How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety

With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world

A Bayesian-Based Approach for Public Sentiment Modeling

Public sentiment is a direct public-centric indicator for the success of effective action planning. Despite its importance, systematic modeling of public sentiment remains untapped in previous studies. This research aims to develop a Bayesian-based approach for quantitative public sentiment modeling, which is capable of incorporating uncertainty and guiding the selection of public sentiment measures. This study comprises three steps: (1) quantifying prior sentiment information and new sentiment observations with Dirichlet distribution and multinomial distribution respectively; (2) deriving the posterior distribution of sentiment probabilities through incorporating the Dirichlet distribution and multinomial distribution via Bayesian inference; and (3) measuring public sentiment through aggregating sampled sets of sentiment probabilities with an application-based measure. A case study on Hurricane Harvey is provided to demonstrate the feasibility and applicability of the proposed approach. The developed approach also has the potential to be generalized to model various types of probability-based measures

empathi: An ontology for Emergency Managing and Planning about Hazard Crisis

In the domain of emergency management during hazard crises, having sufficient situational awareness information is critical. It requires capturing and integrating information from sources such as satellite images, local sensors and social media content generated by local people. A bold obstacle to capturing, representing and integrating such heterogeneous and diverse information is lack of a proper ontology which properly conceptualizes this domain, aggregates and unifies datasets. Thus, in this paper, we introduce empathi ontology which conceptualizes the core concepts concerning with the domain of emergency managing and planning of hazard crises. Although empathi has a coarse-grained view, it considers the necessary concepts and relations being essential in this domain. This ontology is available at https://w3id.org/empathi/

Yunus Abdullah - Use of Social Media by Businesses: A New opportunity For Consulting Services by Accounting Firms

In the last 10 years, social media has been restructuring business policies and practices creating new business models. These models are shaping the internal and external aspects of businesses, improving efficiency, and hopefully yielding higher profits while reducing costs. At the same time, social media is being implemented in such internal operations as employee training, recruiting, communication within organizations, and building business loyalty. Businesses are becoming more dependent on social media, making social media an inevitable expectation of effective business models. The millennial are the new generation of adults who are taking over the business world. This generation of young adults grew up using such social media networks as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google +, and LinkedIn. To sustain good relationship with their clients (millennial), businesses must meet people\u27s expectation of the practices and plan their policies accordingly. This paper will examine how the use of social media by businesses is leading to a new service being offered by accounting firms, social media consulting. Experts in internal controls, accounting firms, will have the resources and capacity to offer services in social media consulting. The large accounting firms such as Deloitte, KPMG, Ernst &Young, and PWC have already entered social media consulting market.https://epublications.marquette.edu/mcnair_2013/1006/thumbnail.jp

Mejorando los sistemas rurales de alertas tempranas a través de la integración de OpenBTS y JAIN SLEE

Actualmente existe una tendencia que combina las características de los servicios Web 2.0 y los servicios de telecomunicaciones, conocida como Telco 2.0. Estos servicios convergentes se han aplicado exitosamente en sistemas de alertas tempranas, proporcionando mayor agilidad y flexibilidad en la prestación de servicios. Sin embargo, existen varias limitantes que no permiten el despliegue de servicios convergentes en las zonas rurales de países en vía de desarrollo, como la falta de disponibilidad de una ngn (Next Generation Network), la ausencia de tecnología avanzada y la falta de recursos para inversión. Este artículo propone una arquitectura de integración entre jain slee y OpenBTS para sistemas rurales de alertas tempranas. Se evalúa el prototipo implementado con un caso de estudio específico al enviar advertencias Telco 2.0 a los cafeteros colombianos cuyas plantaciones puedan verse afectadas por la roya, una de las enfermedades más peligrosas para la producción de café.Nowadays exists a trend that combines the features of Web 2.0 services and telecommunications services known as Telco 2.0. These converged services have been successfully implemented in early warning systems providing improved agility and flexibility in service delivery. However the deployment of converged services in rural zones of developing countries presents several constraints which do not allow to provide this kind of services, as the unavailability of a Next Generation Network (ngn), absence of advanced technology and lack of investment resources. This paper proposes a jain slee and OpenBTS integration architecture for early warning systems in rural zones. The implemented prototype is evaluated with a specific case study involving the deployment of Telco 2.0 warnings in Colombian coffee plantations which may be affected by coffee rust, one of the most threatening diseases in coffee production