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/

Human Resources for Health Migration: global policy responses, initiatives, and emerging issues

This report identifies and maps contemporary global policy responses to, and initiatives on, international HRH migration, with particular reference to low‐income source countries. It reports on a systematic review and analysis of the responses and initiatives of twelve multilateral organisations and global fora: European Union; Global Forum on Migration and Development; Global Health Workforce Alliance; International Labour Organization; International Organization for Migration; Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development; Pan‐American Health Organization; UN Global Migration Group; UN High‐Level Dialogue on Migration and Development; World Bank; World Health Organization; and the World Trade Organization. The report documents how these global policy actors are presently engaging with the HRH migration field through their activities, initiatives and policy responses. It situates this engagement within global policy initiatives spanning health, migration and development. In addition to reviewing and mapping current initiatives and policy responses and their outcomes, the report identifies emerging issues, upcoming promising initiatives and global policy scenarios

ILR Faculty Research in Progress, 2016-2017

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.ResearchinProgress_2016_17.pdf: 38 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

ILR Research in Progress 2013-14

The production of scholarly research continues to be one of the primary missions of the ILR School. During a typical academic year, ILR faculty members published or had accepted for publication over 25 books, edited volumes, and monographs, 170 articles and chapters in edited volumes, numerous book reviews. In addition, a large number of manuscripts were submitted for publication, presented at professional association meetings, or circulated in working paper form. Our faculty's research continues to find its way into the very best industrial relations, social science and statistics journals.Research_in_Progress_2013_14.pdf: 54 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Social Effectiveness of Tertiary Education for Adults in Mid-life

No abstract available

Between North and South: The EU-ACP Migration Relationship

Before the turn of the century, international migration had an extremely low profile on the global development agenda. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), for example, make no mention at all of international migration. Although a number of studies have attempted to “mainstream” migration into the MDGs after the fact, it is still largely ignored in official assessments of progress made towards them (Usher, 2005; Crush and Frayne 2007; Skeldon, 2008). According to the United Nations (UN), the silence surrounding migration in the MDGs was because it was too divisive and sensitive an issue between developed and developing countries (United Nations Population Fund [UNFPA], 2005). At the time, cooperation between North and South on the governance of migration more broadly seemed highly unlikely. Nation states in the North increasingly believed that their territorial sovereignty was under threat from irregular migration from the South, and states in the South saw their development prospects undermined by a crippling “brain drain” to the North. Repeated efforts by the UN to convene an international conference on migration in the late 1990s were unsuccessful. Since 2000, however, international migration has moved to the top of the global governance agenda and a whole range of bilateral and multilateral partnerships have taken shape (Koser, 2010; Newland, 2010; Betts, 2011; Hansen, Koehler and Money, 2011; Koslowski, 2011; Kunz, Lavenex and Pannizon, 2011). This process began with various initiatives within the UN, notably the 2003 Doyle Report to Secretary-General Kofi Annan and his appointment of a special rapporteur on migration and development. Outside the UN, discussions about international migration gathered momentum with the appointment of the Global Commission on International Migration (GCIM) and the first UN High Level Dialogue (HLD) on International Migration and Development in 2006 (GCIM, 2005; UN, 2006). In 2007, the first meeting of the new Global Forum on Migration and Development (GFMD) was convened in Brussels. This was followed by annual meetings in the Philippines in 2008; Greece in 2009; Mexico in 2010; Switzerland in 2011; and Mauritius in 2012. The GFMD is a state‐led, voluntary, non‐binding consultative process open to all member states and observer states of the UN (Omelianuk, 2008; 2012; Newland, 2012). In 2009, the major UN agencies, plus the International Organization for Migration (IOM), combined to form the Global Migration Group (GMG) with a brief to “promote the wider application of all relevant international and regional instruments and norms relating to migration, and to encourage the adoption of more coherent, comprehensive and better coordinated approaches to the issue of international migration” (GMG, 2012). In 2010, the GMG issued a handbook for states with recommendations on how to mainstream migration into their development planning and vice-versa (GMG, 2010). Another notable feature of the “new optimism” around international migration is the growth of cooperation on the issue within and between regional blocs of states. Regional consultative processes (RCPs) on migration, for example, now exist in many parts of the globe (Thouez and Channac, 2006; Hansen, 2010). While the original focus of many RCPs was migration management, issues of migration and development grew increasingly on their agendas. In Southern Africa, for example, the Migration Dialogue for Southern Africa (MIDSA) was founded by IOM and SAMP as a non-binding consultative forum for Southern African Development Community (SADC) states in 2002 and meets on an annual basis. Originally focussed on regional cooperation in managed migration, the MIDSA agenda has been increasingly shaped by migration and development issues. In addition to the RCPs, geographically dispersed blocs of states also moved migration and development higher on their lists of priorities: these include the Commonwealth, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the African Union (AU) and the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group of States (AU, 2006a; AU, 2006b; ACP, 2010; Gagnon and Khoudour- Castéras, 2011; de Boeck, 2012; Melde, 2012; OECD, 2012; Ramphal Institute, 2012). The most recent trend is the emergence of increased dialogue and cooperation on international migration between blocs of states. The European Union (EU) has been a central player in many of these initiatives. Following the adoption of its Global Approach to Migration (GAM) in 2005, the EU pursued “mobility partnerships” with major migrant-sending regions and countries (Parkes, 2009; Devisscher, 2011; Reslow, 2012). In relation to Africa, the Euro-African Ministerial Conference on Migration and Development, held in Rabat, Morocco in July 2006, was followed by the Joint EU-AU Declaration on Migration and Development in Tripoli, Libya in November that year (see: www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/47fdfb010.html) One of the outcomes of the declaration is the recent Africa-EU Partnership on Migration, Mobility and Employment (MME). The MME partnership commits the parties to dialogue on a broad range of issues, including diasporas; remittances; brain drain; migrant rights; the social consequences of migration; regular, circular and irregular migration; visa issues; smuggling and trafficking of migrants; readmission and return; refugee protection; the mobility of students; and harmonization processes. The partnership’s current 12-point action plan includes the establishment of an African Institute for Remittances in Addis Ababa, the implementation of the Ouagadougou Action Plan to Combat Trafficking in Human Beings and the Diaspora Outreach Initiative. In the space of a decade, how and why has migration shifted from being an issue that was of marginal interest on the international development agenda to one that is increasingly at its centre? How has one of the most contentious North-South issues of the 1990s become the focus of so much bilateral and multilateral dialogue and cooperation between them? The first section of this paper provides a possible answer to these questions, which provides a context for understanding the nature of cooperation between the EU and ACP Group of States on international migration governance

