Timely and keyword-based dynamic content selection for public displays

In public display systems determine what to present and when is a central feature. Although several adaptive scheduling alternatives have been explored, which introduce sensibility of the display to some type of external variable, they are still very dependent on the user in their behavior, content specific in their nature and very rigid in their adaptation to their social environment, not providing visitors of the place with appropriate, rich and personalized information according to their interests and expectations. There is a need for solutions that successfully integrate the wealth of dynamic web sources as providers for situated and updated content with social and contextual environment around the display so as to present the most appropriate content at every moment, and thus improving the utility of the system. In this paper, we present a recommender system for public situated displays that is able to autonomously select relevant content from Internet sources using a keyword-based place model as input. Based on external relevance criteria the system finds and pre-selects only those sources that are more relevant, and an adaptive scheduling algorithm continuously select content that are relevant, timely, in accordance with the place model, sensitive to immediate indications of interest and balanced to serve the broad range of interests of the target population. To evaluate this system we have carried out two partial experiments. The results showed that keyword-based shared place models jointly with content specific relevance models are a simple and valid approach to user-generated content for public displays.The first author was supported by a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology scholarship (SFRH/BD/31292/2006)

Place-aware content selection from dynamic web sources for public displays

Public digital displays could greatly benefit from the ability to dynamically select from the Internet content items that would be strongly related with the place where each display is installed. Generically, this is similar to the type of problem addressed by recommender systems. However, the usage context of a public display raises specific challenges that may limit the applicability of existing recommender systems. In this paper, we explore the creation of a recommender system for public situated displays that is able to autonomously select relevant content from Internet sources using keywords as input. This type of recommender system should enable public displays to become devices for Internet information delivery in public spaces, while also making them more situated in the social settings in which they are installed. We have created a recommender system based on these principles and we have conducted two studies to evaluate the perceived performance of the system. The results have shown that keywords can be very effective in driving user-generated content, but they often need to be complemented with contextual information that disambiguates their semanticsFundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - SFRH/BD/31292/200

Autonomous and context-aware scheduling for public displays using place-based tag clouds

Public displays are an increasingly ubiquitous element of our socio-digital landscape with a strong potential to become key building blocks for AmI. For that purpose, they should have the ability to dynamically and autonomously select content from web sources according to the relevance of their content to the Continuous flow of social settings around the display. In this paper, we explore the creation of a public display system that evaluates the relevance of content from web sources and selects the most relevant content according to a dynamic tag cloud that incorporates static place definitions, but is also sensitive to the people around the display. We have developed and evaluate a dynamic content selection system based on those principles.. The results show that place visitors recognize the sensitivity of the system to their demands and that a place tag cloud can provide an important element for the interpretation of place and for the combination of the interests expressed by the place owner and the multiple place visitors.The first author was supported by a Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology scholarship (SFRH/BD/31292/2006)

Travel chains in urban public transportation: Identifying user needs, travel strategies, and travel information system improvements

The implementation of a functional public transportation network has many benefits for a city, among other things, a way of sustainable mobility. Today, urban areas face the challenge of keeping up with technological trends and encouraging mobility activities using public transportation. For this reason, it is important to understand public transportation user behavior and, consequently, the motives and challenges related to urban travel. Research in the field of urban transportation mainly focuses on systematic and network-related issues to improve the travel experience. However, examining urban travel from a user’s perspective is equally essential to improving a city’s transportation network. With the help of twenty participants, an extensive travel study in the urban area of Zurich took place. The research design consists of a three-step mixed method approach. Data on travel behavior, mobility preferences, and information needs are obtained. The data is explored using an advanced travel chain structure, revealing results in the context of individual travel phases. The results show that urban travel relies heavily on the information apps provide, especially when planning. This need is mainly bound to spatial and temporal properties, for which app elements such as maps, dynamic timetables, and real-time information are most valued. Furthermore, travel using public transportation is approached by evaluating suggested routes according to the journey’s duration, efficiency, and complexity. However, decisions are often based on familiarity with the general area or interchange points. Uncertainties during urban travel are mitigated by walking when suitable, avoiding complex interchanges, and monitoring all phases with the help of an app. User results also indicate no serious issues regarding the City of Zurich as a public transportation provider. Nonetheless, measures could include integrating crowdsourced and context-aware data to meet the demands of adaptive and accurate travel information needs. The broader implications of the thesis outcome support cities and transportation service providers in understanding travel behavior. Consequently, this insight enables them to address specific needs and thus encourage sustainable mobility

Quality Control in Crowdsourcing: A Survey of Quality Attributes, Assessment Techniques and Assurance Actions

Crowdsourcing enables one to leverage on the intelligence and wisdom of potentially large groups of individuals toward solving problems. Common problems approached with crowdsourcing are labeling images, translating or transcribing text, providing opinions or ideas, and similar - all tasks that computers are not good at or where they may even fail altogether. The introduction of humans into computations and/or everyday work, however, also poses critical, novel challenges in terms of quality control, as the crowd is typically composed of people with unknown and very diverse abilities, skills, interests, personal objectives and technological resources. This survey studies quality in the context of crowdsourcing along several dimensions, so as to define and characterize it and to understand the current state of the art. Specifically, this survey derives a quality model for crowdsourcing tasks, identifies the methods and techniques that can be used to assess the attributes of the model, and the actions and strategies that help prevent and mitigate quality problems. An analysis of how these features are supported by the state of the art further identifies open issues and informs an outlook on hot future research directions.Comment: 40 pages main paper, 5 pages appendi

IoT Maps : Charting the Internet of Things

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming increasingly ubiquitous in our everyday environments. While the number of devices and the degree of connectivity is growing, it is striking that as a society we are increasingly unaware of the locations and purposes of such devices. Indeed, much of the IoT technology being deployed is invisible and does not communicate its presence or purpose to the inhabitants of the spaces within which it is deployed. In this paper, we explore the potential benefits and challenges of constructing IoT maps that record the location of IoT devices. To illustrate the need for such maps, we draw on our experiences from multiple deployments of IoT systems.Peer reviewe

Combining Game Design and Data Visualization to Inform Plastics Policy: Fostering Collaboration between Science, Decision-Makers, and Artificial Intelligence

This multi-disciplinary case study details how a public web application combines information and game design to visualize effects of user-defined policies intended to reduce plastic waste. Contextualizing this open source software within a broader lineage of digital media research, this user experience exploration outlines potential directions for facilitating conversation between artificial intelligence, scientists, and decision makers during an iterative policy building process. Furthermore, this system dissection reveals how this interactive science effort considers the practicalities of a treaty's shifting priorities and proposals in its designs. Specifically, this historically situated investigation of the tool's approach highlights options for centering human decision making where artificial intelligence helps reason about interventions but does not prescribe them. Finally, analysis summarizes this application's specific game design-inspired mechanics and their efforts to: enable users' agency to explore solution possibilities freely, invite deep engagement with scientific findings, and simultaneously serve multiple audiences with divergent objectives and expertise.Comment: 29 pages of which 8 are citations, 4 figures, latex generated from markdown via Pandoc (https://pandoc.org/) for Arxi

Urban data and city dashboards: Six key issues

This chapter considers the relationship between data and the city by critically examining six key issues with respect city dashboards: epistemology, scope and access, veracity and validity, usability and literacy, use and utility, and ethics. While city dashboards provide useful tools for evaluating and managing urban services, understanding and formulating policy, and creating public knowledge and counter-narratives, our analysis reveals a number of conceptual and practical shortcomings. In order for city dashboards to reach their full potential we advocate a number of related shifts in thinking and praxes and forward an agenda for addressing the issues we highlight. Our analysis is informed by our endeavours in building the Dublin Dashboard

A Generic Alerting Service for Digital Libraries

Users of modern digital libraries (DLs) can keep themselves up-to-date by searching and browsing their favorite collections, or more conveniently by resorting to an alerting service. The alerting service notifies its clients about new or changed documents. Proprietary and mediating alerting services fail to fluidly integrate information from differing collections. This paper analyses the conceptual requirements of this much-sought after service for digital libraries. We demonstrate that the differing concepts of digital libraries and its underlying technical design has extensive influence (a) the expectations, needs and interests of users regarding an alerting service, and (b) on the technical possibilities of the implementation of the service. Our findings will show that the range of issues surrounding alerting services for digital libraries, their design and use is greater than one may anticipate. We also show that, conversely, the requirements for an alerting service have considerable impact on the concepts of DL design. Our findings should be of interest for librarians as well as system designers. We highlight and discuss the far-reaching implications for the design of, and interaction with, libraries. This paper discusses the lessons learned from building such a distributed alerting service. We present our prototype implementation as a proof-of-concept for an alerting service for open DL software

TCL3 UTM (UAS Traffic Management) Flight Tests, Airspace Operations Laboratory (AOL) Report

The Technology Capability Level-3 (TCL3) flight tests were conducted at six different test sites located across the USA from March to May of 2018. The campaign resulted in over 830 data collection flights using 28 different aircraft and involving 20 flight crews. Flights not only varied in duration, but also in the environments and terrains over which they flew. The TCL3 tests highlighted four different types of tests: three tests focused on Communication, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS); six tests focused on Sense and Avoid (SAA) technologies; six tests focused on USS Data and Information Exchange (DAT); and five tests focused on exploring fundamental Concepts of the project (CON). This document presents data collected during the TCL3 tests that informed the operators experiencesthe quality of the unmanned aerial system (UAS) Service Supplier (USS) information that the operator was provided with, the usefulness of this information, and the usability of the automation, both while airborne and on the ground. It is intended to complement the reports written by the test sites and the quantitative reports and presentations of the UAS Traffic Management (UTM) project. With the goal of instructing what the minimum information requirements and/or best practices might be in TCL3 operations, the driving enquiry was: How do you get the information you need, when you need it, to successfully fly a UAS in UTM airspace? This enquiry touches on two requirements for displays, which are to provide adequate situation awareness (SA) and to share information through a USS. The six test sites participating in the TCL3 tests flew a subset of the 20 tests (outlined above), with most sites working on a subset of each of the four types: Communications, Navigation and Surveillance (CNS); DAT; CON; and Sense and Avoid (SAA). The, mainly qualitative, data addressed in this report was collected by the AOL (Airspace Operations Laboratory) both on-site and remotely for each test. The data consists of the contents of end-of-day debriefs, end-of-day surveys, observer notes, and flight test information, all submitted as part of the Data Management Plan (DMP)