework. Compatibility of the tailored e-commerce framework and external pressure are included as external factor of adoption to the existing TOE framework. Organizational support, organizational readiness, ease of use, usefulness, entrepreneurial orientation and perception of decision makers are also included as internal/organizational factors for e-commerce adoption. The survey responses are also used to perform strength, weakness, opportunity and threat (SWOT) analysis on each of the factors of e-commerce adoption. Based on the results a tailored e-commerce framework is proposed to suite the Ethiopian banks working environment by amending the national interoperability infrastructure–EthSwitch to interoperate among the member banks and the e-commerce application, 3-Domian secure (issuer, acquirer and interoperability), is interfaced with the merchant plug in at the merchant web site and rearranging the existing modules of the framework. As a result, the tailored e-commerce framework that is “close-controlled and close-boundary” will resolve the issues of e-commerce fraud, security related issues, settlement related issues, legislation and policy related issues. Other researchers will use the proposed framework as a startup to further study cross boarder e-commerce implementation in Ethiopia by widening the operating environment to accept major international standard cards such as the Visa and MasterCardItem Adoption Of Information And Communication Technology In Public Administration In Oromia Region: The Case Of Bereh And Sendafa Woredas(Addis Ababa University, 2017-06-05) Asefa, Girma; Lessa (PhD), LemmaInformation Communication Technology (ICT) has become a significant tool to facilitate human activity that has made contributing to the countries’ on economy and social welfare. As extant literature reveal, the application of ICTs in the public administrations is basically affected by the organizations context, technological context and environmental context factors. Purpose of this study was to identify the challenges and contextual factors that drive information and communication technology adoption in Bereh and Sendafa Woredas public administrations. To achieve objective a qualitative and quantitative approaches were conducted with a survey that focused on ICT uses, its challenges and contextual factor that drive ICT in the public administrations. The quantitative survey study was conducted on 230 respondents on both Woredas and the qualitative key informant interview. The data from both sources were combined and analyzed to get a view of the current situation. The findings show that the public administrations are mainly hindered by a group of challenges related to strategy design on ICT tools challenges for instances infrastructural, standard Internet connectivity design issues and the forces that drive the ICT adoption also ICT awareness creation among the top managers. Possible actions for management intervention are also forwarded based on the key findingsItem Afaan Oromo Morphological Analysis a Hybrid Approach(Addis Ababa University, 2021-12-13) Genna, Kedir; Meshesha, Million (PhD)This study provides relatively detailed information on developing Afaan Oromo morphological analysis system. Morphological analyzer decomposes words into its components called morphemes and annotates those morphemes with grammatical information. Although the module uses machine-learning approach on morphological analysis, it used rule-based approach to segments words into its small components, morphemes. The developed prototype focused on inflectional forms of nominals (nouns and adjectives) and verbs since the two words classes are mostly the ones that undergo inflection, they determine the inflectional characteristics of the language. The protype was developed using python programming and Hidden Markov Model (HMM). The Viterbi algorithm is used to encode the HMM model. Then, the prototype was trained and tested using representative data. A corpus of size 4,320 nouns and 3,780 verbs are used to train the HMM model. Then the performance of the analyser was tested using 480 nouns and 420 verbs. Generally, the accuracy of the analyzer for nouns and verbs is 84.6 % and 82.9% respectively. The result of the experiment was quite satisfactory, which can be improved by incorporating simple grammatical constraints and contextual information (including information encoded in tonal system) to minimize the ambiguities, words root database to reduce errors during morphemes identification and additional data to emphasis the initial probability of the model. The key limitations in this effort are limited funding opportunities, scarcity gold standard and balanced annotated data sets and inherently multiple sources of ambiguity of the language at different levels.Item Afaan Oromo Text Retrieval System(Addis Ababa University, 2012-06) Gutema, Gezehagn; Meshesha, Million(PhD)This study is mainly intended to make possible retrieval of Afan Oromo text documents by applying techniques of modern information retrieval system. Information retrieval is a mechanism that enables finding relevant information material of unstructured nature that satisfies information need of user from large collection. Afaan Oromo text retrieval developed in this study has indexing and searching parts. Vector Space Model of information retrieval system was used to guide