An infrastructure for delivering geospatial data to field users

Federal agencies collect and analyze data to carry out their missions. A significant portion of these activities requires geospatial data collection in the field. Models for computer-assisted survey information collection are still largely based on the client-server paradigm with symbolic data representation. Little attention has been given to digital geospatial information resources, or emerging mobile computing environments. This paper discusses an infrastructure designs for delivering geospatial data users in a mobile field computing environment. Mobile field computing environments vary widely, and generally offer extremely limited computing resources, visual display, and bandwidth relative to the usual resources required for distributed geospatial data. Key to handling heterogeneity in the field is an infrastructure design that provides flexibility in the location of computing tasks and returns information in forms appropriate for the field computing environment. A view agent based infrastructure has been developed with several components. Wrappers are used for encapsulating not only the data sources, but the mobile field environment as well, localizing the details associated with heterogeneity in data sources and field environments. Within the boundaries of the wrappers, mediators and object-oriented views implemented as mobile agents work in a relatively homogeneous environment to generate query results. Mediators receive a request from the user application via the field wrapper, and generate a sequence of mobile view agents to search for, retrieve, and process data. The internal infrastructure environment is populated with computation servers to provide a location for processing, especially for combining data from multiple locations. Each computation server has a local object-oriented data warehouse equipped with a set of data warehouse tools for working with geospatial data. Since the prospect of query reuse is likely for a field worker, we store the final and intermediate results in the data warehouse, allowing the warehouse to act as an active cache. Even when field computing capacity is ample, the warehouse is used to process data so that network traffic can be minimized

Best Practices in Omnichannel Customer Experience Design for Luxury Retail Consumers

This thesis will investigate how luxury brands create a unique shopping experience through omnichannel integration. With continuous improvements in technology, consumers have a variety of ways to view products and complete transactions. These omnichannel offerings provide shoppers with a seamless retail experience. However, tension arises when luxury brands try to implement omnichannel strategies. This is because omnichannel typically increases brand availability, or the perception of it (Kapferer et. al. 2012). The focus of this thesis will be on three brands: Burberry, Hermès, and Chanel and how they utilize omnichannel integration to enhance the shopping experience all while trying to maintain a certain level of exclusivity. A unique framework is utilized to analyze their strategies, investigating whether their omnichannel initiatives enhance the dream factor or facilitate sales.https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155359/1/Grace Drettmann_Written Report.pd

Guidelines for e-reference library services for distance learners and other remote users.

Until recently the provision of distance education was undertaken mainly by various professional associations and commercial agencies offering vocational training. Library provision to meet the needs of registered students was limited. Over the past 30 years, however, the delivery of higher and further education to students studying at a distance has become a core part of the activity of many academic institutions: a few specialist higher education institutions such as the Open Universities established in Britain and India, and some conventional universities that established teaching centres away from their main campuses

New neighborhood, old habits? Delivery preferences of residents in new development areas and their assessment of alternative parcel logistics concepts: a case study of Berlin

Various alternative solutions for sustainable last-mile parcel deliveries have been piloted and partially put into operation in Europe in the past decade. However, these delivery concepts have mainly been considered in inner-city areas. There are a few examples of the application of these concepts in peripheral urban areas, where new housing is being built to accommodate high population pressure. However, it is unclear whether the delivery preferences of residents in new neighbourhoods differ from those of the population average. This research conducted a case study in the western outskirts of Berlin, examining two newly built neighbourhoods and one existing residential area. Results from three survey waves of residents (N=645) show that conventional doorstep delivery is preferred by 80% of the respondents. Nonetheless, there is a high willingness to use alternative delivery options, and respondents see benefits in climate-friendly delivery methods. This research also examines the willingness to pay for alternative parcel logistics concepts, which seems to be too low at the moment (at around €1 per shipment) to compensate for the additional costs of an operational change. However, the results also show an increasing awareness of and preferences for new delivery concepts, thus providing practical implications for planners and logistics operators alike

The development of a needs assessment of pediatric occupational therapists: learning needs for competency in mainland China

