15,299 research outputs found
OpenKnowledge at work: exploring centralized and decentralized information gathering in emergency contexts
Real-world experience teaches us that to manage emergencies, efficient crisis response coordination is crucial; ICT infrastructures are effective in supporting the people involved in such contexts, by supporting effective ways of interaction. They also should provide innovative means of communication and information management. At present, centralized architectures are mostly used for this purpose; however, alternative infrastructures based on the use of distributed information sources, are currently being explored, studied and analyzed. This paper aims at investigating the capability of a novel approach (developed within the European project OpenKnowledge1) to support centralized as well as decentralized architectures for information gathering. For this purpose we developed an agent-based e-Response simulation environment fully integrated with the OpenKnowledge infrastructure and through which existing emergency plans are modelled and simulated. Preliminary results show the OpenKnowledge capability of supporting the two afore-mentioned architectures and, under ideal assumptions, a comparable performance in both cases
Regional Data Archiving and Management for Northeast Illinois
This project studies the feasibility and implementation options for establishing a regional data archiving system to help monitor
and manage traffic operations and planning for the northeastern Illinois region. It aims to provide a clear guidance to the
regional transportation agencies, from both technical and business perspectives, about building such a comprehensive
transportation information system. Several implementation alternatives are identified and analyzed. This research is carried
out in three phases.
In the first phase, existing documents related to ITS deployments in the broader Chicago area are summarized, and a
thorough review is conducted of similar systems across the country. Various stakeholders are interviewed to collect
information on all data elements that they store, including the format, system, and granularity. Their perception of a data
archive system, such as potential benefits and costs, is also surveyed. In the second phase, a conceptual design of the
database is developed. This conceptual design includes system architecture, functional modules, user interfaces, and
examples of usage. In the last phase, the possible business models for the archive system to sustain itself are reviewed. We
estimate initial capital and recurring operational/maintenance costs for the system based on realistic information on the
hardware, software, labor, and resource requirements. We also identify possible revenue opportunities.
A few implementation options for the archive system are summarized in this report; namely:
1. System hosted by a partnering agency
2. System contracted to a university
3. System contracted to a national laboratory
4. System outsourced to a service provider
The costs, advantages and disadvantages for each of these recommended options are also provided.ICT-R27-22published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe
Research Directions in Information Systems for Humanitarian Logistics
This article systematically reviews the literature on using IT (Information Technology) in humanitarian logistics focusing on disaster relief operations. We first discuss problems in humanitarian relief logistics. We then identify the stage and disaster type for each article as well as the articleâs research methodology and research contribution. Finally, we identify potential future research directions
Unmanned Aerial Systems for Wildland and Forest Fires
Wildfires represent an important natural risk causing economic losses, human
death and important environmental damage. In recent years, we witness an
increase in fire intensity and frequency. Research has been conducted towards
the development of dedicated solutions for wildland and forest fire assistance
and fighting. Systems were proposed for the remote detection and tracking of
fires. These systems have shown improvements in the area of efficient data
collection and fire characterization within small scale environments. However,
wildfires cover large areas making some of the proposed ground-based systems
unsuitable for optimal coverage. To tackle this limitation, Unmanned Aerial
Systems (UAS) were proposed. UAS have proven to be useful due to their
maneuverability, allowing for the implementation of remote sensing, allocation
strategies and task planning. They can provide a low-cost alternative for the
prevention, detection and real-time support of firefighting. In this paper we
review previous work related to the use of UAS in wildfires. Onboard sensor
instruments, fire perception algorithms and coordination strategies are
considered. In addition, we present some of the recent frameworks proposing the
use of both aerial vehicles and Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UV) for a more
efficient wildland firefighting strategy at a larger scale.Comment: A recent published version of this paper is available at:
https://doi.org/10.3390/drones501001
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Centralized versus market-based approaches to mobile task allocation problem: State-of-the-art
Centralized approach has been adopted for finding solutions to resource allocation problems (RAPs) in many real-life applications. On the other hand, market-based approach has been proposed as an alternative to solve the problem due to recent advancement in ICT technologies. In spite of the existence of some efforts to review the pros and cons of each approach in RAPs, the studies cannot be directly applied to specific problem domains like mobile task allocation problem which is characterised with high level of uncertainty on the availability of resources (workers). This paper aims to review existing studies on task allocation problems(TAPs) focusing on those two approaches and their comparison and identify major issues that need to be resolved for comparing the two approaches in mobile task allocation problems. Mobile Task Allocation Problem (MTAP) is defined and its problematic structures are explained in relation with task allocation to mobile workers. Solutions produced by each approach to some applications and variations of MTAP are also discussed and compared. Finally, some future research directions are identified in order to compare both approaches in function of uncertainty emerging from the mobile nature of the MTAP
Dynamic coordination in fleet management systems: Toward smart cyber fleets
Fleet management systems are commonly used to coordinate mobility and delivery services in a broad variety of domains. However, their traditional top-down control architecture becomes a bottleneck in open and dynamic environments, where scalability, proactiveness, and autonomy are becoming key factors for their success. Here, the authors present an abstract event-based architecture for fleet management systems that supports tailoring dynamic control regimes for coordinating fleet vehicles, and illustrate it for the case of medical emergency management. Then, they go one step ahead in the transition toward automatic or driverless fleets, by conceiving fleet management systems in terms of cyber-physical systems, and putting forward the notion of cyber fleets. © 2014 IEEE.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness through the projects âAgreement Technologiesâ (grant CSD2007-0022; CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010), âintelligent Human-Agent Societiesâ (grant TIN2012-36586-C03-02), and âSmart Deliveryâ (grant RTC-2014-1850-4).Peer Reviewe
Semantic reasoning for intelligent emergency response applications
Emergency response applications require the processing of large amounts of data, generated by a diverse set of sensors and devices, in order to provide for an accurate and concise view of the situation at hand. The adoption of semantic technologies allows for the definition of a formal domain model and intelligent data processing and reasoning on this model based on generated device and sensor measurements. This paper presents a novel approach to emergency response applications, such as fire fighting, integrating a formal semantic domain model into an event-based decision support system, which supports reasoning on this model. The developed model consists of several generic ontologies describing concepts and properties which can be applied to diverse context-aware applications. These are extended with emergency response specific ontologies. Additionally, inference on the model performed by a reasoning engine is dynamically synchronized with the rest of the architectural components. This allows to automatically trigger events based on predefined conditions. The proposed ontology and developed reasoning methodology is validated on two scenarios, i.e. (i) the construction of an emergency response incident and corresponding scenario and (ii) monitoring of the state of a fire fighter during an emergency response
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