How do SUMPs Consider Factors Influencing Walkability and Cyclability? A Review of Literature and Planning Tools

Improving active mobility in settlements is one of the EU's core objectives to improve people's quality of life. EU guidelines indicate Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans (SUMPs) as strategic planning tools to achieve sustainable results through the definition of objectives and the provision of actions. Scientific research has extensively explored numerous factors in the built environment and active mobility infrastructures that influence mobility features and demands. However, a gap exists between research and urban plans employed to promote sustainable mobility. This paper examines whether these identified factors from scientific literature have implications for enhancing active mobility actions in Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans. First, a literature review highlights recurring factors in assessing active mobility networks. Then, an overview of actions supporting walkability and cyclability within Sustainable Urban Mobility Plans applied in the Emilia-Romagna Region in Italy is conducted. The two reviews comparison points out the expected implementation gap between research and practice

Chapter Domitian Coast. Rehabilitation’ outlooks of the Northern coast of Campania

Object of the paper is the Domitian Coast, belonging to the North-West of Campania Region, characterized by contrasting factors. The fertility of the soil and the considerable length of an easily accessible and available coastline are threatened by an indiscriminate exploitation of the ground for anthropogenic uses. The paper analyses the Domitian territory and the issues characterizing this particular area on the basis of three categories of elements. The second part indicates the possible intervention policies set up to redevelop this territory

Measurement model of multiple intelligence for employability among management graduates in Universiti Teknikal Malaysia, Melaka

In this study, developing a fit measurement model and identifying the best fitting items to represent Howard Gardner’s nine intelligences namely, musical intelligence, bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, mathematical/logical intelligence, visual/spatial intelligence, linguistic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, naturalist intelligence and spiritual intelligence are the main interest in order to enhance the opportunities of the management graduates for employability. In order to develop a fit measurement model, Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) was applied where it consisted of several stages such as (1) Model specification, (2) Model identification, (3) Model estimation, (4) Model evaluation, (5) Model modification using Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA). A psychometric test which is the Ability Test in Employment (ATIEm) was used as the instrument to measure the existence of nine types of intelligence of UTeM management graduates for job placement purposes. This study was conducted at the Faculty of Technology Management and Technopreneurship (FPTT), Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka (UTeM). The respondents of this study consisted of 137 graduates. The initial measurement model contains nine unobserved variables and each unobserved variable is measured by ten observed variables. Hence, the model contains 90 observed variables. However, 59 observed variables have low factor loadings where some modifications had been done by removing those items and they were excluded from further analysis. As such, the modified measurement model deemed to improve the Goodness-of-Fit [GFI (Goodness of Fit Index) = 0.814; RMR (Root Mean Square Residuals) = 0.063; TLI (Tucker-Lewis Fit Index) = 0.928; IFI (Incremental Fit Index) = 0.940; CFI (Comparative Fit Index) = 0.938; RMSEA (Root Mean Square of Approximation) = 0.049]. The modification procedures significantly improved the overall model fit as the fit indices show adequate model fit to the data. Furthermore, ATIEm underwent the process of CFA to validate the items and constructs related with the items. The Composite Reliability (CR) values ranged from 0.743 to 0.930 which were above the suggested benchmark value of 0.70 whereas the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) of each factor exceeded 0.50, representing good convergent validity, causing the measurement model is acceptable. The final modified measurement model contains 31 observed variables which have factor loadings more than 0.60 with those 31 items as considered as the best fitting items to represent Gardner’s nine intelligences. The finding showed that the UTeM management graduates possessed all nine intelligences either it is high or low. Musical intelligence, mathematical/logical intelligence, naturalist intelligence and spiritual intelligence contributed highest loadings on certain items. But, most of the intelligences such as bodily-kinaesthetic intelligence, visual/spatial intelligence, verbal/linguistic intelligence, interpersonal intelligence and intrapersonal intelligence possessed by UTeM management graduates are just at the borderline

Educational Technology and Education Conferences, June to December 2012

The conference list contains events such as "Learning and Teaching","Innovation in e-Learning", "Online Teaching", "Distance Learning Administration", "The World Open Educational Resources Congress", "Mobile Health", and "Realizing Dreams"

Une approche systémique unifiée pour l’optimisation durable des systèmes socio-environnementaux: Ingénierie des systèmes de décision en univers incertain

