75,004 research outputs found
Facilitating open plot structures in story driven video games using situation generation
Story driven video games are rising in popularity, along with the players desire to make meaningful choice within the plot and therefore become more involved and immersed within the experience. This paper investigates the problems which arise from implementing interactive narrative within video games and potential techniques to solve those problems. The main focus of the study was the situation generation technique, used to maintain the continuity within open, emergent plot structures, using behaviour trees as a means to implement and traverse plot sequences. The ISGEngine was developed during the course of this study in order to implement and evaluate the situation generation technique
The Role of Trust and Interaction in GPS Related Accidents: A Human Factors Safety Assessment of the Global Positioning System (GPS)
The Global Positioning System (GPS) uses a network of orbiting and geostationary satellites to calculate the position of a receiver over time. This technology has revolutionised a wide range of safety-critical industries and leisure applications ranging from commercial fisheries through to mountain running. These systems provide diverse benefits; supplementing the users existing navigation skills and reducing the uncertainty that often characterises many route planning tasks. GPS applications can also help to reduce workload by automating tasks that would otherwise require finite cognitive and perceptual resources. However, the operation of these systems has been identified as a contributory factor in a range of recent accidents. Users often come to rely on GPS applications and, therefore, fail to notice when they develop faults or when errors occur in the other systems that use the data from these systems. Further accidents can stem from the âover confidenceâ that arises when users assume automated warnings will be issued when they stray from an intended route. Unless greater attention is paid to the human factors of GPS applications then there is a danger that we will see an increasing number of these failures as positioning technologies are integrated into increasing numbers of application
On the use of serious games technology to facilitate large-scale training in cybercrime response
As technology becomes pervasive in everyday life, there are very few crimes that donât have some âcyberâ element to them. The vast majority of crime now has some digital footprint; whether itâs from a CCTV camera, mobile phone or IoT device, there exists a vast range of technological devices with the ability to store digital evidence that could be of use during a criminal investigation. There is a clear requirement to ensure that digital forensic investigators have received up-to-date training on appropriate methods for the seizure, acquisition and analysis of digital devices. However, given the increasing number of crimes now involving a range of technological devices it is increasingly important for those police officers who respond to incidents of crime to have received appropriate training.The aim of our research is to transform the delivery of first responder training in tackling cybercrime.A project trialling the use of computer games technology to train officers in cybercrime response is described. A game simulating typical cybercrime scenes has been developed and its use in training first responders has been evaluated within Police Scotland. Overall, this approach to the large-scale provision of training (potentially to a whole force) is shown to offer potential
Public Health England's recovery tools: potential teaching resources?
The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version.Training to combat chemical and radiation accidents, incidents or attacks is critical for health professionals
due to recent events involving these hazards or their use as unconventional weapons, such as the use of
the nerve agent novichok in Salisbury, UK. Health professionals need to have appropriate knowledge and
skills to effectively respond to future events involving any of these substances, which requires a rapid and
coordinated response from different professionals to protect the environment and minimise the number of
people exposed and reduce morbidity and mortality. However, despite chemical and radiation incidents
becoming increasingly prevalent, literature reviews have shown that there is a lack of teaching of
appropriate competences to face future crises in Europe, particularly amongst clinicians and other health
professionals that would be part of the initial response. Thus, De Montfort University (DMU, UK) in
collaboration with different academics from the University of AlcalĂĄ (Spain) and researchers from Public
Health England (PHE) with comprehensive experience in environmental decontamination and restoration,
have created a short training course for providing undergraduate/postgraduate students with basic skills
to respond to chemical incidents, basic skills that are based on the major competences recently identified
by the European Commission [1]. This novel training has been tested with students from different
backgrounds in various European universities, recording high degrees of acquisition of the various basic
competences that we developed to initially respond to chemical events [2]. To develop the practical part
of this chemical training, we have incorporated the novel guidance and methodology developed by PHE
to successfully tailor a protection and recovery response to any incident involving chemical substances,
which is available in the âUK Recovery Handbook for Chemical Incidentsâ [3] and its web-based tools:
âChemical Recovery Navigation Toolâ (CRNT, [4]) and âChemical Recovery Record Formâ (CRRF, [5]).
