Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

Proceedings of the ECSCW'95 Workshop on the Role of Version Control in CSCW Applications

The workshop entitled "The Role of Version Control in Computer Supported Cooperative Work Applications" was held on September 10, 1995 in Stockholm, Sweden in conjunction with the ECSCW'95 conference. Version control, the ability to manage relationships between successive instances of artifacts, organize those instances into meaningful structures, and support navigation and other operations on those structures, is an important problem in CSCW applications. It has long been recognized as a critical issue for inherently cooperative tasks such as software engineering, technical documentation, and authoring. The primary challenge for versioning in these areas is to support opportunistic, open-ended design processes requiring the preservation of historical perspectives in the design process, the reuse of previous designs, and the exploitation of alternative designs. The primary goal of this workshop was to bring together a diverse group of individuals interested in examining the role of versioning in Computer Supported Cooperative Work. Participation was encouraged from members of the research community currently investigating the versioning process in CSCW as well as application designers and developers who are familiar with the real-world requirements for versioning in CSCW. Both groups were represented at the workshop resulting in an exchange of ideas and information that helped to familiarize developers with the most recent research results in the area, and to provide researchers with an updated view of the needs and challenges faced by application developers. In preparing for this workshop, the organizers were able to build upon the results of their previous one entitled "The Workshop on Versioning in Hypertext" held in conjunction with the ECHT'94 conference. The following section of this report contains a summary in which the workshop organizers report the major results of the workshop. The summary is followed by a section that contains the position papers that were accepted to the workshop. The position papers provide more detailed information describing recent research efforts of the workshop participants as well as current challenges that are being encountered in the development of CSCW applications. A list of workshop participants is provided at the end of the report. The organizers would like to thank all of the participants for their contributions which were, of course, vital to the success of the workshop. We would also like to thank the ECSCW'95 conference organizers for providing a forum in which this workshop was possible

An information assistant system for the prevention of tunnel vision in crisis management

In the crisis management environment, tunnel vision is a set of bias in decision makers’ cognitive process which often leads to incorrect understanding of the real crisis situation, biased perception of information, and improper decisions. The tunnel vision phenomenon is a consequence of both the challenges in the task and the natural limitation in a human being’s cognitive process. An information assistant system is proposed with the purpose of preventing tunnel vision. The system serves as a platform for monitoring the on-going crisis event. All information goes through the system before arrives at the user. The system enhances the data quality, reduces the data quantity and presents the crisis information in a manner that prevents or repairs the user’s cognitive overload. While working with such a system, the users (crisis managers) are expected to be more likely to stay aware of the actual situation, stay open minded to possibilities, and make proper decisions

Systems thinking and Equity-focused evaluations

Questions about access to resources - who gets what? - ought not to be seen in isolation from related questions of power - who owns what? They also ought not to be seen in isolation from questions of knowledge and expertise - who does what? Moreover these questions relate to important questions regarding legitimacy - who gets affected by what some people get? Such questions are often more easily avoided in a normal evaluation for fear of the ethics and politics involved in addressing them. But such questions as formulated above also may not be easy to grasp or work with in terms of an approach to evaluating an intervention. To the systems thinker C. West Churchman (1913-2004), such ethical and political questions were profoundly important. It was Churchman's life-long task to surface the need to address such questions. One of the most significant insights offered by Churchman in order to address ethical issues was the need to engage meaningfully with different perspectives

Cyber Security’s Influence on Modern Society

The world of cyber security is evolving every day, and cyber-criminals are trying to take advantage of it to gain as much money and power as possible. As the Internet continues to grow, more people around the world join the Internet. The purpose of this is to see how much of an importance cyber security has and how cyber-criminals are able to utilize the cyberworld for their own personal gain. Research has been done on how the cyberworld got where it is today. Additionally, individual research has been done in an effort to learn how to hack. A hack lab has been created and a study has been done to see if it is possible to hack into a cell phone within one month without obtaining any knowledge prior to the start of the study

Post-Westgate SWAT : C4ISTAR Architectural Framework for Autonomous Network Integrated Multifaceted Warfighting Solutions Version 1.0 : A Peer-Reviewed Monograph

Police SWAT teams and Military Special Forces face mounting pressure and challenges from adversaries that can only be resolved by way of ever more sophisticated inputs into tactical operations. Lethal Autonomy provides constrained military/security forces with a viable option, but only if implementation has got proper empirically supported foundations. Autonomous weapon systems can be designed and developed to conduct ground, air and naval operations. This monograph offers some insights into the challenges of developing legal, reliable and ethical forms of autonomous weapons, that address the gap between Police or Law Enforcement and Military operations that is growing exponentially small. National adversaries are today in many instances hybrid threats, that manifest criminal and military traits, these often require deployment of hybrid-capability autonomous weapons imbued with the capability to taken on both Military and/or Security objectives. The Westgate Terrorist Attack of 21st September 2013 in the Westlands suburb of Nairobi, Kenya is a very clear manifestation of the hybrid combat scenario that required military response and police investigations against a fighting cell of the Somalia based globally networked Al Shabaab terrorist group.Comment: 52 pages, 6 Figures, over 40 references, reviewed by a reade

Consciosusness in Cognitive Architectures. A Principled Analysis of RCS, Soar and ACT-R

This report analyses the aplicability of the principles of consciousness developed in the ASys project to three of the most relevant cognitive architectures. This is done in relation to their aplicability to build integrated control systems and studying their support for general mechanisms of real-time consciousness.\ud To analyse these architectures the ASys Framework is employed. This is a conceptual framework based on an extension for cognitive autonomous systems of the General Systems Theory (GST).\ud A general qualitative evaluation criteria for cognitive architectures is established based upon: a) requirements for a cognitive architecture, b) the theoretical framework based on the GST and c) core design principles for integrated cognitive conscious control systems

Expanding alliance: ANZUS cooperation and Asia–Pacific security

Is an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? Overview The alliance between Australia and the US, underpinned by the formal ANZUS Treaty of 1951, continues to be a central part of Australian defence and security thinking and an instrument of American policy in the Asia–Pacific. How is it that an alliance conceived as a bulwark against a resurgence of Japanese militarism and which cut its military and intelligence teeth in the Cold War is still relevant to today’s strategic concerns? The answer is partly—and importantly—that the core values of the ANZUS members are strongly aligned, and successive Australian governments and American presidential administrations have seen great value in working with like-minded partners to ensure Asia–Pacific security. Far from becoming a historical curiosity, today it’s not just relevant, but of greater importance than has been the case in the past few decades. To explore new ideas on how to strengthen the US–Australia alliance, ASPI conducted a high-level strategic dialogue in Honolulu in July this year. Discussions canvassed the future strategic environment; the forthcoming Australian Defence White Paper; budget, sovereignty and expectation risks; and cooperation in the maritime, land, air, cyber, space and intelligence domains. A key purpose of the Honolulu dialogue was to help ASPI develop policy recommendations on the alliance relationship for government. This report is the product of those discussions

CHORUS Deliverable 3.4: Vision Document

The goal of the CHORUS Vision Document is to create a high level vision on audio-visual search engines in order to give guidance to the future R&D work in this area and to highlight trends and challenges in this domain. The vision of CHORUS is strongly connected to the CHORUS Roadmap Document (D2.3). A concise document integrating the outcomes of the two deliverables will be prepared for the end of the project (NEM Summit)