11,891 research outputs found
Designing citizen science tools for learning: lessons learnt from the iterative development of nQuire
This paper reports on a 4-year research and development case study about the design of citizen science tools for inquiry learning. It details the process of iterative pedagogy-led design and evaluation of the nQuire toolkit, a set of web-based and mobile tools scaffolding the creation of online citizen science investigations. The design involved an expert review of inquiry learning and citizen science, combined with user experience studies involving more than 200 users. These have informed a concept that we have termed âcitizen inquiryâ, which engages members of the public alongside scientists in setting up, running, managing or contributing to citizen science projects with a main aim of learning about the scientific method through doing science by interaction with others. A design-based research (DBR) methodology was adopted for the iterative design and evaluation of citizen science tools. DBR was focused on the refinement of a central concept, âcitizen inquiryâ, by exploring how it can be instantiated in educational technologies and interventions. The empirical evaluation and iteration of technologies involved three design experiments with end users, user interviews, and insights from pedagogy and user experience experts. Evidence from the iterative development of nQuire led to the production of a set of interaction design principles that aim to guide the development of online, learning-centred, citizen science projects. Eight design guidelines are proposed: users as producers of knowledge, topics before tools, mobile affordances, scaffolds to the process of scientific inquiry, learning by doing as key message, being part of a community as key message, every visit brings a reward, and value users and their time
Efficient Opportunistic Sensing using Mobile Collaborative Platform MOSDEN
Mobile devices are rapidly becoming the primary computing device in people's
lives. Application delivery platforms like Google Play, Apple App Store have
transformed mobile phones into intelligent computing devices by the means of
applications that can be downloaded and installed instantly. Many of these
applications take advantage of the plethora of sensors installed on the mobile
device to deliver enhanced user experience. The sensors on the smartphone
provide the opportunity to develop innovative mobile opportunistic sensing
applications in many sectors including healthcare, environmental monitoring and
transportation. In this paper, we present a collaborative mobile sensing
framework namely Mobile Sensor Data EngiNe (MOSDEN) that can operate on
smartphones capturing and sharing sensed data between multiple distributed
applications and users. MOSDEN follows a component-based design philosophy
promoting reuse for easy and quick opportunistic sensing application
deployments. MOSDEN separates the application-specific processing from the
sensing, storing and sharing. MOSDEN is scalable and requires minimal
development effort from the application developer. We have implemented our
framework on Android-based mobile platforms and evaluate its performance to
validate the feasibility and efficiency of MOSDEN to operate collaboratively in
mobile opportunistic sensing applications. Experimental outcomes and lessons
learnt conclude the paper
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From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet
This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communitiesâ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)
An Architecture for Integrated Intelligence in Urban Management using Cloud Computing
With the emergence of new methodologies and technologies it has now become
possible to manage large amounts of environmental sensing data and apply new
integrated computing models to acquire information intelligence. This paper
advocates the application of cloud capacity to support the information,
communication and decision making needs of a wide variety of stakeholders in
the complex business of the management of urban and regional development. The
complexity lies in the interactions and impacts embodied in the concept of the
urban-ecosystem at various governance levels. This highlights the need for more
effective integrated environmental management systems. This paper offers a
user-orientated approach based on requirements for an effective management of
the urban-ecosystem and the potential contributions that can be supported by
the cloud computing community. Furthermore, the commonality of the influence of
the drivers of change at the urban level offers the opportunity for the cloud
computing community to develop generic solutions that can serve the needs of
hundreds of cities from Europe and indeed globally.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Geospatial information infrastructures
Manual of Digital Earth / Editors: Huadong Guo, Michael F. Goodchild, Alessandro Annoni .- Springer, 2020 .- ISBN: 978-981-32-9915-3Geospatial information infrastructures (GIIs) provide the technological, semantic,organizationalandlegalstructurethatallowforthediscovery,sharing,and use of geospatial information (GI). In this chapter, we introduce the overall concept and surrounding notions such as geographic information systems (GIS) and spatial datainfrastructures(SDI).WeoutlinethehistoryofGIIsintermsoftheorganizational andtechnologicaldevelopmentsaswellasthecurrentstate-of-art,andreïŹectonsome of the central challenges and possible future trajectories. We focus on the tension betweenincreasedneedsforstandardizationandtheever-acceleratingtechnological changes. We conclude that GIIs evolved as a strong underpinning contribution to implementation of the Digital Earth vision. In the future, these infrastructures are challengedtobecomeïŹexibleandrobustenoughtoabsorbandembracetechnological transformationsandtheaccompanyingsocietalandorganizationalimplications.With this contribution, we present the reader a comprehensive overview of the ïŹeld and a solid basis for reïŹections about future developments
A European research roadmap for optimizing societal impact of big data on environment and energy efficiency
We present a roadmap to guide European research efforts towards a socially
responsible big data economy that maximizes the positive impact of big data in
environment and energy efficiency. The goal of the roadmap is to allow
stakeholders and the big data community to identify and meet big data
challenges, and to proceed with a shared understanding of the societal impact,
positive and negative externalities, and concrete problems worth investigating.
It builds upon a case study focused on the impact of big data practices in the
context of Earth Observation that reveals both positive and negative effects in
the areas of economy, society and ethics, legal frameworks and political
issues. The roadmap identifies European technical and non-technical priorities
in research and innovation to be addressed in the upcoming five years in order
to deliver societal impact, develop skills and contribute to standardization.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl
Internet of things
Manual of Digital Earth / Editors: Huadong Guo, Michael F. Goodchild, Alessandro Annoni .- Springer, 2020 .- ISBN: 978-981-32-9915-3Digital Earth was born with the aim of replicating the real world within the digital world. Many efforts have been made to observe and sense the Earth, both from space (remote sensing) and by using in situ sensors. Focusing on the latter, advances in Digital Earth have established vital bridges to exploit these sensors and their networks by taking location as a key element. The current era of connectivity envisions that everything is connected to everything. The concept of the Internet of Things(IoT)emergedasaholisticproposaltoenableanecosystemofvaried,heterogeneous networked objects and devices to speak to and interact with each other. To make the IoT ecosystem a reality, it is necessary to understand the electronic components, communication protocols, real-time analysis techniques, and the location of the objects and devices. The IoT ecosystem and the Digital Earth (DE) jointly form interrelated infrastructures for addressing todayâs pressing issues and complex challenges. In this chapter, we explore the synergies and frictions in establishing an efïŹcient and permanent collaboration between the two infrastructures, in order to adequately address multidisciplinary and increasingly complex real-world problems. Although there are still some pending issues, the identiïŹed synergies generate optimism for a true collaboration between the Internet of Things and the Digital Earth
MusA: Using Indoor Positioning and Navigation to Enhance Cultural Experiences in a museum
In recent years there has been a growing interest into the use of multimedia mobile guides in museum environments. Mobile devices have the capabilities to detect the user context and to provide pieces of information suitable to help visitors discovering and following the logical and emotional connections that develop during the visit. In this scenario, location based services (LBS) currently represent an asset, and the choice of the technology to determine users' position, combined with the definition of methods that can effectively convey information, become key issues in the design process. In this work, we present MusA (Museum Assistant), a general framework for the development of multimedia interactive guides for mobile devices. Its main feature is a vision-based indoor positioning system that allows the provision of several LBS, from way-finding to the contextualized communication of cultural contents, aimed at providing a meaningful exploration of exhibits according to visitors' personal interest and curiosity. Starting from the thorough description of the system architecture, the article presents the implementation of two mobile guides, developed to respectively address adults and children, and discusses the evaluation of the user experience and the visitors' appreciation of these application
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