These innovative resources aid the user to select effective protection, decontamination and restoration
techniques or strategies from a pool of up-to-date options applicable to different environments according
to the physicochemical properties of the chemical(s) involved and the area affected. The CRNT is
accompanied by the CRRF, which facilitates collection and analysis of the necessary data to inform
decisions, and an e-learning resource named âChemical Recovery: Backgroundâ (CRB, [6]), which could
facilitate the learning of environmental decontamination and restoration. We are currently developing a
short training course to cover minor radiation incidents; this radiation training will follow the same methods
used to develop the chemical training, but with the specific PHE recovery tools to tackle such events,
specifically the âUK Recovery Handbooks for Radiation Incidentsâ [7] and its associated web-based tools
âRadiation Recovery Navigation Toolâ (Rad RNT, [8]), one for each environment: food production systems,
inhabited areas and drinking water supplies. This communication will explore the use of the PHEâs
Recovery Navigation Tools as potential resources to facilitate the acquisition of basic knowledge to tailor
protection and recovery interventions for minor chemical and radiation incidents to protect the public
Situational awareness and safety
This paper considers the applicability of situation awareness concepts to safety in the control of complex systems. Much of the research to date has been conducted in aviation, which has obvious safety implications. It is argued that the concepts could be extended to other safety critical domains. The paper presents three theories of situational awareness: the three-level model, the interactive sub-systems approach, and the perceptual cycle. The difference between these theories is the extent to which they emphasise process or product as indicative of situational awareness. Some data from other studies are discussed to consider the negative effects of losing situational awareness, as this has serious safety implications. Finally, the application of situational awareness to system design, and training are presented
Review of current practices in recording road traffic incident data: with specific reference to spatial analysis and road policing policy
Road safety involves three major components: the road system, the human factor and the vehicle element.
These three elements are inter-linked through geo-referenced traffic events and provide the basis for road
safety analyses and attempts to reduce the number of road traffic incidents and improve road safety.
Although numbers of deaths and serious injuries are back to approximately the 1950s levels when there
were many fewer vehicles on the road, there are still over 100 fatalities or serious injuries every day, and
this is a considerable waste of human capital. It is widely acknowledged that the location perspective is the
most suitable methodology by which to analyse different traffic events, where by in this paper, I will
concentrating on the relationship between road traffic incidents and traffic policing. Other methods include
studying road and vehicle engineering and these will be discussed later. It is worth noting here that there is
some division within the literature concerning the definitions of âaccidentâ and âincidentâ. In this paper I
will use âincidentâ because it is important to acknowledge a vast majority of âroad accidentsâ are in fact
crimes. However I will use the term âaccidentâ where it is referred to in the literature or relevant reports. It
is important to mention here that a road traffic accident can be defined as âthe product of an unwelcome
interaction between two or more moving objects, or a fixed and moving objectâ (Whitelegg 1986). Road
safety and road incident reduction relates to many other fields of activity including education, driver
training, publicity campaigns, police enforcement, road traffic policing, the court system, the National
Health Service and Vehicle engineering.
Although the subject of using GIS to analyse road traffic incidents has not received much academic
attention, it lies in the field of crime mapping which is becoming increasingly important. It is clear that
studies have been attempted to analyse road traffic incidents using GIS are increasingly sophisticated in
terms of hypotheses and statistical technique (for example see Austin, Tight and Kirby 1997). However it is
also clear that there is considerable blurring of boundaries and the analysis of road accidents sits
uncomfortably in crime mapping. This is due to four main reasons:
- Road traffic incidents are associated with road engineering, which is concerned with generic
solutions while road traffic analysis is about sensitivity to particular contexts.
- Not all road traffic incidents are crimes
- It is not just the police who have an interest in reducing road traffic incidents, other partners
include local authorities, hospitals and vehicle manufacturers
- The management of road traffic incidents is not just confined to the police
GIS has been used for over thirty years however it has only been recently been used in the field of
transportation. The field of transportation has come to embrace Geographical Information Systems as a keytechnology to support its research and operational need. The acronym GIS-T is often employed to refer to
the application and adaptation of GIS to research, planning and management in transportation. GIS-T
covers a broad arena of disciplines of which road traffic incident detection is just one theme. Others include
in vehicle navigation systems.