Nowadays, the sustainability of human activities is a major worldwide concern. The challenge is to evaluate such activities not only in terms of efficiency and productivity, but also in terms of their economic, social, environmental, etc. durability. For this, the experts of these areas need to work collaboratively. In this context, human societies are facing several major challenges such as: (1) process a large amount of information whose volume increases exponentially (“big data”), (2) live in a both dynamic and imperfect real world, (3) predict and assess future states of its activities.The researches we have conducted in this thesis contribute in particular to the domain of decision systems engineering under uncertainty. We have chosen the field of general socio-environmental systems as subject of study, particularly the multidisciplinary field of agriculture. We propose a systemic approach for the sustainable optimization of socio-environmental systems: (1) the meta-modeling of socio-environmental systems, (2) the generic representation of data imperfection flowing in such systems, associated to a decision model in uncertain environment and finally (3) the simulation and the assessment of such systems in dynamic environment for the purpose of decision making by experts which we have illustrated by both a service-oriented architecture model and case studies applied to the agriculture domain.De nos jours, la durabilité des activités humaines devient une préoccupation majeure dans le monde entier. Il s’agit d’évaluer ces activités non seulement en matière d’efficacité et de productivité, mais aussi en ce qui concerne leurs durabilités économique, sociale, environnementale, etc. Pour ce faire, les experts de ces différents domaines doivent travailler en collaboration. Dans ce contexte, les sociétés humaines sont confrontées à plusieurs défis majeurs qui sont les suivants : (1) traiter de grandes quantités d’informations (« big data »), (2) évoluer dans un monde réel dynamique et imparfait, (3) prévoir et évaluer les états futurs de ses activités.Les recherches que nous avons menées dans cette thèse contribuent plus particulièrement au domaine de l’ingénierie des systèmes de décision en univers incertain. Nous prenons comme objet d'étude général le domaine des systèmes socio-environnementaux, et plus particulièrement le domaine pluridisciplinaire de l’agriculture. Nous proposons une approche systémique pour l’optimisation durable des systèmes socio-environnementaux : (1) la méta-modélisation des systèmes socio-environnementaux, (2) la représentation générique de l’imperfection des informations qui circulent dans ces systèmes, associée à un modèle de décision en contexte incertain et enfin (3) la simulation et l’évaluation de ces systèmes en environnement dynamique en vue de prises de décisions par des experts, que nous avons illustrée par un modèle d’architecture orientée service ainsi que des études de cas appliquées au domaine de l’agriculture

