Options for organization and operation of space applications transfer centers

The benefits of developing regional facilities for transfer of NASA developed technology are discussed. These centers are designed to inform, persuade, and serve users. Included will be equipment for applications and demonstrations of the processes, a library, training facilities, and meeting rooms. The staff will include experts in the various techniques, as well as personnel involved in finding and persuading potential users

Context-awareness for mobile sensing: a survey and future directions

The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power have empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user related social and cognitive activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provides the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects, and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen due to the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved, and at the same time better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlighten them by proposing possible solutions

Social Signal Processing for Real-time Situational Understanding: A Vision and Approach

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Enforcement and Spectrum Sharing: Case Studies of Federal-Commercial Sharing

To promote economic growth and unleash the potential of wireless broadband, there is a need to introduce more spectrally efficient technologies and spectrum management regimes. That led to an environment where commercial wireless broadband need to share spectrum with the federal and non-federal operations. Implementing sharing regimes on a non-opportunistic basis means that sharing agreements must be implemented. To have meaning, those agreements must be enforceable.\ud \ud With the significant exception of license-free wireless systems, commercial wireless services are based on exclusive use. With the policy change facilitating spectrum sharing, it becomes necessary to consider how sharing might take place in practice. Beyond the technical aspects of sharing, that must be resolved lie questions about how usage rights are appropriately determined and enforced. This paper is reasoning about enforcement in a particular spectrum bands (1695-1710 MHz and 3.5 GHz) that are currently being proposed for sharing between commercial services and incumbent spectrum users in the US. We examine three enforcement approaches, exclusion zones, protection zones and pure ex post and consider their implications in terms of cost elements, opportunity cost, and their adaptability

Enforcement in Dynamic Spectrum Access Systems

The spectrum access rights granted by the Federal government to spectrum users come with the expectation of protection from harmful interference. As a consequence of the growth of wireless demand and services of all types, technical progress enabling smart agile radio networks, and on-going spectrum management reform, there is both a need and opportunity to use and share spectrum more intensively and dynamically. A key element of any framework for managing harmful interference is the mechanism for enforcement of those rights. Since the rights to use spectrum and to protection from harmful interference vary by band (licensed/unlicensed, legacy/newly reformed) and type of use/users (primary/secondary, overlay/underlay), it is reasonable to expect that the enforcement mechanisms may need to vary as well.\ud \ud In this paper, we present a taxonomy for evaluating alternative mechanisms for enforcing interference protection for spectrum usage rights, with special attention to the potential changes that may be expected from wider deployment of Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) systems. Our exploration of how the design of the enforcement regime interacts with and influences the incentives of radio operators under different rights regimes and market scenarios is intended to assist in refining thinking about appropriate access rights regimes and how best to incentivize investment and growth in more efficient and valuable uses of the radio frequency spectrum

Flood hazard hydrology: interdisciplinary geospatial preparedness and policy

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2017Floods rank as the deadliest and most frequently occurring natural hazard worldwide, and in 2013 floods in the United States ranked second only to wind storms in accounting for loss of life and damage to property. While flood disasters remain difficult to accurately predict, more precise forecasts and better understanding of the frequency, magnitude and timing of floods can help reduce the loss of life and costs associated with the impact of flood events. There is a common perception that 1) local-to-national-level decision makers do not have accurate, reliable and actionable data and knowledge they need in order to make informed flood-related decisions, and 2) because of science--policy disconnects, critical flood and scientific analyses and insights are failing to influence policymakers in national water resource and flood-related decisions that have significant local impact. This dissertation explores these perceived information gaps and disconnects, and seeks to answer the question of whether flood data can be accurately generated, transformed into useful actionable knowledge for local flood event decision makers, and then effectively communicated to influence policy. Utilizing an interdisciplinary mixed-methods research design approach, this thesis develops a methodological framework and interpretative lens for each of three distinct stages of flood-related information interaction: 1) data generation—using machine learning to estimate streamflow flood data for forecasting and response; 2) knowledge development and sharing—creating a geoanalytic visualization decision support system for flood events; and 3) knowledge actualization—using heuristic toolsets for translating scientific knowledge into policy action. Each stage is elaborated on in three distinct research papers, incorporated as chapters in this dissertation, that focus on developing practical data and methodologies that are useful to scientists, local flood event decision makers, and policymakers. Data and analytical results of this research indicate that, if certain conditions are met, it is possible to provide local decision makers and policy makers with the useful actionable knowledge they need to make timely and informed decisions