Human-centred workplace: Re-finding physical document in an office workplace

Today’s typical busy schedules make it difficult for people to keep track, organize and search the documents they keep in their own office workplace. The consequences of less organized offices are often that people lose more time in searching for paper documents. To avoid the consequences of losing documents, some archive their physical documents according to their use and others place documents in highly visible areas. These strategies offer some comfort when searching the document, but the practice demands people to be somewhat organized. Even digital support for finding physical documents typically requires some organisation and order has observed. In this thesis, we describe a project that created a system, which does not require people to be orderly and aims at freeing people from the time-consuming job of sorting or sequencing their documents. The system generates and prints passive tags (Quick Response Code) on documents and uses cameras in the office to track changes in the document locations. The thesis describes the design, implementation and initial evaluation of the system ‘Human-centred workplace (HCW).

Semantic discovery and reuse of business process patterns

Patterns currently play an important role in modern information systems (IS) development and their use has mainly been restricted to the design and implementation phases of the development lifecycle. Given the increasing significance of business modelling in IS development, patterns have the potential of providing a viable solution for promoting reusability of recurrent generalized models in the very early stages of development. As a statement of research-in-progress this paper focuses on business process patterns and proposes an initial methodological framework for the discovery and reuse of business process patterns within the IS development lifecycle. The framework borrows ideas from the domain engineering literature and proposes the use of semantics to drive both the discovery of patterns as well as their reuse

Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning

This reprint is a reprint of the articles that appeared in Sensors' (MDPI) Special Issue on “Sensors and Systems for Indoor Positioning". The published original contributions focused on systems and technologies to enable indoor applications

Sensor Networks and Their Applications: Investigating the Role of Sensor Web Enablement

The Engineering Doctorate (EngD) was conducted in conjunction with BT Research on state-of-the-art Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) projects. The first area of work is a literature review of WSN project applications, some of which the author worked on as a BT Researcher based at the world renowned Adastral Park Research Labs in Suffolk (2004-09). WSN applications are examined within the context of Machine-to-Machine (M2M); Information Networking (IN); Internet/Web of Things (IoT/WoT); smart home and smart devices; BT’s 21st Century Network (21CN); Cloud Computing; and future trends. In addition, this thesis provides an insight into the capabilities of similar external WSN project applications. Under BT’s Sensor Virtualization project, the second area of work focuses on building a Generic Architecture for WSNs with reusable infrastructure and ‘infostructure’ by identifying and trialling suitable components, in order to realise actual business benefits for BT. The third area of work focuses on the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards and their Sensor Web Enablement (SWE) initiative. The SWE framework was investigated to ascertain its potential as a component of the Generic Architecture. BT’s SAPHE project served as a use case. BT Research’s experiences of taking this traditional (vertical) stove-piped application and creating SWE compliant services are described. The author’s findings were originally presented in a series of publications and have been incorporated into this thesis along with supplementary WSN material from BT Research projects. SWE 2.0 specifications are outlined to highlight key improvements, since work began at BT with SWE 1.0. The fourth area of work focuses on Complex Event Processing (CEP) which was evaluated to ascertain its potential for aggregating and correlating the shared project sensor data (‘infostructure’) harvested and for enabling data fusion for WSNs in diverse domains. Finally, the conclusions and suggestions for further work are provided

Exploring socio-technical relations : perceptions of Saskatoon Transit’s go-pass smartcard and electronic fare system

