Computational and Causal Approaches on Social Media and Multimodal Sensing Data: Examining Wellbeing in Situated Contexts

A core aspect of our lives is often embedded in the communities we are situated in. The interconnectedness of our interactions and experiences intertwines our situated context with our wellbeing. A better understanding of wellbeing will help us devise proactive and tailored support strategies. However, existing methodologies to assess wellbeing suffer from limitations of scale and timeliness. These limitations are surmountable by social and ubiquitous technologies. Given its ubiquity and wide use, social media can be considered a “passive sensor” that can act as a complementary source of unobtrusive, real-time, and naturalistic data to infer wellbeing. This dissertation leverages social media in concert with multimodal sensing data, which facilitate analyzing dense and longitudinal behavior at scale. This work adopts machine learning, natural language, and causal inference analysis to infer wellbeing of individuals and collectives, particularly in situated communities, such as college campuses and workplaces. Before incorporating sensing modalities in practice, we need to account for confounds. One such confound that might impact behavior change is the phenomenon of “observer effect” --- that individuals may deviate from their typical or otherwise normal behavior because of the awareness of being “monitored”. I study this problem by leveraging the potential of longitudinal and historical behavioral data through social media. Focused on a multimodal sensing study, I conduct a causal study to measure observer effect in social media behavior, and explain the observations through existing theory in psychology and social science. The findings provide recommendations to correcting biases due to observer effect in social media sensing for human behavior and wellbeing. The novelties and contributions of this dissertation are four-fold. First, I use social media data that uniquely captures the behavior of situated communities. Second, I adopt theory-driven computational and causal methods to make conclusive research claims on wellbeing dynamics. Third, I address major challenges with methods to combine social media with multimodal sensing data for a comprehensive understanding of human behavior. Fourth, I draw interpretations and explanations of online-data-driven offline inferences. This dissertation situates the findings in an interdisciplinary context, including psychology and social science, and bears implications from theoretical, practical, design, methodological, and ethical perspectives catering to various stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, and policymakers.Ph.D

SHELDON Smart habitat for the elderly.

An insightful document concerning active and assisted living under different perspectives: Furniture and habitat, ICT solutions and Healthcare

Perceived Usefulness of Remote Health Monitoring among Healthcare Providers, Mexican-origin and non-Hispanic White Heart Failure Patients and Informal Caregivers

Few remote health monitoring (RHM) studies have included Mexican-origin Latinos, and even fewer have explored RHM acceptance and utility, reasons for RHM uptake success or failure, or how cultural values influence RHM use among this population. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the remote health monitoring (RHM) needs and goals of health care providers, older adult heart failure (HF) patients, and their informal caregivers with a focus on Mexican-origin Latino and non-Hispanic white patients and caregivers. Qualitative semi-structured interviews were used to determine the remote health monitoring needs and goals of participants. Content and thematic analysis of interview transcripts revealed that perceptions of RHM were influenced by attitude towards health management and, among caregivers, RHM emerged as a potential partner in care that could ease caregiver concerns. The findings from this study can be used to inform the development of appropriate remote health monitoring systems and interventions for both Mexican-origin and non-Hispanic white heart failure patients and their caregivers to reduce both heart failure patient hospital readmissions and caregiver burden

Soluciones TIC para envejecimiento activo y saludable en el hogar, en el puesto de trabajo y en la sociedad

