SEMA4A: An ontology for emergency notification systems accessibility

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Expert Systems with Applications. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2009 Elsevier B.V.Providing alert communication in emergency situations is vital to reduce the number of victims. Reaching this goal is challenging due to users’ diversity: people with disabilities, elderly and children, and other vulnerable groups. Notifications are critical when an emergency scenario is going to happen (e.g. a typhoon approaching) so the ability to transmit notifications to different kind of users is a crucial feature for such systems. In this work an ontology was developed by investigating different sources: accessibility guidelines, emergency response systems, communication devices and technologies, taking into account the different abilities of people to react to different alarms (e.g. mobile phone vibration as an alarm for deafblind people). We think that the proposed ontology addresses the information needs for sharing and integrating emergency notification messages over distinct emergency response information systems providing accessibility under different conditions and for different kind of users.Ministerio de Educación y Cienci

PluralisMAC: a generic multi-MAC framework for heterogeneous, multiservice wireless networks, applied to smart containers

Developing energy-efficient MAC protocols for lightweight wireless systems has been a challenging task for decades because of the specific requirements of various applications and the varying environments in which wireless systems are deployed. Many MAC protocols for wireless networks have been proposed, often custom-made for a specific application. It is clear that one MAC does not fit all the requirements. So, how should a MAC layer deal with an application that has several modes (each with different requirements) or with the deployment of another application during the lifetime of the system? Especially in a mobile wireless system, like Smart Monitoring of Containers, we cannot know in advance the application state (empty container versus stuffed container). Dynamic switching between different energy-efficient MAC strategies is needed. Our architecture, called PluralisMAC, contains a generic multi-MAC framework and a generic neighbour monitoring and filtering framework. To validate the real-world feasibility of our architecture, we have implemented it in TinyOS and have done experiments on the TMote Sky nodes in the w-iLab.t testbed. Experimental results show that dynamic switching between MAC strategies is possible with minimal receive chain overhead, while meeting the various application requirements (reliability and low-energy consumption)

e-Nudging Justice: The Role of Digital Choice Architecture in Online Courts

Justice systems around the world are launching online courts and tribunals as a means to improve their efficiency, increase access to justice, and ameliorate the quality of proceedings. These online courts and tribunals are publicly administered judicial online dispute resolution (ODR) systems that enable litigants, lawyers, judges and court personnel to complete all litigation related activities, from filing through final disposition, on a dedicated digital platform. Online courts are envisioned as a promising response to many challenges that civil justice systems face, including those stemming from voluminous case filings, procedural complexity, limited accessibility, high costs of litigation, and the ubiquity of settlements and non-trial adjudication. The guiding premise of judicial ODR systems is that information technology (IT) and innovative procedural design can improve the accessibility, efficiency and effectiveness of courts. Specifically, most online courts are designed to improve access to justice for self-represented litigants (SRLs), who access courts unassisted by lawyers. As such, they respond to calls to redesign civil courts for the typical litigant and process, and specifically, for the skills and needs of SRLs

Design and Implementation of a Scalable Crowdsensing Platform for Geospatial Data

In the recent years smart devices and small low-powered sensors are becoming ubiquitous and nowadays everything is connected altogether, which is a promising foundation for crowdsensing of data related to various environmental and societal phenomena. Very often, such data is especially meaningful when related to time and location, which is possible by already equipped GPS capabilities of modern smart devices. However, in order to gain knowledge from high-volume crowd-sensed data, it has to be collected and stored in a central platform, where it can be processed and transformed for various use cases. Conventional approaches built around classical relational databases and monolithic backends, that load and process the geospatial data on a per-request basis are not suitable for supporting the data requests of a large crowd willing to visualize phenomena. The possibly millions of data points introduce challenges for calculation, data-transfer and visualization on smartphones with limited graphics performance. We have created an architectural design, which combines a cloud-native approach with Big Data concepts used in the Internet of Things. The architectural design can be used as a generic foundation to implement a scalable backend for a platform, that covers aspects important for crowdsensing, such as social- and incentive features, as well as a sophisticated stream processing concept to calculate incoming measurement data and store pre-aggregated results. The calculation is based on a global grid system to index geospatial data for efficient aggregation and building a hierarchical geospatial relationship of averaged values, that can be directly used to rapidly and efficiently provide data on requests for visualization. We introduce the Noisemap project as an exemplary use case of such a platform and elaborate on certain requirements and challenges also related to frontend implementations. The goal of the project is to collect crowd-sensed noise measurements via smartphones and provide users information and a visualization of noise levels in their environment, which requires storing and processing in a central platform. A prototypic implementation for the measurement context of the Noisemap project is showing that the architectural design is indeed feasible to realize

Examining the issues & challenges of email & e-communications. 2nd Northumbria Witness Seminar Conference, 24-25 Oct 2007 Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne.

