Mission-Critical Communications from LMR to 5G: a Technology Assessment approach for Smart City scenarios

Radiocommunication networks are one of the main support tools of agencies that carry out actions in Public Protection & Disaster Relief (PPDR), and it is necessary to update these communications technologies from narrowband to broadband and integrated to information technologies to have an effective action before society. Understanding that this problem includes, besides the technical aspects, issues related to the social context to which these systems are inserted, this study aims to construct scenarios, using several sources of information, that helps the managers of the PPDR agencies in the technological decisionmaking process of the Digital Transformation of Mission-Critical Communication considering Smart City scenarios, guided by the methods and approaches of Technological Assessment (TA).As redes de radiocomunicações são uma das principais ferramentas de apoio dos órgãos que realizam ações de Proteção Pública e Socorro em desastres, sendo necessário atualizar essas tecnologias de comunicação de banda estreita para banda larga, e integra- las às tecnologias de informação, para se ter uma atuação efetiva perante a sociedade . Entendendo que esse problema inclui, além dos aspectos técnicos, questões relacionadas ao contexto social ao qual esses sistemas estão inseridos, este estudo tem por objetivo a construção de cenários, utilizando diversas fontes de informação que auxiliem os gestores destas agências na tomada de decisão tecnológica que envolve a transformação digital da Comunicação de Missão Crítica considerando cenários de Cidades Inteligentes, guiado pelos métodos e abordagens de Avaliação Tecnológica (TA)

Space assets and technology for bushfire management

The financial, emotional, and ecological impacts of bushfires can be devastating. This report was prepared by the participants of the Southern Hemisphere Space Studies Program 2021 in response to the topic: “How space assets and technologies can be applied to better predict and mitigate bushfires and their impacts.” To effectively reach the diverse set of stakeholders impacted by bushfires, Communication was identified as a key enabler central to any examination of the topic. The three pillars “predict”, “mitigate” and “communicate” were identified to frame the task at hand. Combining the diverse skills and experience of the class participants with the interdisciplinary knowledge gained from the seminars, distinguished lectures, and workshops during the SHSSP21 program, conducted a literature review With specific reference to the 2019-20 Australian fire season, we looked at the current state of the art, key challenges, and how bushfires can be better predicted and mitigated in the future. Comparing this to the future desired state, we identified gaps for each of the three domains, and worked across teams to reach consensus on a list of recommendations. Several of these recommendations were derived independently by two or more of the three groups, highlighting the importance of a holistic and collaborative approach. The report details a number of recommendations arising from this Where applicable, we also aligned our discussion with the experience and lessons from other countries and agencies to consider,learn from and respond to the international context, as others develop systems using space technology to tackle similar wildfire issues

The political philosophy of surveillance : from historical roots to COVID-19

Many theorists have argued that surveillance has become the dominant organizing method of social activities in late modernity. Given the increased prevalence and employment of surveillance systems around the world, this thesis seeks to trace and contextualize the developments in surveillance, both theoretically and practically, that have led to its current extent and nature. We begin by analyzing the philosophical theories that provide the normative frameworks which condone, recommend, limit and make it meaningful. This comprises Jeremy Bentham’s “Panopticon,” Michel Foucault’s “Disciplinary Societies” and “Panopticism,” Fredrick Winslow Taylor’s “Scientific Management,” and Gilles Deleuze’s “Societies of Control.” Next, we describe the difference that digital technologies make to surveillance systems, namely that the former greatly enhance the latter’s ubiquity. As we shall see, COVID-19 is an important subject of analysis regarding surveillance since it has triggered an acceleration of technological development and influence. This second chapter will hence examine surveillance on three levels, describing the contexts in which surveillance has developed in each level, and how it is developing as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The first concerns surveillance on a National Level, with a focus on government surveillance. The second involves surveillance on a City Level, including smart city operations and workplace surveillance, and the third assesses surveillance on a Personal Level, covering social media surveillance and smart home technology. In the final chapter, we underscore certain aspects of modern surveillance practices where either Bentham, Foucault, Taylor, or Deleuze’s principles are implicit. For social media surveillance, we also draw from Shoshana Zuboff’s concept of “surveillance capitalism”. Lastly, the inherent differences and impact of surveillance operations for the current geopolitical and social order are highlighted, drawing from accounts that shed light on Autocracy’s empowerment with such technology, on Democracy’s increased potential for misuse, and on the likely repercussions of politically and socially employing surveillance systems. The conclusion then argues that surveillance, as it stands, has major potential to inherently and permanently alter the global political and social landscape

A Blueprint for Equitable AI

We convened two diverse groups of experts in late 2022 to discuss how they might advise building and distributing artificial intelligence for equitable outcomes. In advance of these virtual roundtables, we provided some suggested readings, which are listed at the end of this report, along with a few definitions to start the conversation. This report represents a summary of the discussions.Many of the ideas explored are not new, nor do the participants offer silver bullets to ongoing challenges. But there is value in exploring them together to build the muscle and future institutions required for civil discourse on the role technology plays in our lives. We hope this report inspires greater curiosity among technologists and the communities they serve, and spurs and shapes the development of markets, norms, and policies toward achieving greater equity

Can cyber technology be resilient and green?

