TIPExtop: An Exploratory Design Tool for Emergency Planning

ABSTRACT Emergency planning is an ongoing activity in which a multidisciplinary group of experts intermittently collaborate to define the most appropriate response to risks. One of the most important tasks of emergency planning is risk reduction. Such a task compiles the analysis of capabilities to face an emergency, the prioritizing of activities, and the definition of procedures and strategies. It is therefore a reflection process based on exchanging information between planners and exploring alternatives. Despite the exploration of alternatives is an especially relevant activity to design better plans, recent research on computer-mediated collaborative tools for planning do not usually offer support for this activity. Thus, with the purpose of supporting reflection during the development of risk reduction tasks, this paper presents an exploratory design tool that allow planners to assess the space of alternatives and the underlying information related those alternatives. This planning tool will help planners to examine and contextualize information, allowing them to define more suitable response strategies

Human–agent collaboration for disaster response

In the aftermath of major disasters, first responders are typically overwhelmed with large numbers of, spatially distributed, search and rescue tasks, each with their own requirements. Moreover, responders have to operate in highly uncertain and dynamic environments where new tasks may appear and hazards may be spreading across the disaster space. Hence, rescue missions may need to be re-planned as new information comes in, tasks are completed, or new hazards are discovered. Finding an optimal allocation of resources to complete all the tasks is a major computational challenge. In this paper, we use decision theoretic techniques to solve the task allocation problem posed by emergency response planning and then deploy our solution as part of an agent-based planning tool in real-world field trials. By so doing, we are able to study the interactional issues that arise when humans are guided by an agent. Specifically, we develop an algorithm, based on a multi-agent Markov decision process representation of the task allocation problem and show that it outperforms standard baseline solutions. We then integrate the algorithm into a planning agent that responds to requests for tasks from participants in a mixed-reality location-based game, called AtomicOrchid, that simulates disaster response settings in the real-world. We then run a number of trials of our planning agent and compare it against a purely human driven system. Our analysis of these trials show that human commanders adapt to the planning agent by taking on a more supervisory role and that, by providing humans with the flexibility of requesting plans from the agent, allows them to perform more tasks more efficiently than using purely human interactions to allocate tasks. We also discuss how such flexibility could lead to poor performance if left unchecked

Emotional user experience of innovative human-computer interactions: A multi-component approach

Emotions are a relevant indicator of users’ acceptance of technologies. Despite users’ subjective feeling being traditionally examined with categorical labels, the Component Process Model suggests that the cognitive and motivational component can also be examined in User Experience studies. This study focuses on emotions using innovative non-tactile Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) to perform different tasks. Results revealed that cognitive and motivational components of emotions are decisive to confirm or to infirm the self-reported subjective feeling. More precisely, non-tactile controllers triggered significantly higher cognitive appraisals than the tactile controller. These non-tactile controllers also trigger significantly higher readiness to approach and to avoid than the tactile controller, depending on the type of controller used, and on its application. The innovativeness of the controller does not necessarily involve positive emotions and needs to be situated in a specific context of use. This analysis show how User Experience testing for product development could gain in investigating the additional components of users’ emotional experience

glueTK: A Framework for Multi-modal, Multi-display Interaction

This thesis describes glueTK, a framework for human machine interaction, that allows the integration of multiple input modalities and the interaction across different displays. Building upon the framework, several contributions to integrate pointing gestures into interactive systems are presented. To address the design of interfaces for the wide range of supported displays, a concept for transferring interaction performance from one system to another is defined

Examining the Impact of Increasing Location-Based Information Fidelity on Command Center Decision-Making

The deployment of high-fidelity information systems in command and control environments is common, however it is not yet well understood what impacts these systems have on decision-making processes, or whether the implementation of these systems is always a positive change. Research in military domains has suggested that these types of systems can create substantial increases in micromanagement, but these changes have not been empirically investigated. In this thesis, the effect of high-fidelity information on command environments is experimentally evaluated. A baseline set of data is collected within a real-world command center that uses only low-fidelity information. Then, a laboratory-based controlled technology experiment is used to gather information about how the command processes change as information fidelity is increased. Finally, the same system is implemented within the functioning command center and a preliminary comparison is carried out against the original baseline data. The experimental study suggests that an increase in micromanagement may occur with an increase in information fidelity, while increases in situation awareness and performance improvements during times of both extremely low and high workload are seen. The preliminary ecological validation study shows support for these effects

Adaptivität und semantische Interoperabilität von Manufacturing Execution Systemen (MES)

MES (Manufacturing Execution Systems) are situated between automation and management level and are affected from changes of the production. Therefore their adaptivity within the lifecycle of production plants is mission critical. Furthermore MES act as data and information hub. This means that they have to work together with other systems in an efficient and seamless way. MES must be interoperable and must have semantics under control. The present publication faces both aspects