The growth and learning needs of pediatric occupational therapists working in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) have not been fully researched or documented at this time. Without a formal occupational therapy association, the communication and planning to identify these professional development needs can be challenging. WFOT resources available for non-member countries combine with some of the traditional occupational therapy resources and initiatives from neighboring member associations. Hong Kong and Taiwan provide practices and materials that reflect Chinese culture and assist in promoting the profession (Lin, 2014; Sinclair, 2015). Language nuances, historical and political issues can make direct transference to the mainland of China problematic. These activities help support occupational therapy as a distinct healthcare profession within these regions of the PRC but may have barriers to direct application in mainland China. A formal needs assessment of the occupational therapists has not yet been undertaken. The steps to develop a pediatric needs assessment are presented in this paper. Research confirms a facilitated needs assessment can assist in determining and understanding learning needs, preferences, patterns, and future topics (Newcomer, Hatry, & Wholey, 2015) for occupational therapists and the groups that provide them professional development training in mainland China. There are three distinct stakeholder groups identified for this research project: pediatric occupational therapists, professional development producers, and families of children receiving therapy services in mainland China. The research team works collaboratively with identified stakeholder partners to identify the training and growth needs of the pediatric occupational therapist to provide the required educational recommendations that will foster competency in practice. Both the occupational therapists and the providers of professional development activities gain a better understanding through participation in the program evaluation processes of surveying learning needs in the context of international evidence-based competency content. The implementation and dissemination of the program verifies, validates and provides a synthesis of perspectives and establishes a connection for the client’s input to the therapy services. The program evaluation summary recommendations are hypothesized to have an impact on improving the perception of the quality of pediatric occupational therapy services received by caregivers and families in mainland China

Historical origins of nasa's launch operations center to july 1, 1962

Historical origins of NASA Launch Operations Center to July 1, 196

Service-Oriented Architecture for Patient-Centric eHealth Solutions

The world is in shortage of about 7.2 million healthcare workers in 2013, and the figure is estimated to grow to 12.9 million by 2035, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). On the other hand, the median age of the world’s population was predicted to increase from 26.6 years in 2000 to 37.3 years in 2050, and then to 45.6 years in 2100. Thus further escalating the need for new and efficient healthcare solutions. Telehealth, telecare, and Ambient Assisted Living (AAL) solutions promise to make healthcare services more sustainable, and to enable patients to live more independently and with a higher quality of life at their homes. Smart homes will host intelligent, connected devices that integrate with the Internet of Things (IoT) to form the basis of new and advanced healthcare systems. However, a number of challenges needs to be addressed before this vision can be actualised. These challenges include flexible integration, rapid service development and deployment, mobility, unified abstraction, scalability and high availability, security and privacy. This thesis presents an integration architecture based on Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) that enables novel healthcare services to be developed rapidly by utilising capabilities of various devices in the patients’ surroundings. Special attention is given to a service broker component, the Information Integration Platform (IIP), that has been developed to bridge communications between everyday objects and Internet-based services following the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) principles. It exposes its functionalities through a set of RESTfulWeb services, and maintains a unified information model which enables various applications to access in a uniform way. The IIP breaks the traditional vertical “silo” approach of integration, and handles information dissemination task between information providers and consumers by adopting a publish/subscribe messaging pattern. The feasibility of the IIP solution is evaluated both through prototyping and testing the platform’s representative healthcare services, e.g., remote health monitoring and emergency alarms. Experiments conducted on the IIP reveal how performance aspects are affected by needs for security, privacy, high availability, and scalability

Beyond the Library Collections: Proceedings of the 2022 Erasmus Staff Training Week at ULiège Library

No library can buy or hold everything its patrons need. At a certain point, librarians need to pool their resources and collaborate to provide access to what they don’t have: Collaboration and partnership, centralized and shared collection storage, digitization projects, interlibrary loan and resource sharing, purchase on demand, PDA and EBA are notably key to success.The 2022 edition of the Erasmus Mobility Staff Training week organized at the University of Liège Library focused on services, projects and policies that libraries can deploy and promote to increase and ease access to materials that do not belong to their print or electronic holdings. More than 20 librarians, managers, and researchers in library science share their experiences and visions in this book