Enhancing trustability in MMOGs environments

Massively Multiplayer Online Games (MMOGs; e.g., World of Warcraft), virtual worlds (VW; e.g., Second Life), social networks (e.g., Facebook) strongly demand for more autonomic, security, and trust mechanisms in a way similar to humans do in the real life world. As known, this is a difficult matter because trusting in humans and organizations depends on the perception and experience of each individual, which is difficult to quantify or measure. In fact, these societal environments lack trust mechanisms similar to those involved in humans-to-human interactions. Besides, interactions mediated by compute devices are constantly evolving, requiring trust mechanisms that keep the pace with the developments and assess risk situations. In VW/MMOGs, it is widely recognized that users develop trust relationships from their in-world interactions with others. However, these trust relationships end up not being represented in the data structures (or databases) of such virtual worlds, though they sometimes appear associated to reputation and recommendation systems. In addition, as far as we know, the user is not provided with a personal trust tool to sustain his/her decision making while he/she interacts with other users in the virtual or game world. In order to solve this problem, as well as those mentioned above, we propose herein a formal representation of these personal trust relationships, which are based on avataravatar interactions. The leading idea is to provide each avatar-impersonated player with a personal trust tool that follows a distributed trust model, i.e., the trust data is distributed over the societal network of a given VW/MMOG. Representing, manipulating, and inferring trust from the user/player point of view certainly is a grand challenge. When someone meets an unknown individual, the question is “Can I trust him/her or not?”. It is clear that this requires the user to have access to a representation of trust about others, but, unless we are using an open source VW/MMOG, it is difficult —not to say unfeasible— to get access to such data. Even, in an open source system, a number of users may refuse to pass information about its friends, acquaintances, or others. Putting together its own data and gathered data obtained from others, the avatar-impersonated player should be able to come across a trust result about its current trustee. For the trust assessment method used in this thesis, we use subjective logic operators and graph search algorithms to undertake such trust inference about the trustee. The proposed trust inference system has been validated using a number of OpenSimulator (opensimulator.org) scenarios, which showed an accuracy increase in evaluating trustability of avatars. Summing up, our proposal aims thus to introduce a trust theory for virtual worlds, its trust assessment metrics (e.g., subjective logic) and trust discovery methods (e.g., graph search methods), on an individual basis, rather than based on usual centralized reputation systems. In particular, and unlike other trust discovery methods, our methods run at interactive rates.MMOGs (Massively Multiplayer Online Games, como por exemplo, World of Warcraft), mundos virtuais (VW, como por exemplo, o Second Life) e redes sociais (como por exemplo, Facebook) necessitam de mecanismos de confiança mais autónomos, capazes de assegurar a segurança e a confiança de uma forma semelhante à que os seres humanos utilizam na vida real. Como se sabe, esta não é uma questão fácil. Porque confiar em seres humanos e ou organizações depende da percepção e da experiência de cada indivíduo, o que é difícil de quantificar ou medir à partida. Na verdade, esses ambientes sociais carecem dos mecanismos de confiança presentes em interacções humanas presenciais. Além disso, as interacções mediadas por dispositivos computacionais estão em constante evolução, necessitando de mecanismos de confiança adequados ao ritmo da evolução para avaliar situações de risco. Em VW/MMOGs, é amplamente reconhecido que os utilizadores desenvolvem relações de confiança a partir das suas interacções no mundo com outros. No entanto, essas relações de confiança acabam por não ser representadas nas estruturas de dados (ou bases de dados) do VW/MMOG específico, embora às vezes apareçam associados à reputação e a sistemas de reputação. Além disso, tanto quanto sabemos, ao utilizador não lhe é facultado nenhum mecanismo que suporte uma ferramenta de confiança individual para sustentar o seu processo de tomada de decisão, enquanto ele interage com outros utilizadores no mundo virtual ou jogo. A fim de resolver este problema, bem como os mencionados acima, propomos nesta tese uma representação formal para essas relações de confiança pessoal, baseada em interacções avatar-avatar. A ideia principal é fornecer a cada jogador representado por um avatar uma ferramenta de confiança pessoal que segue um modelo de confiança distribuída, ou seja, os dados de confiança são distribuídos através da rede social de um determinado VW/MMOG. Representar, manipular e inferir a confiança do ponto de utilizador/jogador, é certamente um grande desafio. Quando alguém encontra um indivíduo desconhecido, a pergunta é “Posso confiar ou não nele?”. É claro que isto requer que o utilizador tenha acesso a uma representação de confiança sobre os outros, mas, a menos que possamos usar uma plataforma VW/MMOG de código aberto, é difícil — para não dizer impossível — obter acesso aos dados gerados pelos utilizadores. Mesmo em sistemas de código aberto, um número de utilizadores pode recusar partilhar informações sobre seus amigos, conhecidos, ou sobre outros. Ao juntar seus próprios dados com os dados obtidos de outros, o utilizador/jogador representado por um avatar deve ser capaz de produzir uma avaliação de confiança sobre o utilizador/jogador com o qual se encontra a interagir. Relativamente ao método de avaliação de confiança empregue nesta tese, utilizamos lógica subjectiva para a representação da confiança, e também operadores lógicos da lógica subjectiva juntamente com algoritmos de procura em grafos para empreender o processo de inferência da confiança relativamente a outro utilizador. O sistema de inferência de confiança proposto foi validado através de um número de cenários Open-Simulator (opensimulator.org), que mostrou um aumento na precisão na avaliação da confiança de avatares. Resumindo, a nossa proposta visa, assim, introduzir uma teoria de confiança para mundos virtuais, conjuntamente com métricas de avaliação de confiança (por exemplo, a lógica subjectiva) e em métodos de procura de caminhos de confiança (com por exemplo, através de métodos de pesquisa em grafos), partindo de uma base individual, em vez de se basear em sistemas habituais de reputação centralizados. Em particular, e ao contrário de outros métodos de determinação do grau de confiança, os nossos métodos são executados em tempo real

