Construction safety and digital design: a review

As digital technologies become widely used in designing buildings and infrastructure, questions arise about their impacts on construction safety. This review explores relationships between construction safety and digital design practices with the aim of fostering and directing further research. It surveys state-of-the-art research on databases, virtual reality, geographic information systems, 4D CAD, building information modeling and sensing technologies, finding various digital tools for addressing safety issues in the construction phase, but few tools to support design for construction safety. It also considers a literature on safety critical, digital and design practices that raises a general concern about ‘mindlessness’ in the use of technologies, and has implications for the emerging research agenda around construction safety and digital design. Bringing these strands of literature together suggests new kinds of interventions, such as the development of tools and processes for using digital models to promote mindfulness through multi-party collaboration on safet

Towards a Novel Cooperative Logistics Information System Framework

Supply Chains and Logistics have a growing importance in global economy. Supply Chain Information Systems over the world are heterogeneous and each one can both produce and receive massive amounts of structured and unstructured data in real-time, which are usually generated by information systems, connected objects or manually by humans. This heterogeneity is due to Logistics Information Systems components and processes that are developed by different modelling methods and running on many platforms; hence, decision making process is difficult in such multi-actor environment. In this paper we identify some current challenges and integration issues between separately designed Logistics Information Systems (LIS), and we propose a Distributed Cooperative Logistics Platform (DCLP) framework based on NoSQL, which facilitates real-time cooperation between stakeholders and improves decision making process in a multi-actor environment. We included also a case study of Hospital Supply Chain (HSC), and a brief discussion on perspectives and future scope of work

Databases, Doctrine, and Constitutional Criminal Procedure

Over the past twenty years there has been an explosion in the creation, availability, and use of criminal justice databases. Large scale database systems now routinely influence law enforcement decisions ranging from formal determinations to arrest or convict an individual to informal judgments to subject a person to secondary pre-flight screening or investigate possible gang membership. Evidence gathered from database-related sources is now commonly introduced, and can play a pivotal proof role, in criminal trials. Although much has been written about the failure of constitutional law to adequately respond to the threat to privacy rights posed by databases, less attention has focused upon the awkward fit between database-generated evidence and the conventional modes of analysis in constitutional criminal procedure. This Essay examines databases as a tool of law enforcement and sets forth tentative steps toward a theory of constitutional violations in this area

The role of information systems in the prevention and detection of transnational and international crime

© Cambridge University Press 2014. All around the world criminal activity remains at the forefront of governmental concerns, not only as a problem that distorts the very fabric of society within the confines of national jurisdictions, but also as a problem that cuts across national borders to exhibit a global dimension. The international dimension of criminal activity remains critical and is generally characterized by a complexity that is unique and requires action on many different levels. Criminals set out to mask their illegal activities and deliberately generate complexity as a means of concealment. In doing so, they exploit new developments in technology that assist them in achieving their ends. This criminality exhibits forms of innovation that stretch far beyond traditional criminal activity (e.g., drug and human trafficking) and manages to attach itself within the broader fabric of society by exploiting the very latest developments. This evolution is necessary as criminals seek not only to escape arrest, prosecution and conviction, but also to enjoy the fruits of their criminality (mostly financial gains). Thus, they seek to develop ways of exploiting the various diffuse norms of social interaction (e.g., trust), financial modes of conduct (e.g., cash-based economies), technological and communication developments (e.g., Internet), and thereby minimize the possibility for detection. By limiting the resources that can be made available for prevention (or making them obsolete when developing new criminal behaviour), they participate in this co-evolution actively; and this they achieve by generating complexity

Next challenges for adaptive learning systems

Learning from evolving streaming data has become a 'hot' research topic in the last decade and many adaptive learning algorithms have been developed. This research was stimulated by rapidly growing amounts of industrial, transactional, sensor and other business data that arrives in real time and needs to be mined in real time. Under such circumstances, constant manual adjustment of models is in-efficient and with increasing amounts of data is becoming infeasible. Nevertheless, adaptive learning models are still rarely employed in business applications in practice. In the light of rapidly growing structurally rich 'big data', new generation of parallel computing solutions and cloud computing services as well as recent advances in portable computing devices, this article aims to identify the current key research directions to be taken to bring the adaptive learning closer to application needs. We identify six forthcoming challenges in designing and building adaptive learning (pre-diction) systems: making adaptive systems scalable, dealing with realistic data, improving usability and trust, integrat-ing expert knowledge, taking into account various application needs, and moving from adaptive algorithms towards adaptive tools. Those challenges are critical for the evolving stream settings, as the process of model building needs to be fully automated and continuous.</jats:p

Visa Policy: Roles of the Departments of State and Homeland Security

CRS ReportCRSVisaPolicy.pdf: 1613 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

ATM automation: guidance on human technology integration

© Civil Aviation Authority 2016Human interaction with technology and automation is a key area of interest to industry and safety regulators alike. In February 2014, a joint CAA/industry workshop considered perspectives on present and future implementation of advanced automated systems. The conclusion was that whilst no additional regulation was necessary, guidance material for industry and regulators was required. Development of this guidance document was completed in 2015 by a working group consisting of CAA, UK industry, academia and industry associations (see Appendix B). This enabled a collaborative approach to be taken, and for regulatory, industry, and workforce perspectives to be collectively considered and addressed. The processes used in developing this guidance included: review of the themes identified from the February 2014 CAA/industry workshop1; review of academic papers, textbooks on automation, incidents and accidents involving automation; identification of key safety issues associated with automated systems; analysis of current and emerging ATM regulatory requirements and guidance material; presentation of emerging findings for critical review at UK and European aviation safety conferences. In December 2015, a workshop of senior management from project partner organisations reviewed the findings and proposals. EASA were briefed on the project before its commencement, and Eurocontrol contributed through membership of the Working Group.Final Published versio