searching for relevant document from Oromiffa text corpus. The model is selected since Vector space model is the widely used classic model of information retrieval system. The index file structure used is inverted index file structure. For this study text document corpus is prepared by the researcher encompassing different news article and experiment is made by using 9(nine) different user information need queries. Various techniques of text pre-processing including tokenization, normalization, stop word removal and stemming are used for both document indexing and query text. The experiment shows that the performance is on the average 0.575(57.5%) precision and 0.6264(62.64%) recall. The challenging tasks in the study are handling synonymy and polysemy, inability of the stemmer algorithm to all word variants, and ambiguity of words in the language. The performance the system can be increased if stemming algorithm is improved, standard test corpus is used, and thesaurus is used to handle polysemy and synonymy words in the language.Item Afaan Oromo-English Cross-Lingual Information Retrieval (CLIR): a Corpus Based Approach(Addis Ababa University, 2011-06) Bekele, Daneal; Teferi, Dereje(PhD)The goal of Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) is to provide users with access to information that is in a different language from their queries. It has the ability to issue a query in one language and retrieve documents in another. This is achieved by designing a system where a query in one language can be compared with documents in another. Afaan Oromo is one of the major languages that are widely spoken and used in Ethiopia. Despite the fact that Afaan Oromo has a large number of speakers, little effort has been put in conducting researches which aim at making English documents available to Afaan Oromo speakers. This study is, therefore, an attempt to develop Afaan Oromo-English CLIR system which enables Afaan Oromo native speakers to access and retrieve the vast online information sources that are available in English by writing queries using their own (native) language. In this study, the development of a corpus-based CLIR system which makes use of wordbased query translation for Afaan Oromo-English language pairs and evaluation of the system on a corpus of test documents and queries prepared for this purpose is described. This approach requires the availability of parallel documents hence such documents are collected from Bible chapters, legal and some available religious documents. Evaluation of the system is conducted by both monolingual and bilingual retrievals. In the monolingual run, the Afaan Oromo queries are given to the system and Afaan Oromo documents are retrieved while in the bilingual run the Afaan Oromo queries are given to the system after being translated into English to retrieve English documents. For the bilingual run translation of Afaan Oromo queries into their English equivalent is done by using bilingual dictionary constructed from the collected parallel corpora. The performance of the system was measured by recall and precision. In the first phase of the experimentation, the maximum average precision value of 0.421and 0.304 are obtained for the Afaan Oromo and English documents respectively. The second phase of experimentation performs slightly better than the first. Maximum average precision value of 0.468 and 0.316 are obtained for the Afaan Oromo and English documents respectively. Therefore, with the use of large and cleaned parallel Afaan Oromo-English document collections, it is possible to develop CLIR for the language pairs.Item Agricultural Information Network For Ethiopia : Need, Functions and Implementation Strategy(Addis Ababa University, 1992-06) Kebede, Gashaw; Neelameghan, A. (Prof.)The relevance and viability of cooperative approach by forming a network of existing information service units in the country to address commonly faced shortcomings in agricultural information provision was assessed and discussed. A review of literature on various aspects of information ne tworking was made mainly to draw up a general framework and basic pri nciples essential to asse ss viability, to determine possible and viable areas of cooperation and to establish the particular type of net work required. A preliminary survey on problems, resource capability and attitude to networking on the existing information service units in Ethi opia using questionnaire supported by selected interview was conducted. The results revealed shortages in information sources, skilled personnel, and equipment and facility; and cumbersome organizational structures are widespread. standardization and bibliographic control tools are also a bsent. Local publications are neglected areas. Financial resource limitations are major problems. The information services provided are limited to reading and lending services by large. All these are constraints in the improvements . of the services immedi tely. staff will i ngness to appr oach , the" existing problems cooperatively was high. Also surveyed with a different questionnaire were agricult ural information users of the surveyed information service units so as to assess their reaction to and opinions about the available servi ces which t he ne t wor k could t ake into cons i de r ation as i t s ultimate goal. Al t hough at present books are t he most used, journals