From Behind the Lens: Police Officer Perceptions as Body-Worn Cameras are Introduced Into the New York City Police Department

In 2014, the U.S. District Court ordered the New York City Police Department (NYPD) to test the use of body-worn cameras (BWCs) after finding that their stop, question, and frisk practices violated the rights of some minority New Yorkers. The ruling in Floyd v. City of New York (2013) mandated the recording of future interactions to determine if behavior would be influenced. A total of 54 volunteer officers wore a BWC for a 1-year period and were assigned to six precincts, all selected due to the high frequency of stop, question, and frisk reports prepared by patrol officers. This research examined patrol officer perceptions of the BWC from the lens of the NYPD’s two-officer patrol car. The study revealed unique access to 54 volunteer officers and their non-camera-wearing patrol partners, as they recorded citizen interactions during this pilot period. Further, this study examined the extent officers were open to the adoption of BWCs, providing some of the first-ever evidence for or against claims of increased transparency, accountability and improvements in both officer and citizen behavior during encounters. The respondents’ demographic data were analyzed to determine any relationship with particular viewpoints toward the BWC. The results suggest that patrol officers are in favor of the adoption of a BWC program, and that the BWC had little to no effect on their patrol partnerships. Results also suggest that officers felt comfortable wearing BWCs, and that regardless of their age, gender, years of police experience or years partnering, the existence of the BWC made for better police service in New York City

An examination of the feasibility of automated license plate recognition technology for parking lot deployment

In order to assess the feasibility of ALPR technology in Canada, a pilot project using the technology was conducted in Surrey, British Columbia, Canada in 2006. As part of this larger pilot project, one unmarked police vehicle equipped with ALPR technology was deployed to a number of major parking lots in Surrey. The purpose of this current study was to examine the data from this one car to analyze the quantity, quality, and location of „hits‟ to determine whether it was a viable and useful strategy to deploy ALPR-enabled police vehicles to parking lots. Given the proportion of „hits‟ in parking lots, it is recommended that ALPR not be deployed to parking lots alone. While there may be a benefit to deploying ALPR-enabled vehicles to parking lots between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m., it would appear that the technology might be more useful along high traffic corridors

Smart Cities in Asia

This open access book examines different aspects of smart cities, including technology, urban development, sustainable development, finance, and privacy and data protection. It also covers a wide range of jurisdictions in Asia-Pacific: Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. The book consists of two main parts. The first part includes general chapters that conceptualize smart cities and provide an overview of these cities’ problems such as privacy and data protection concern. The general chapters also discuss the role of public and private sectors in developing and governing smart cities. The second part encompasses country-specific chapters that examine the concepts addressed in the general chapters in practice by analyzing several specific smart city projects. This book provides researchers and practitioners with some knowledge of a smart city and its implication in the Asia context. The book is designed with some general chapters updating the literature on smart cities for readers who are interested in an overview of this concept. Audiences who are curious about how smart cities are perceived and implemented in some Asian jurisdictions are benefited from country-specific chapters. The book is also helpful to general audiences whose interests lay at the intersection of law, governance, and technology

Developing an Integrated Traffic Corridor in Santa Fe through Intelligent Transportation Infrastructure

Santa Fe, NM experienced an increase in traffic congestion and accidents. Current traffic infrastructure is in need of improvement. This project inventoried traffic infrastructure around Santa Fe and investigated methods for calculating travel times through the city, with the goal of analyzing the implementation of an integrated traffic corridor. The project concluded that using INRIX data for travel times was reliable and that implementing an integrated traffic corridor in Santa Fe had a benefit-cost ratio of 75:1. Our results will provide accurate travel times to the public via dynamic message signs and potentially help the city of Santa Fe implement an integrated corridor in future years to help reduce traffic congestion and accidents

Data Analytics in advancing Accounting Profession and Business Information for Decision Making