Initially it was only used to ask simple accident enquiries such as depicting the relative incidence of
accidents in wet weather or when there is no street lighting, or to flag high absolute or relative incidences
of accidents (see Anderson 2002). Recently however there has been increased acknowledgement that there
is a requirement to go beyond these simple questions and to extend the analyses. It has been widely claimed
by academics and the police alike that knowing where road accidents occur must lead to better road
policing, in order to ensure that road policing becomes better integrated with other policing activities. This
paper will be used to explore issues surrounding the analysis of road traffic accidents and how GIS
analysts, police and policy makers can achieve a better understanding of road traffic incidents and how to
reduce them.
For the purpose of this study I will be trying to achieve a broader overview of the aspects concerning road
accident analysis with a strong emphasis on data quality and accuracy with concern to GIS analysis. Data
quality and accuracy are seen as playing a pivotal role in the road traffic management agenda because they assist the police and Local Authorities as to the specific location whereby management can be undertaken.
Part one will consider the introduction to road incidents and their relationship with geography and spatial
analysis and how this were initially applied to locating âhotspotsâ and the more recent theory of âaccident
migrationâ. Part two will address current data issues of the UK collection procedure. This section will pay
particular reference to geo-referencing and the implication of data quality on the procedure of analysing
road incidents using GIS. Part three addresses issues surrounding the spatial analysis of road traffic
incidents, including some techniques such as spatial autocorrelation, time-space geography and the
modifiable area unit problem. Finally part four looks at the role of effective road traffic policing and how
this can be achieved due to better understanding of the theory and issues arising from analysing road traffic
incidents. It will also look at the diffusion and use of GIS within the police and local authorities
Alternative sweetener from curculigo fruits
This study gives an overview on the advantages of Curculigo Latifolia as an alternative sweetener and a health product. The purpose of this research is to provide another option to the people who suffer from diabetes. In this research, Curculigo Latifolia was chosen, due to its unique properties and widely known species in Malaysia. In order to obtain the sweet protein from the fruit, it must go through a couple of procedures. First we harvested the fruits from the Curculigo trees that grow wildly in the garden. Next, the Curculigo fruits were dried in the oven at 50 0C for 3 days. Finally, the dried fruits were blended in order to get a fine powder. Curculin is a sweet protein with a taste-modifying activity of converting sourness to sweetness. The curculin content from the sample shown are directly proportional to the mass of the Curculigo fine powder. While the FTIR result shows that the sample spectrum at peak 1634 cmâ1 contains secondary amines. At peak 3307 cmâ1 contains alkynes
Roles and responsibilities in agile ICT for development
This paper examines the different roles in designing interactive software in a ICT for development context.
Using experiences from a participatory action research project, in which we used agile methods to design and
deploy an system to support âagricultural information flowâ for a co-operative of small farmers in rural India, we
identify points of difference between the roles in standard descriptions of agile software methods and the roles as
they emerged in our project. A key finding is the critical role played by a âDevelopment Project Managerâ in
facilitating dialogue, orchestrating the activities of other actors and in building the capabilities and confidence of
all the participants in joint action
Making training more cognitively effective: making videos interactive
The cost of health and safety (H&S) failures to the UK industry is currently estimated at up to ÂŁ6.5 billion per annum, with the construction sector suffering unacceptably high levels of work-related incidents. Better H&S education across all skill levels in the industry is seen as an integral part of any solution. Traditional lecture-based courses often fail to recreate the dynamic realities of managing H&S on site and therefore do not sufficiently create deeper cognitive learning (which results in remembering and using what was learned). The use of videos is a move forward, but passively observing a video is not cognitively engaging and challenging, and therefore learning is not as effective as it can be. This paper describes the development of an interactive video in which learners take an active role. While observing the video, they are required to engage, participate, respond and be actively involved. The potential for this approach to be used in conjunction with more traditional approaches to H&S was explored using a group of 2nd-year undergraduate civil engineering students. The formative results suggested that the learning experience could be enhanced using interactive videos. Nevertheless, most of the learners believed that a blended approach would be most effective
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