Smartphone sensing platform for emergency management

The increasingly sophisticated sensors supported by modern smartphones open up novel research opportunities, such as mobile phone sensing. One of the most challenging of these research areas is context-aware and activity recognition. The SmartRescue project takes advantage of smartphone sensing, processing and communication capabilities to monitor hazards and track people in a disaster. The goal is to help crisis managers and members of the public in early hazard detection, prediction, and in devising risk-minimizing evacuation plans when disaster strikes. In this paper we suggest a novel smartphone-based communication framework. It uses specific machine learning techniques that intelligently process sensor readings into useful information for the crisis responders. Core to the framework is a content-based publish-subscribe mechanism that allows flexible sharing of sensor data and computation results. We also evaluate a preliminary implementation of the platform, involving a smartphone app that reads and shares mobile phone sensor data for activity recognition.Comment: 11th International Conference on Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management ISCRAM2014 (2014

Smart Cities for Real People

Accelerating urbanization of the population and the emergence of new smart sensors (the Internet of Things) are combining in the phenomenon of the smart city. This movement is leading to improved quality of life and public safety, helping cities to enjoy economies that help remedy some budget overruns, better health care, and is resulting in increased productivity. The following report summarizes evolving digital technology trends, including smart phone applications, mapping software, big data and sensor miniaturization and broadband networking, that combine to create a technology toolkit available to smart city developers, managers and citizens. As noted above, the benefits of the smart city are already evident in some key areas as the technology sees actual implementation, 30 years after the creation of the broadband cable modem. The challenges of urbanization require urgent action and intelligent strategies. The applications and tools that truly benefit the people who live in cities will depend not on just the tools, but their intelligent application given current systemic obstacles, some of which are highlighted in the article. Of course, all the emerging technologies mentioned are dependent on ubiquitous, economical, reliable, safe and secure networks (wired and wireless) and network service providers