The nature of the risks and opportunities facing business has changed over time. Much of the global value today is more of technology service and knowledge based than it was 40 years ago. The study examines data analytics in advancing accounting profession and business information for decision making. Two specific objectives guided the study, the study used a survey research design approach, and the population consists of 300 respondents made up of 50 each from academics, financial analysts, accountants, business owners, investors and big data analysts. Descriptive statistics was used to analyses the data while Z test was used to test the hypotheses. The findings from the study shows that the two hypotheses tested has a high acceptance degrees level of an average percentage of (92.4%) and (86.98%) respectively, this goes to shows that the issue of big data analytics in advancing accounting profession and business information for decision making is very much germen. This also was observed in the results of Z-Test of the Standard Deviation of (0.412) and (0.303) respectively, which leads to the acceptance of the two alternatives hypotheses and rejecting of the null hypotheses. The study concluded that big data analytics improves and help business organizations take informed decisions to enhance their operational efficiency, also, that the world accepted the slogan that data is the new oil. Those who are able to gain out of that will remain in the business ie, survival of the fittest. This is the implication to the new millennium environment where the professional accountant finds itself. Therefore, should be able to deal with the complex procedures, so that the accountant will be a big data analytics professional too. The study recommended among others that all the stakeholders (academics, financial analysts, professional association bodies, accountants, business owners, investors and government) should be involves in the necessity of teaching big data and business analyses in management sciences in our higher institutions to promote students' knowledge, the continues enlightenment, holding workshops, training and retraining  courses for researchers and academics of the importance of analyzing big data and how to process, store, manage and use the analyzed data in the financial and accounting field, since using big data can lead to better disclosure which in turn  enhance investor trust

Use of Drone and Infrared Camera for a Campus Building Envelope Study

Presently, there are concerns that buildings in the USA under-performs in terms of energy efficiency when compared with the original design specifications. A significant percentage of the energy loss in these buildings is associated with the building’s envelope. This study provides a qualitative and analytical understanding of the R-value, which indicates the thermal performance of the elements that make up a building envelope. Infrared thermography is used as a methodology to assess the thermal performance of envelopes of ten buildings on East Tennessee State University Campus. A Fluke Ti25 infrared hand-held camera and a DJI phantom-2 drone mounted with FLIR Vue Pro infrared camera were used for data collection. Data analyses were carried out using ‘Smartview’ and ‘FLIR Reporter Pro’ software. The data analyses revealed energy loss, insulation deficiencies, the associated energy costs of the inefficiencies and the potential savings that could result from correcting these deficiencies in the evaluated building’s envelopes

Development and Identification of Metrics to Predict the Impact of Dimension Reduction Techniques on Classical Machine Learning Algorithms for Still Highway Images

We are witnessing an influx of data - images, texts, video, etc. Their high dimensionality and large volume make it challenging to apply machine learning to obtain actionable insight. This thesis explores several aspects pertaining to dimensional reduction: dimension reduction methods, metrics to measure distortion, image preprocessing, etc. Faster training and inference time on reduced data and smaller models which can be deployed on commodity hardware are a critical advantage of dimension reduction. For this study, classical machine learning methods were explored owing to their solid mathematical foundation and interpretability. The dataset used is a time series of images from several camera feeds observing the traffic, weather and road conditions along highways. The time-series nature of dataset gives rise to interesting questions which are investigated in this work. For instance, can machine learning models trained on past data be used on future camera feed data? This is highly desirable and yet difficult due to the changing weather, road conditions, traffic conditions and scenery. Can dimension reduction models obtained from past data be used for reducing dimensionality of future data? This thesis also examines the difference between the performance of machine learning methods before and after application of dimension reduction. It tests some existing metrics to measure quality of dimension-reduced data set and introduces several new ones. It also examines the application of image pre-processing methods to boost the performance of classifiers. The classification performance with and without random sampling has been studied as well

Inefficiently Automated Law Enforcement

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Analyzing the dynamics between organizational culture and change : a case study of China Central Television (CCTV) in transition

The Thesis sets out to analyze CCTV's transition from 1979-2003 with a special focus on its most influential reform entitled Producer Responsibility System (PRS). In order to present a real picture of CCTV's organizational culture, this research uses multiple research methods to synthesize valuable contributions from two schools of organizational culture theory driven by different research orientations. Data collection methods include a6 months' ethnographic research project inside CCTV. The research has two main research findings. First, following the introduction of PRS, the reform process has been uneven. A split has emerged at CCTV between an 'inner' and an 'outer' management circles, with very different organizational cultures and responses to organizational change. Second, the research identifies four logics which have shaped CCTV's organizational culture: Party logic, Commercial logic, Professional logic and Social and ethnic logic. CCTV's transition has been defined by a complex interaction and negotiation between these four logics. This thesis summarizes CCTV's organizational change from 1979-2003 into three stages, from a 'frozen' status to 'change by exception' and then to 'incremental change'. Analysis of the relationship between these four logics suggests that to achieve a real transition from Party mouthpiece to modem media enterprise, CCTV needs to achieve a new 'paradigm change'. The key to the success of this 'paradigm change' will be a systematic reconstruction of CCTV's organizational culture based on the central objective of building media professionalism. The single case study places some limits on the generalizability of the findings but other Chinese media businesses share a similar economic, historical and cultural context. The problems at CCTV can thus be seen to be representative general issues of the Chinese media industry in transition