It is essential to consider what new technologies mean to the people who use them and the ways in which they are experienced and used. In the context of public transit services in Saskatoon, understanding what the recent changes from a manual to an electronic/automated system means to users and the broader community is critically important to the overall assessment of the service. Investigating users’ lived experiences and interpretations of technical artifacts is valuable to understanding socio-technical relations or the embodied interactions of humans and machines as “technologies-in-practice.” Research into socio-technical relations has primarily focused on large scale technological systems and expert practices while less attention has been paid to “seemingly mundane” technologies or technical artifacts routinely used in everyday life. At the same time, this preoccupation has overshadowed or downplayed the importance of exploring users’ experiences and interpretations of technologies. The goal of this research is to contribute to the sociological understanding of mundane technologies-in-practice and socio-technical relations more broadly. In order to gain insight into this relationship, this thesis focuses on bus riders’ (users) and the community’s perceptions of the Go-Pass smartcard and electronic fare system used by the public transit service in Saskatoon. The perspectives of Go-Pass users and community stakeholders (n=15) were investigated using qualitative semi-structured interviews to gain deeper understanding into the complex relationship between users and technologies. Drawing from Science and Technology Studies (STS) and the sociology of technology literature, I propose that a sociomaterial theoretical perspective following a mutual shaping framework offers insight into socio-technical relations. Both critical and feminist technology studies literature has been helpful for developing an understanding of the wider social and political contexts of technical use which underscores this study. In particular, the conceptual insights of “socio-technical assemblages” (Suchman, 2007) and “intra-action” (Barad, 2003) have been helpful tools for exploring agency, subjectivity and power which is key to uncovering the intricacies of socio-technical relations and human-machine interaction. The four main themes emerging from this study were: 1) shifting human-machine roles and relationships; 2) the socio-technical construction of the bus rider; 3) configuring users’ and technologies; and 4) structural issues and social justice implications of technologies-in-practice. The findings demonstrate that the use of this new system is mutually co-constructed by both social and technical factors whereby both the users and the technology inform perceptions and use. There was also the unexpected connection between users’ everyday situated uses, experiences and interpretations of the Go-Pass technologies to wider social-political contexts. There were a number of issues raised in relation to the implementation of the Go-Pass system which had negative effects or unintended social and technical consequences particularly for those most marginalized economically. At the same time, there were important benefits and positive effects on riders’ quality of life and use of the service. Finally, participants’ perspectives have contributed to understanding what the Go-Pass technologies mean to them, the ways in which they are used in practice and the ways in which the mixing of people and seemingly mundane technologies shape relations in everyday settings

Privacy-invading technologies : safeguarding privacy, liberty & security in the 21st century

With a focus on the growing development and deployment of the latest technologies that threaten privacy, the PhD dissertation argues that the US and UK legal frameworks, in their present form, are inadequate to defend privacy and other civil liberties against the intrusive capabilities of body scanners, CCTV microphones and loudspeakers, human-implantable microchips, and other privacy-intrusive technologies. While there are benefits derived from the use of these technologies in terms of public security, for instance, these benefits do not necessarily need to come at the expense of privacy and liberty overall. The interests of privacy, liberty and security can be balanced and safeguarded concurrently. In order to accomplish this worthy objective, new laws must further regulate directly and proactively the design and manufacture of these privacy-intrusive technologies in the first place, rather than only regulate their use or operation. Manufacturer-level rules/regulations should, therefore, require the incorporation of the fundamental privacy principles through what is known as __Privacy by Design__.LEI Universiteit LeidenEffective Protection of Fundamental Rights in a pluralist worl

Wireless Patient Monitoring over 4G Network

The purpose of this thesis is to explain how remote patient monitoring systems work over the 4G network using wearable sensors and corresponding interface devices. Gathered data from the sensing devices are carried over the Monitoring Wireless Sensor Network to the more elaborate 4G Network where the data is then relayed to the interface devices for reading, storage, interpretation and effective utilization. This thesis describes the underlying technologies and principles of sensors and sensor net-works, the concept of the 4G Network and how it integrates with the sensor network. The goal of Wireless Patient Monitoring over the 4G Network is link the spatial gap that exist between Healthcare and ICT, this will in turn enhance patients care efficiency while cutting costs, maximising profits and increase security while monitoring patients. This thesis is important in that it gives the reader an overview and basic idea of how a wireless patient monitoring system works over the 4G Network. An increasing number of ICT firms, healthcare and medical institutions are investing heavily on remote patient monitoring systems technologies and this thesis provides the reader the insight of how such systems work and how they can be implemented