Post-Westgate SWAT : C4ISTAR Architectural Framework for Autonomous Network Integrated Multifaceted Warfighting Solutions Version 1.0 : A Peer-Reviewed Monograph

Police SWAT teams and Military Special Forces face mounting pressure and challenges from adversaries that can only be resolved by way of ever more sophisticated inputs into tactical operations. Lethal Autonomy provides constrained military/security forces with a viable option, but only if implementation has got proper empirically supported foundations. Autonomous weapon systems can be designed and developed to conduct ground, air and naval operations. This monograph offers some insights into the challenges of developing legal, reliable and ethical forms of autonomous weapons, that address the gap between Police or Law Enforcement and Military operations that is growing exponentially small. National adversaries are today in many instances hybrid threats, that manifest criminal and military traits, these often require deployment of hybrid-capability autonomous weapons imbued with the capability to taken on both Military and/or Security objectives. The Westgate Terrorist Attack of 21st September 2013 in the Westlands suburb of Nairobi, Kenya is a very clear manifestation of the hybrid combat scenario that required military response and police investigations against a fighting cell of the Somalia based globally networked Al Shabaab terrorist group.Comment: 52 pages, 6 Figures, over 40 references, reviewed by a reade

Combined AI Capabilities for Enhancing Maritime Safety in a Common Information Sharing Environment

The complexity of maritime traffic operations indicates an unprecedented necessity for joint introduction and exploitation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, that take advantage of the vast amount of vessels’ data, offered by disparate surveillance systems to face challenges at sea. This paper reviews the recent Big Data and AI technology implementations for enhancing the maritime safety level in the common information sharing environment (CISE) of the maritime agencies, including vessel behavior and anomaly monitoring, and ship collision risk assessment. Specifically, the trajectory fusion implemented with InSyTo module for soft information fusion and management toolbox, and the Early Notification module for Vessel Collision are presented within EFFECTOR Project. The focus is to elaborate technical architecture features of these modules and combined AI capabilities for achieving the desired interoperability and complementarity between maritime systems, aiming to provide better decision support and proper information to be distributed among CISE maritime safety stakeholders

Networking and Application Interface Technology for Wireless Sensor Network Surveillance and Monitoring

Distributed unattended ground sensor networks used in battlefield surveillance and monitoring missions, have proven to be valuable in providing a tactical information advantage required for command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance planning. Operational effectiveness for surveillance missions can be enhanced further through network centric capability, where distributed UGS networks have the ability to perform surveillance operations autonomously. NCC operation can be enhanced through UGSs having the ability to evaluate their awareness of the current joint surveillance environment, in order to provide the necessary adaptation to dynamic changes. NCC can also provide an advantage for UGS networks to self-manage their limited operational resources efficiently, according to mission objective priority. In this article, we present a cross-layer approach and highlight techniques that have potential to enable NCC operation within a mission-orientated UGS surveillance setting

Sources, topics and use of knowledge by coaches

In recent years, the value of social learning approaches as part of the design and delivery of formalised coach development initiatives has gained credence in the literature. However, insight is currently lacking into the fundamental social dimensions that underpin coach learning. Accordingly, this study aimed to explore coaches’ perceptions of their actual and preferred methods of acquiring new coaching knowledge, the types of knowledge they currently acquire and/or desire, and their application of new knowledge. Responses to an online survey, completed by practicing coaches (N = 320) in a range of sports and contexts, were analysed descriptively and inductively. Results revealed that coaches’ preferred, and mostly acquired, coaching knowledge from informal learning activities, especially when these permitted social interaction. Notably, however, formal coach education courses were also reported relatively frequently as a source of recent knowledge acquisition. Nevertheless, critical justification for and application of, acquired knowledge was largely absent. Based on the findings, we suggest that, before social learning activities such as mentoring schemes and communities of practice are placed at the centre of formalised coach development provision, coach educators must put in place the support structures to better enable coaches to recognise and deal with the potentially mixed influences of the social milieu on coach learning, aiming to ensure that their informal development is sufficiently open-minded, reflective and critical

Sustainable supply chain management in the digitalisation era: The impact of Automated Guided Vehicles

Internationalization of markets and climate change introduce multifaceted challenges for modern supply chain (SC) management in the today's digitalisation era. On the other hand, Automated Guided Vehicle (AGV) systems have reached an age of maturity that allows for their utilization towards tackling dynamic market conditions and aligning SC management focus with sustainability considerations. However, extant research only myopically tackles the sustainability potential of AGVs, focusing more on addressing network optimization problems and less on developing integrated and systematic methodological approaches for promoting economic, environmental and social sustainability. To that end, the present study provides a critical taxonomy of key decisions for facilitating the adoption of AGV systems into SC design and planning, as these are mapped on the relevant strategic, tactical and operational levels of the natural hierarchy. We then propose the Sustainable Supply Chain Cube (S2C2), a conceptual tool that integrates sustainable SC management with the proposed hierarchical decision-making framework for AGVs. Market opportunities and the potential of integrating AGVs into a SC context with the use of the S2C2 tool are further discussed