There are some key events that have characterised the recent period one of these is the so-called digital transformation considered the natural evolution of the current society in the light of a pervasive technology like digital technology. Digital technology is intertwined with almost all the life sectors. Since the dawn of digital technology, the number of application and solutions based on such technology had a surprising rate of growth. Nowadays there is no field of human knowledge that doesn’t take advantage or is based on digital: communication, education, government, health, energy, mobility, etc.. We are increasing leaving the analog, face to face, paper-based world to enter the intangible digital mediated one. At the same time, society already faced several relevant cyber infrastructure malfunctions and attacks due to hackers, some targeting Governmental or Law Enforcement agencies and Institutions, some targeting critical infrastructures, others targeting big companies. Nowadays we are surrounded by “critical infrastructures” managed by cyber components that, in case of attacks, may create minor or mayor impacts on our daily life. The actual trend is to transfer to the digital domain as much as possible any “traditional” process and document, so in a glimpse government procedures and citizens documents and data will flow in the format of bit streams, sometimes, under the pressure of critical events this process wasn’t designed to ensure security. Consequently, the more we become digitalised, the more we are vulnerable to hackers and hybrid threats. Of course, the overall scenario includes many other aspects and “shades”. In the “analogue” world we had different pipelines and “channels” to perform, thanks to different tools and means, our activities, in the cyber world the whole activity depends on a single “pillar”: cyber technology. The pervasiveness of cyber technology, the internet and the quick deployment of emerging number crunching applications is emphasizing energy consumption, at the same time the rapid pace of innovation in the field of consumers’ devices produces significant amount of waste to be recycled or disposed. As a consequence, can cyber technology be considered green and resilient

Bridging the Gap Between Silicon Valley and the Capital Beltway: Lessons Learned from the U.S. Government's Venture Capital and Startup Engagements in Intelligence and Defense

The speed with which technological innovation occurs in the commercial sector has outpaced the U.S. government’s in-house innovation capabilities in the past few decades. In order to safeguard national security, the United States is largely reliant on access to superior information and defense technology, and it cannot afford to fall behind in scientific advancements. Thus, the federal government has sought out partnerships with the startup community in order to match the agility of commercial technology innovation. By 1999, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) leadership recognized that the Agency could not compete in innovation with the same speed as others in the commercial marketplace. This led to the creation of In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s own venture capital arm. Other government agencies realized the need to identify areas of strategic alignment between startup technology and national security requirements and have followed in the CIA’s footsteps. It is important to examine these innovative acquisition strategies as they are still developing but will without a doubt continue to burgeon as the U.S. engages in the 21st century technological race. This thesis extracts and analyzes lessons learned and best practices from federal intelligence- and defense-related investment vehicles.Strauss Center for International Security and La

The Digitalisation of African Agriculture Report 2018-2019

An inclusive, digitally-enabled agricultural transformation could help achieve meaningful livelihood improvements for Africa’s smallholder farmers and pastoralists. It could drive greater engagement in agriculture from women and youth and create employment opportunities along the value chain. At CTA we staked a claim on this power of digitalisation to more systematically transform agriculture early on. Digitalisation, focusing on not individual ICTs but the application of these technologies to entire value chains, is a theme that cuts across all of our work. In youth entrepreneurship, we are fostering a new breed of young ICT ‘agripreneurs’. In climate-smart agriculture multiple projects provide information that can help towards building resilience for smallholder farmers. And in women empowerment we are supporting digital platforms to drive greater inclusion for women entrepreneurs in agricultural value chains

Working Together: Exploring the Factors that Influence Interorganizational Cooperation

Administrative and policy failures increasingly occur because of the inability of organizations to facilitate collective action in the absence of a central, hierarchical authority. I explore how organizations achieve (or fail to achieve) voluntary, self-organizing collective action that is not a direct result of external control, presenting a polycentric system of governance within a set of public, nonprofit, and for-profit agencies operating in the policy domain of emergency management. Using a complex adaptive systems framework (Axelrod and Cohen 1999), I identify the patterns of variation, interaction, and the choices made among agencies that determine whether organizations work together. I develop a model of an integrated, interdependent system of emergency management facilitated by a knowledge commons, as opposed to the established sequential cycle of disaster response. The research problem addressed, collective action without hierarchy, is fundamentally an issue of decision making. The ability of decision makers to recognize key situations in their environments and develop strategies for action, i.e. cognition, is critical. Analysis of network data and semi-structured interviews finds that urgent need, proximity, and professional capital, a concept developed in this dissertation, promote and sustain cooperation. I show how these factors increase the capacity of heterogeneous networks to accomplish shared goals. Even if the conditions of urgent need and proximity are satisfied, situations exist where agencies fail to cooperate. Key standards of professional performance—appearance, levels of staffing, past performance, response time, and the quality of equipment—influence the decisions of emergency managers to work together. I present the concept of professional capital to describe how these recognized standards of professional performance demonstrate competence and justify the decisions of managers to interact. Professional capital transcends jurisdictional and disciplinary boundaries, influencing the confidence of decision makers and shaping judgments based on expectations of performance. This concept adds a missing component to social capital theory, which currently focuses on the roles of pre-established trust and norms of reciprocity in promoting collective action

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio