Trajectory Representation in Location-Based Services: Problems and Solution

Recently, much work has been done in feasibility studies on services offered to moving objects in an environment equipped with mobile telephony, network technology and GIS. However, despite of all work on GIS and databases, the situations in which the whereabouts of objects are constantly monitored and stored for future analysis are an important class of problems that present-day database/GIS has difficulty to handle. Considering the fact that data about whereabouts of moving objects are acquired in a discrete way, providing the data when no observation is available is a must. Therefore, obtaining a "faithful representation" of trajectories with a sufficient number of discrete (though possibly erroneous) data points is the objective of this research

Palliative and end-of-life care for adults with advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: a rapid review focusing on patient and family caregiver perspectives.

Purpose of review: The aim of the review was to explore patient and family caregiver perspectives on key issues for ensuring quality of end-of-life care for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The growing evidence on the value of specialist palliative care services demonstrates significant improvements in treatments and provisions; however, much of the literature is generic in nature or centred on people with a cancer diagnosis. In this review, we examine the literature to ascertain the views and needs of patients and carers affected by advanced COPD, a highly debilitating condition that can have a profoundly negative impact on the quality of end-of-life experience. Recent findings: A total of 19 papers were included in the review. The main themes in the literature were Holistic Care, Illness Trajectory and Technology. Summary: Areas of unmet need emphasized across physical, psychosocial and spiritual domains were identified, particularly in relation to appropriate and timely conversations. Positive developments in the care and treatment of advanced COPD include the use of the STIOLTO Respimat inhaler, a brief educative and psychosocial intervention based on cognitive-behavioural therapy, and high-intensity exercise training. There is some evidence regarding the use of technology in end-stage COPD

Moving Object Trajectories Meta-Model And Spatio-Temporal Queries

In this paper, a general moving object trajectories framework is put forward to allow independent applications processing trajectories data benefit from a high level of interoperability, information sharing as well as an efficient answer for a wide range of complex trajectory queries. Our proposed meta-model is based on ontology and event approach, incorporates existing presentations of trajectory and integrates new patterns like space-time path to describe activities in geographical space-time. We introduce recursive Region of Interest concepts and deal mobile objects trajectories with diverse spatio-temporal sampling protocols and different sensors available that traditional data model alone are incapable for this purpose.Comment: International Journal of Database Management Systems (IJDMS) Vol.4, No.2, April 201

Spatio-Temporal Techniques for User Identification by means of GPS Mobility Data

One of the greatest concerns related to the popularity of GPS-enabled devices and applications is the increasing availability of the personal location information generated by them and shared with application and service providers. Moreover, people tend to have regular routines and be characterized by a set of "significant places", thus making it possible to identify a user from his/her mobility data. In this paper we present a series of techniques for identifying individuals from their GPS movements. More specifically, we study the uniqueness of GPS information for three popular datasets, and we provide a detailed analysis of the discriminatory power of speed, direction and distance of travel. Most importantly, we present a simple yet effective technique for the identification of users from location information that are not included in the original dataset used for training, thus raising important privacy concerns for the management of location datasets.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figure