[SPA] Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones.La presente tesis doctoral compendia las publicaciones resultado de varios años de trabajo en el marco de tres líneas de investigación relacionadas con envejecimiento activo y soluciones e-health y Ambient Assisted Living para la población de edad más avanzada: Mobiliario inteligente y espacios inteligentes, envejecimiento activo y saludable, y soluciones de las Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (TIC) enfocadas al cuidado de la salud en general y a las personas mayores en particular. Dichos trabajos muestran los resultados de un análisis del estado del arte, patentes y otros, para poder establecer una definición precisa del concepto de Mobiliario Inteligente con el objetivo de destacar sus propiedades en cuanto a funcionalidad y al elemento digital activo y conectado. Además, es necesario destacar que el mobiliario inteligente debe ser considerado como un ente integrado en el concepto de ciudades inteligentes o calidad de vida. Por ello la investigación del estado del arte se centra en envejecimiento de la población activa, tendencias recientes, direcciones futuras y envejecimiento en el trabajo. El objetivo es poder extraer conclusiones en cuanto a los principales problemas de motivación y proponer respuestas eficaces que apoyen el envejecimiento en el trabajo y soluciones e-health que permita a la población senior vivir de manera independiente durante más tiempo a través, tanto de una arquitectura IoT de bajo rango para ayudar a abordar los retos de despliegue de servicios e-health en áreas rurales, como de un sistema de teleasistencia basado en el cuidado proactivo, el envejecimiento activo, la prevención y las necesidades de los usuarios y sus entornos. [ENG] This doctoral dissertation has been presented in the form of thesis by publication. The present doctoral thesis summarises a set of publications resulting from several years of work within the framework of three research lines on active ageing and e-health solutions and Ambient Assisted Living for the ageing population: Smart furniture and Smart habitats, active and healthy ageing and Information and Communication Technology solutions focused on health care in general and on the adult population in particular. Such works show the results of an analysis of the state of the art, patents, and others, to establish a precise definition of the concept of Smart Furniture to highlight its properties in terms of functionality and the active and connected digital element, and to underline that smart furniture must be considered as an integrated entity in the concept of Smart Cities or Quality of Life. For this reason, the state-of-the- art research focuses on the aging workforce, recent trends, future directions, and aging at work. The aim is to draw conclusions on the main motivational issues and to propose effective responses that support the concept of aging at work, as well as e-health solutions for the senior population to live independently for longer through both, a low-range IoT architecture to help address the challenges of deploying a e-health system in rural areas, and a tele-assistance system based on proactivity, prevention, and users’ needs and their environments.Esta tesis doctoral se presenta bajo la modalidad de compendio de publicaciones. Está formada por un total de cuatro artículos. Artículo 1.-: Krejcar, O., Maresova, P., Selamat, A., Melero, F. J., Barakovic, S., Husic, J. B., Herrera-Viedma, E., Frischer, R., & Kuca, K., 2019. Smart furniture as a component of a smart city—definition based on key technologies specification. IEEE Access, volumen 7. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2019.2927778. Artículo 2.-: Barakovic Husic, J., Melero, F. J., Barakovic, S., Lameski, P., Zdravevski, E., Maresova, P., Krejcar, O., Chorveb, I., Garcia, N.M, & Trajkovik, V., 2020. Aging at Work: A Review of Recent Trends and Future Directions. International journal of environmental research and public health, volumen 17 https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph17207659. Artículo 3.-: Dimitrievski, A., Filiposka, S., Melero, F. J., Zdravevski, E., Lameski, P., Pires, I. M., Garcia N.M., Lousado, J.P. & Trajkovik, V., 2021. Rural Healthcare IoT Architecture Based on Low-Energy LoRa. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public health, volumen 18. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph18147660 Artículo 4.-: Melero, F. J., Bueno, M.V., Martínez, R., Maestre, R., Beteta, M.A., Puebla, T., Bleda, A.L., Sánchez, G., Pérez, R. & Álvarez, M., 2022. Design and Development of a Heterogeneous Active Assisted Living Solution for Monitoring and Following-up with Chronic Heart Failure Patients in Spain. Sensors, Volumen 22, https://doi.org/10.3390/s22228961Escuela Internacional de Doctorado de la Universidad Politécnica de CartagenaUniversidad Politécnica de CartagenaPrograma de Doctorado en Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicacione

Citizen Science: Reducing Risk and Building Resilience to Natural Hazards

Natural hazards are becoming increasingly frequent within the context of climate change—making reducing risk and building resilience against these hazards more crucial than ever. An emerging shift has been noted from broad-scale, top-down risk and resilience assessments toward more participatory, community-based, bottom-up approaches. Arguably, non-scientist local stakeholders have always played an important role in risk knowledge management and resilience building. Rapidly developing information and communication technologies such as the Internet, smartphones, and social media have already demonstrated their sizeable potential to make knowledge creation more multidirectional, decentralized, diverse, and inclusive (Paul et al., 2018). Combined with technologies for robust and low-cost sensor networks, various citizen science approaches have emerged recently (e.g., Haklay, 2012; Paul et al., 2018) as a promising direction in the provision of extensive, real-time information for risk management (as well as improving data provision in data-scarce regions). It can serve as a means of educating and empowering communities and stakeholders that are bypassed by more traditional knowledge generation processes. This Research Topic compiles 13 contributions that interrogate the manifold ways in which citizen science has been interpreted to reduce risk against hazards that are (i) water-related (i.e., floods, hurricanes, drought, landslides); (ii) deep-earth-related (i.e., earthquakes and volcanoes); and (iii) responding to global environmental change such as sea-level rise. We have sought to analyse the particular failures and successes of natural hazards-related citizen science projects: the objective is to obtain a clearer understanding of “best practice” in a citizen science context

Final Report: National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence

Final report presenting the National Security Commission for Artificial Intelligence (NSCAI)'s recommendations for winning the AI era. It includes a 16 chapter Main Report and "Blueprints for Action that outline the concrete steps departments and agencies can take to implement NSCAI's recommendations." - Introduction