Spatial and Temporal Sentiment Analysis of Twitter data

The public have used Twitter world wide for expressing opinions. This study focuses on spatio-temporal variation of georeferenced Tweets’ sentiment polarity, with a view to understanding how opinions evolve on Twitter over space and time and across communities of users. More specifically, the question this study tested is whether sentiment polarity on Twitter exhibits specific time-location patterns. The aim of the study is to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of georeferenced Twitter sentiment polarity within the area of 1 km buffer around the Curtin Bentley campus boundary in Perth, Western Australia. Tweets posted in campus were assigned into six spatial zones and four time zones. A sentiment analysis was then conducted for each zone using the sentiment analyser tool in the Starlight Visual Information System software. The Feature Manipulation Engine was employed to convert non-spatial files into spatial and temporal feature class. The spatial and temporal distribution of Twitter sentiment polarity patterns over space and time was mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Some interesting results were identified. For example, the highest percentage of positive Tweets occurred in the social science area, while science and engineering and dormitory areas had the highest percentage of negative postings. The number of negative Tweets increases in the library and science and engineering areas as the end of the semester approaches, reaching a peak around an exam period, while the percentage of negative Tweets drops at the end of the semester in the entertainment and sport and dormitory area. This study will provide some insights into understanding students and staff ’s sentiment variation on Twitter, which could be useful for university teaching and learning management

European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information

This book focuses on the study of the remarkable new source of geographic information that has become available in the form of user-generated content accessible over the Internet through mobile and Web applications. The exploitation, integration and application of these sources, termed volunteered geographic information (VGI) or crowdsourced geographic information (CGI), offer scientists an unprecedented opportunity to conduct research on a variety of topics at multiple scales and for diversified objectives. The Handbook is organized in five parts, addressing the fundamental questions: What motivates citizens to provide such information in the public domain, and what factors govern/predict its validity?What methods might be used to validate such information? Can VGI be framed within the larger domain of sensor networks, in which inert and static sensors are replaced or combined by intelligent and mobile humans equipped with sensing devices? What limitations are imposed on VGI by differential access to broadband Internet, mobile phones, and other communication technologies, and by concerns over privacy? How do VGI and crowdsourcing enable innovation applications to benefit human society? Chapters examine how crowdsourcing techniques and methods, and the VGI phenomenon, have motivated a multidisciplinary research community to identify both fields of applications and quality criteria depending on the use of VGI. Besides harvesting tools and storage of these data, research has paid remarkable attention to these information resources, in an age when information and participation is one of the most important drivers of development. The collection opens questions and points to new research directions in addition to the findings that each of the authors demonstrates. Despite rapid progress in VGI research, this Handbook also shows that there are technical, social, political and methodological challenges that require further studies and research

Determining spatio-temporal metrics that distinguish play outcomes in field hockey

Tactical behaviour in field sports can be examined using spatio-temporal metrics, which are descriptions of player behaviour derived from data of player positions over time. Many metrics can be computed that describe the cooperative and adversarial interactions between players. The methods typically used by sports performance analysts cannot appropriately analyse the many possible spatio-temporal metrics and their interactions. Tantalisingly, the interactions between these descriptions of player behaviour could potentially describe tactical differences in performance. This thesis describes a programme of research that determined some spatiotemporal metrics that distinguish play outcomes in field hockey. Methods inspired by genetic analysts were used to estimate the influence of combinations of spatio-temporal metrics on the outcome of field hockey plays. The novel application of the genetic methods to sports performance data raised some practical difficulties. Adjustments to the method facilitated the selection of distinguishing metric combinations from an initially large list of over 3,600 metrics. The adjustments made to the genetic methods represent one of several contributions to knowledge made by this programme of research. These contributions will help performance analysts with the increasingly common task of analysing high-dimensional data. Other contributions to knowledge are a suite of metric combinations that distinguish play outcomes in field hockey and empirical support for some tactical preconceptions. The key finding of interest for players and coaches is that play outcomes in field hockey are distinguished by proximity to the goal and passing execution. The metrics that distinguish the several outcomes differ depending on the outcomes being compared. Coaches and athletes should therefore recognise the variety of tactics required to minimise negative outcomes and maximise positive ones