These proceedings capture the content of the second Witness Seminar hosted by Northumbria University’s School of Computing, Engineering and Information Sciences. It followed the success of the first witness seminar in terms of its format and style but differed in that it focused on one topic - managing email and other electronic communications technologies from a records perspective. As before the witnesses were invited to share their views and opinions on a specific aspect taking as their starting point a pertinent published article(s). Three seminars explored the business, people and technology perspectives of email and e-communications, asking the following questions: What are the records management implications and challenges of doing business electronically? Are people the problem and the solution? Is technology the problem or panacea? The final seminar, 'Futurewatch', focused on moving forward, exploring new ways of working, potential new technologies and what records professionals and others need to keep on their radar screens

Overview of the SMART-BEAR Technical Infrastructure

This paper describes a cloud-based platform that offers evidence-based, personalised interventions powered by Artificial Intelligence to help support efficient remote monitoring and clinician-driven guidance to people over 65 who suffer or are at risk of hearing loss, cardiovascular diseases, cognitive impairments, balance disorders, and mental health issues. This platform has been developed within the SMART-BEAR integrated project to power its large-scale clinical pilots and comprises a standards-based data harmonisation and management layer, a security component, a Big Data Analytics system, a Clinical Decision Support tool, and a dashboard component for efficient data collection across the pilot sites

The Changing Patterns of Internet Usage

The Internet unquestionably represents one of the most important technological developments in recent history. It has revolutionized the way people communicate with one another and obtain information and created an unimaginable variety of commercial and leisure activities. Interestingly, many members of the engineering community often observe that the current network is ill-suited to handle the demands that end users are placing on it. Indeed, engineering researchers often describe the network as ossified and impervious to significant architectural change. As a result, both the U.S. and the European Commission are sponsoring “clean slate” projects to study how the Internet might be designed differently if it were designed from scratch today. This Essay explores emerging trends that are transforming the way end users are using the Internet and examine their implications both for network architecture and public policy. These trends include Internet protocol video, wireless broadband, cloud computing programmable networking, and pervasive computing and sensor networks. It discusses how these changes in the way people are using the network may require the network to evolve in new directions

From traditional to modern water management systems; reflection on the evolution of a ‘water ethic’ in semi-arid Morocco

The chapter focuses on water because of the crucial importance of that resource in a semiarid country and because the ways in which it has been managed throughout centuries illustrate the changes in socio-political structures in the society. The focus on water in a semi arid country is symbolic of how precious natural resources are in the development of economies and societies. Morocco provides a fascinating terrain to explore ingenuous traditional water management structures and processes both in urban and in rural environments

The Philip D. Reed Lecture Series: Judicial Records Forum

This Panel Discussion of the Judicial Records Forum was held on June 4, 2014, at Fordham University School of Law. The Judicial Records Forum focuses on issues involving the creation and management of judicial records and access to judicial records in the digital age. The transcript of the Panel Discussion has been lightly edited and represents the panelists’ individual views only, and in no way reflects those of their affiliated firms, organizations, law schools, or the judiciary

NSSDC Conference on Mass Storage Systems and Technologies for Space and Earth Science Applications, volume 1

Papers and viewgraphs from the conference are presented. This conference served as a broad forum for the discussion of a number of important issues in the field of mass storage systems. Topics include magnetic disk and tape technologies, optical disks and tape, software storage and file management systems, and experiences with the use of a large, distributed storage system. The technical presentations describe, among other things, integrated mass storage systems that are expected to be available commercially. Also included is a series of presentations from Federal Government organizations and research institutions covering their mass storage requirements for the 1990's