Delivering elder-care environments utilizing TV-channel based mechanisms

In this paper, we present a smart environment for elderly. What makes the development of such system challenging is that the concept of smartness for elderly brings to the extreme the idea of invisibility of the technology. In our experience, elders are well-disposed to new technologies, provided that those will not require significant changes - namely, they are invisible - to their habits. Starting from this consideration, 200 caregivers responses were collected by questionnaire, so as to better understand elders' needs and habits. A system was subsequently developed allowing elders to access a number of "modern web services" as standard TV channels: at channel 43 there is the health status, at channel 45 the photos of the family, at 46 the agenda of the week, just to mention few of the available services. The content of such services is automatically generated by the smart devices in the environment and is managed by the caregivers (e.g., family members) by simple web apps. Fourteen families were asked to install the system in their house. The results of these experiments confirm that the proposed system is considered effective and user-friendly by elders

MobileTrust: Secure Knowledge Integration in VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANET) are becoming popular due to the emergence of the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence applications. In such networks, secure resource sharing functionality is accomplished by incorporating trust schemes. Current solutions adopt peer-to-peer technologies that can cover the large operational area. However, these systems fail to capture some inherent properties of VANETs, such as fast and ephemeral interaction, making robust trust evaluation of crowdsourcing challenging. In this article, we propose MobileTrust—a hybrid trust-based system for secure resource sharing in VANETs. The proposal is a breakthrough in centralized trust computing that utilizes cloud and upcoming 5G technologies to provide robust trust establishment with global scalability. The ad hoc communication is energy-efficient and protects the system against threats that are not countered by the current settings. To evaluate its performance and effectiveness, MobileTrust is modelled in the SUMO simulator and tested on the traffic features of the small-size German city of Eichstatt. Similar schemes are implemented in the same platform to provide a fair comparison. Moreover, MobileTrust is deployed on a typical embedded system platform and applied on a real smart car installation for monitoring traffic and road-state parameters of an urban application. The proposed system is developed under the EU-founded THREAT-ARREST project, to provide security, privacy, and trust in an intelligent and energy-aware transportation scenario, bringing closer the vision of sustainable circular economy

Improving health and public safety through knowledge management

This paper reports on KM in public healthcare and public safety. It reflects the experiences of the author as a CIO (Chief Information Officer) in both industries in Australia and New Zealand. There are commonalities in goals and challenges in KM in both industries. In the case of public safety a goal of modern policing theory is to move more towards intelligence-driven practice. That means interventions based upon research and analysis of information. In healthcare the goals include investment in capacity based upon knowledge of healthcare needs, evidence-based service planning and care delivery, capture of information and provision of knowledge at the point-of-care and evaluation of outcomes. The issue of knowledge management is explored from the perspectives of the user of information and from the discipline of Information Technology and its application to healthcare and public safety. Case studies are discussed to illustrate knowledge management and limiting or enabling factors. These factors include strategy, architecture, standards, feed-back loops, training, quality processes, and social factors such as expectations, ownership of systems and politics

Designing Mobile Applications for Emergency Response: Citizens Acting as Human Sensors

When an emergency occurs, citizens can be a helpful support for the operation centers involved in the response activities. As witnesses to a crisis, they initially can share updated and detailed information about what is going on. Moreover, thanks to the current technological evolution people are able to quickly and easily gather rich information and transmit it through different communication channels. Indeed, modern mobile devices embed several sensors such as GPS receivers, Wi-Fi, accelerometers or cameras that can transform users into well-equipped human sensors. For these reasons, emergency organizations and small and medium enterprises have demonstrated a growing interest in developing smart applications for reporting any exceptional circumstances. In this paper, we present a practical study about this kind of applications for identifying both limitations and common features.This work is supported by the project emerCien grant funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitivity (TIN2012-09687)

The Concept of Human Security as a Basis for the Application of Big Data Concept in Establishment of Early Warning System for Crisis Management in the Republic of Croatia

We live in a globalised world characterized by constant crises in numerous social and geographical areas. Political instability, climate change, overpopulation, uncontrolled migration, poor governance, crime, as well as many other factors create the circumstances from which crises can develop. Each crisis given its causes and possible consequences requires different approaches and response systems. This research focuses on considering modern technological solutions that have the purpose of alerting and protecting individuals from risks and threats that can lead to their suffering, caused by natural, technical-technological and anthropogenic crisis events. It also aims to link the theory of human security and the big data concept and present their application through the development of the early warning system for crisis management in the Republic of Croatia. This research has significant value because it analyses and describes the establishment of a particular system in the world

Using location-based services to improve mental health interventions

Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Geospatial TechnologiesThe rapid developments in the functionalities of smartphones and technological innovations play a vital role in providing location-based services in healthcare. A mental health sensor-based software platform has been developed by the Geospatial Technologies research group (Geotec), consisting of an application generation framework that offers basic geospatial building blocks (location tracking, trajectory recording, geo-fencing), communication building blocks (notifications) and a basic visualization of collected data for therapists. The framework has been successfully tested for building an application to treat agoraphobia, addiction, and depression, using location-based notifications. However, defining the places of interest for a patient is addressed to a limited extent only. Thus, therapists have difficulties of identifying and defining multiple places of interest, and the generated apps were therefore mostly limited to single places of interest, which were manually defined. Hence, they are difficult to use in larger areas. This thesis aims to use a location-based service to support therapists in defining places of interest, based on location and place categories. The work is carried out as an extension of the SYMPTOMS platform, and it allows therapists to define multiple places of interest automatically and for larger areas. The added value of the approach (in terms of automation, ease of use, and universally usable of therapies) by the location-based services in improving mental health interventions is evaluated. As a result, the application was found to be usable with SUS score of 91.875 and useful for therapists to define multiple places of interest at the same time which simplifies the configuration process and makes therapies universally usable. Reproducibility self-assessment (https://osf.io/j97zp/): 2, 2, 1, 2, 2 (input data, pre-processing, methods, computational environment, results)

Notifying Civilians in Time - Disaster Warning Systems Based on a Multilaterally Secure, Economic, and Mobile Infastructure

The spread of mobile communication equipment offers new opportunities for disaster management referring to civilians. At the same time, location based services are regarded as privacy invading, and are regulated in many countries by specific legislation. We analyze the requirements of a LBS-based disaster management scenario that enables the timely notification of civilians. In addition, we propose a solution for building a privacy-friendly, multilaterally secure disaster management infrastructure based on robust mobile phone infrastructures with high reachability of citizens. We will also point out additional features based on mobile networks. Traditionally, disaster management is a government domain. We will propose another option to implement and run disaster management. We analyze in how far an early warning system could be profitable for the insurance sector. Our comments will sketch that it is possible to reach a large number of persons, avoid insurance damage, and save costs in disaster warning systems. This work was supported by the IST PRIME project; however, it represents the view of the authors only

DESIGNING DISTRIBUTED CONTROLLING TESTBED SYSTEM FOR SUPPLY CHAIN AND LOGISTICS IN AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

The arrival of the era of autonomous robots is indisputable. In this paper, innovations in the distributed control systems realized by autonomous guided vehicles in the automotive industry are provided as proof of concept. The main goal of the considered distributed control system design is to bring all-in-one dependent and independent VDA 5050 compliant robots that are easily configurable and manageable with the web-based high-quality user interface responsive business-critical application. Special attention is paid to applying a platform to manage all autonomous IoT based robots in one seamless system. In addition, a "single point of truth" as one of the main issues of modern distributed controlled systems has been considered.