and loca l pUblica t ions are rep o r ted t o be in great demand. Liter ature s e a r ch, phot ocopying, doc ument delivery are a lso requi red. The ma jority are dissati s f i ed with their in forma t ion servi ce units beca us e their information ne eds are not met. However, many seem to appreciate a cooper ative approach to the ser vices although at present many are less frequent us ers of other similar information units in the country. Taking into consideration what is affordable by the existing units on the one hand and the need to addr ess t he pressing problems on the other, feasi ble areas for a network were identified ,namely, establishing union c atalogues of holdings and list of local publications, limited interl ibr ary loan, t raining and standardization with focus on laying the g r ound for further wider cooperation leading towar ds meeting the expressed as well as generally r equired needs of users and to assist the services achieve better standards of service and r esource base. Recommendations are made to initiate the network and make it operational.Item Agricultural Information Network For Ethiopia : Needs, Functions and Implementation Strategy(Addis Ababa University, 1992-06) Kebede, Gashaw; Lancaster, F.W.Prof.The relevance e and viability of cooperative approach by forming a network of existing information service units in the country to address commonly faced shortcomings in agricultural information provision was assessed and discussed. A review of literature on various aspects of information networking was made mainly to draw up a general framework and basic principles essential to assess viability, to determine possible and viable areas of cooperation and to establish the particular type of network required. A preliminary survey on problems, resource capability and attitude to networking on the existing information service units in Ethiopia using questionnaire supported by selected interview was conducted. The results revealed shortages in information sources, skilled personnel, and equipment organizational structures are and facility; and cumbersome widespread. Standardization and bibliographic control tools are also absent. Local publications are neglected areas. Financial resource limitations are major problems. The information services provided are limited to reading and lending services by large. All these are constraints in the improvements of the services immediately. Staff willingness to approach the existing problems cooperatively was high. Also surveyed with a different questionnaire were agricultural information users of the surveyed information service units so as to assess their reaction to and opinions about the available services which the network could take into consideration as its ultimate goal. Although at present books a re the most used, journals and local publications are reported to be in great demand. Literature search, photocopying, document delivery are also required. The majority are dissatisfied with their information service units because their information needs are not met. However, many seem to appreciate a cooperative approach to the services although at present many are less frequent users of other similar information units in the country. Taking into consideration what is affordable by the existing units on the one hand and the need to address the pressing problems on the other, feasible areas for a network were identified ,namely, establishing union catalogues of holdings and list of local publications, limited inter library loan, training and standardization with focus on laying the ground for further wider cooperation leading towards meeting the expressed as well as generally required needs of achieve better standards users and of service to assist the services and resource base. Recommendations are made to initiate the network and make it operational.Item Amharic - English cross-lingual information retrieval (Cllr): A corpus based approach(Addis Ababa University, 2009-08) Tesfaye Aynalem; Abebe Ermias (Ato)Amharic is the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. On the other hand, English serves as medium of instruction and communication in educational centers, working language in governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Ethiopia. Thus, experimenting on the applicability of a cross language information retrieval system for Amharic-English that can break the language barrier is important. This research is conducted to break the language barrier that users face in obtaining and using documents prepared in Amharic and English. Amharic is the official working language of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia. On the other hand, English serves as medium of instruction and communication in educational centers, working language in governmental and nongovernmental organizations in Ethiopia. Thus, experimenting on the applicability of a cross language information retrieval system for Amharic-English that can break the language barrier is important. This research is conducted to break the language barrier that users face in obtaining and using documents prepared in Amharic and English. The method that is employed to conduct the experimentation is a corpus-based approach. This approach requires availability of a large volume of parallel documents prepared in Amharic and English. The documents that were collected to