A review of GIS-based information sharing systems

GIS-based information sharing systems have been implemented in many of England and Wales' Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs). The information sharing role of these systems is seen as being vital to help in the review of crime, disorder and misuse of drugs; to sustain strategic objectives, to monitor interventions and initiatives; and support action plans for service delivery. This evaluation into these systems aimed to identify the lessons learned from existing systems, identify how these systems can be best used to support the business functions of CDRPs, identify common weaknesses across the systems, and produce guidelines on how these systems should be further developed. At present there are in excess of 20 major systems distributed across England and Wales. This evaluation considered a representative sample of ten systems. To date, little documented evidence has been collected by the systems that demonstrate the direct impact they are having in reducing crime and disorder, and the misuse of drugs. All point to how they are contributing to more effective partnership working, but all systems must be encouraged to record how they are contributing to improving community safety. Demonstrating this impact will help them to assure their future role in their CDRPs. By reviewing the systems wholly, several key ingredients were identified that were evident in contributing to the effectiveness of these systems. These included the need for an effective partnership business model within which the system operates, and the generation of good quality multi-agency intelligence products from the system. In helping to determine the future development of GIS-based information sharing systems, four key community safety partnership business service functions have been identified that these systems can most effectively support. These functions support the performance review requirements of CDRPs, operate a problem solving scanning and analysis role, and offer an interface with the public. By following these business service functions as a template will provide for a more effective application of these systems nationally

FABRIC: A National-Scale Programmable Experimental Network Infrastructure

FABRIC is a unique national research infrastructure to enable cutting-edge and exploratory research at-scale in networking, cybersecurity, distributed computing and storage systems, machine learning, and science applications. It is an everywhere-programmable nationwide instrument comprised of novel extensible network elements equipped with large amounts of compute and storage, interconnected by high speed, dedicated optical links. It will connect a number of specialized testbeds for cloud research (NSF Cloud testbeds CloudLab and Chameleon), for research beyond 5G technologies (Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research or PAWR), as well as production high-performance computing facilities and science instruments to create a rich fabric for a wide variety of experimental activities

Preserving Open Access Journals: A Literature Review

This literature review addresses certain questions concerning the preservation of free, born-digital scholarly materials. It covers recent thinking on the current state of preservation efforts of born-digital materials; the range of actors involved in significant preservation initiatives of these artefacts; the perceived barriers preventing open access materials from benefiting from existing preservation efforts; initiatives that may enable local, small-scale preservation efforts to be undertaken; the challenges and opportunities posed to preservation by new models of scholarship such as open access datasets, reference sharing and annotation, collaborative authoring and community peer review. The review identifies representative international collaborative preservation initiatives, describes their goals and results, their specific preservation strategie, and their applicability to the preservation of born digital open access materials

Overview and Analysis of Practices with Open Educational Resources in Adult Education in Europe

OER4Adults aimed to provide an overview of Open Educational Practices in adult learning in Europe, identifying enablers and barriers to successful implementation of practices with OER. The project was conducted in 2012-2013 by a team from the Caledonian Academy, Glasgow Caledonian University, funded by The Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS). The project drew on data from four main sources: • OER4Adults inventory of over 150 OER initiatives relevant to adult learning in Europe • Responses from the leaders of 36 OER initiatives to a detailed SWOT survey • Responses from 89 lifelong learners and adult educators to a short poll • The Vision Papers on Open Education 2030: Lifelong Learning published by IPTS Interpretation was informed by interviews with OER and adult education experts, discussion at the IPTS Foresight Workshop on Open Education and Lifelong Learning 2030, and evaluation of the UKOER programme. Analysis revealed 6 tensions that drive developing practices around OER in adult learning as well 6 summary recommendations for the further development of such practices

Innovative Clusters in Progress, the Example of Thermi Case: Urban planning theory and practice

The concept of "Smart city" (or "Intelligent city") is very important nowadays, for the comprehension and rapid implementation of innovative digital services based on the Internet. This allows dealing with modern developed cities challenges, helping to achieve a better quality of life in the future. The approach of intervention planning models in suburban areas, exploring digital technologies is the alternative for a developed city to become productive, creative, and therefore "smart". There are plenty research areas, but the main ones are: 1) Cities and regions of Innovation, 2) Creative Clusters, Areas of Expertise, Science and Technology Parks, "Technopoles", 3) Regional Innovation Systems and Strategies, 4) Areas of Digital Innovation and Smart Cities. The interest of the research is located in the east side of the city of Thessaloniki, in Greece. There are three points of interest: 1) the Mediterranean Cosmos, commercial center / Mall, 2) the NOESIS, cultural center and 3) the small town of Thermi. The objectives of the study include; firstly, to reduce the centrality of Mediterranean Cosmos and to guide visitors to the other two poles, secondly, to redefine the nature of the region by increasing its urbanity, and finally, to make the existing digital technologies of development and planning productive

How has New York City developed as a smart city? Evaluating smart city contributors in New York City

Recently, the rapid growth in technologies has changed our lives dramatically. Thus, utilizing technologies and data is becoming more and more necessary in various fields, including urban planning. The purpose of this study is to develop a matrix to measure the level of smart city in New York City and evaluate all projects, incentives, guidelines or pilot projects contributing to making New York City a smart city based on the matrix developed. This evaluation will be mainly qualitative, followed by interviews with experts in the field to get their insights toward smart city concepts in New York City. Ultimately, this study will identify best practices based on evaluation and deficiencies, as well as next steps that New York City should take to be an even smarter city and redefine smart city concept in New York City based on the findings. I believe that this series of study on smart city concept in New York City will help to understand characteristics in New York City regarding smart city concept, which could be helpful for the city to improve or other cities to refer. In addition, I believe that understanding the dynamics around technologies and the use of data and evaluating them as a whole from planners' perspective, not project by project, will significantly improve the quality of the city in a comprehensive way

From Big Bang to Galactic Civilizations

Each scientific study emerges in its own particular time and marks a new step in the development of human thought.1 Big History materialized to satisfy the human need for a unified vision of our existence. It came together in the waning decades of the twentieth century, in part, as a reaction to the specialization of scholarship and education that had taken hold around the world. While this specialization had great results, it created barriers that stood in contrast to a growing unity among our global communities. These barriers were increasingly awkward to bridge, and, thus, Big History emerged as a successful new framework