conduct this research are news articles and legal items.The performance of the system was measured by precision and recall. At the first phase of the experimentation, precision values were very low - the highest being 0.2 and 0.3 for Amharic and English respectively. This was due to the index term list which could not fully represent the documents used for the experimentation. The process of indexing removed important terms from index list which resulted in lack of documents to be retrieved for most of the queries. Thus, the index list was modified, i.e., all the terms which occur in the corpus with the exception of stop words were used. This showed the increase in precision values - the highest being 0.36 and 0.33 for Amharic and English documents respectively. Therefore, with the use of sufficiently large and cleaned parallel Amharic-English document collection, it is possible to develop a cross language information retrieval for the language pairs.Item Amharic Connected Word Speech Recognition System for Mobile Phones(Addis Ababa University, 2017-10-02) Dagne, Bewunetu; Yifru (Ph. D), MarthaThis study investigated ways of integrating an Amharic Automatic speech recognition (ASR) system on mobile phones and demonstrated the possibility of using a connected word Amharic ASR system that can be used to command and control mobile phone devices – devices which currently have become not only a valuable means of communication, but also a common computing device that we carry everywhere. To this end, CMUSphinx’s Pocketsphinx is used to build a connected word, offline, small vocabulary and speaker dependent Amharic ASR system. For the fact that CMUSphinx system does not support whole word models rather word-dependent phone models, in this research work, two distinct acoustic models namely, word-dependent phone (WDP) and word-dependent CV syllable (WDCVS) models are built. And a total of 36 words are used in both models to recognize the Amharic digits from 0 to 100 and a limited set of command phrases, spoken in a connected manner. A prototype Android application is also developed and used to integrate the developed acoustic models with an Android phone. To model the sequence of words acceptable in the prototype application, three different context free grammar files are created and used. The approach used in implementing the recognizer is embedded speech recognition, or simply ESR, using the Pocketsphinx tool – an open source speech recognition toolkit optimized to run on embedded devices. The methodology employed to develop the recognizer is the most popular statistical model which is the Hidden Markov Model. In this study, two categories of performance evaluations are carried out. The first, Category I, is conducted to determine the effect the three model types i.e. continuous, semi-continuous and PTM, have on the two models i.e. WDP and WDCVS, and the second, Category II, is conducted to determine the best of the two models on a mobile phone using the prototype application. Hence, in the second category of evaluations, the best recognition accuracies found for the two models are, 98.07% for WDCVS model and 97.58% % for the WDP model. Thus, according to the results gained, it is highly promising to fully deploy Amharic ASR systems to command, control and perform other activities on mobile phones using Amharic language.Item Amharic Document Image Retrieval Without Explicit Recognition(Addis Ababa University, 2009-06) Worku, Mesfin; Meshesha, Million (PhD); Inkpen, Diana (PhD)Retrieval of the stored information is a key issue. Especially image retrieval needs an emphasis , because the nature of the data is complex and difficult to retrieve . There are many problems to be studied in the area of image retrieval. From these , Document Image Retrieval is one of the issues that have to be given attention Document retrieval can use either a textual-based retrieval system or animate based retrieval system. Document image retrieval system can also be done in two ways: recognition-based document image retrieval or document image retrieval without explicit recognition Currently , little has been done on the Amharic document retrieval systems . The Amharic text retrieval systems which are covered by the researchers considered limited Amharic documents that are available only in hardcopy format The proposed system incorporates document images and user queries . The document image is preprocessed , segmented at word le vela and the feature of each word is extracted . Then the textual query is rendered to convert into an image query, preprocessed , segmented and the feature is extracted . The technique used for feature extraction considers the word shape analysis . The extracted feature of the image query is matched with the feature of the document images , at word level using Euclidean and cosine similarity measures . Finally relevant document images are retrieved in ranked order in response to the given query. To verify the validity of the approach proposed , experiment is carried out on 121 scanned Amharic documents that are selected from printed legal documents and news items. The data retrieval effectiveness is measured using retrieval measures such as precision , recall and F-Score . The experimental results confirmed the validity of the model for retrieving relevant document images from the collection of scanned document images.