"Last-Mile" preparation for a potential disaster

Extreme natural events, like e.g. tsunamis or earthquakes, regularly lead to catastrophes with dramatic consequences. In recent years natural disasters caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, destruction of infrastructure, disruption of economic activity and loss of billions of dollars worth of property and thus revealed considerable deficits hindering their effective management: Needs for stakeholders, decision-makers as well as for persons concerned include systematic risk identification and evaluation, a way to assess countermeasures, awareness raising and decision support systems to be employed before, during and after crisis situations. The overall goal of this study focuses on interdisciplinary integration of various scientific disciplines to contribute to a tsunami early warning information system. In comparison to most studies our focus is on high-end geometric and thematic analysis to meet the requirements of small-scale, heterogeneous and complex coastal urban systems. Data, methods and results from engineering, remote sensing and social sciences are interlinked and provide comprehensive information for disaster risk assessment, management and reduction. In detail, we combine inundation modeling, urban morphology analysis, population assessment, socio-economic analysis of the population and evacuation modeling. The interdisciplinary results eventually lead to recommendations for mitigation strategies in the fields of spatial planning or coping capacity

Innocence Lost: Simulation Scenarios: Prospects and Consequences

Those who believe suitably programmed computers could enjoy conscious experience of the sort we enjoy must accept the possibility that their own experience is being generated as part of a computerized simulation. It would be a mistake to dismiss this is just one more radical sceptical possibility: for as Bostrom has recently noted, if advances in computer technology were to continue at close to present rates, there would be a strong probability that we are each living in a computer simulation. The first part of this paper is devoted to broadening the scope of the argument: even if computers cannot sustain consciousness (as many dualists and materialists believe), there may still be a strong likelihood that we are living simulated lives. The implications of this result are the focus of the second part of the paper. The topics discussed include: the Doomsday argument, scepticism, the different modes of virtual life, transcendental idealism, the Problem of Evil, and simulation ethics

Emerging Linguistic Functions in Early Infancy

This paper presents results from experimental studies on early language acquisition in infants and attempts to interpret the experimental results within the framework of the Ecological Theory of Language Acquisition (ETLA) recently proposed by (Lacerda et al., 2004a). From this perspective, the infant’s first steps in the acquisition of the ambient language are seen as a consequence of the infant’s general capacity to represent sensory input and the infant’s interaction with other actors in its immediate ecological environment. On the basis of available experimental evidence, it will be argued that ETLA offers a productive alternative to traditional descriptive views of the language acquisition process by presenting an operative model of how early linguistic function may emerge through interaction

Many-Task Computing and Blue Waters

This report discusses many-task computing (MTC) generically and in the context of the proposed Blue Waters systems, which is planned to be the largest NSF-funded supercomputer when it begins production use in 2012. The aim of this report is to inform the BW project about MTC, including understanding aspects of MTC applications that can be used to characterize the domain and understanding the implications of these aspects to middleware and policies. Many MTC applications do not neatly fit the stereotypes of high-performance computing (HPC) or high-throughput computing (HTC) applications. Like HTC applications, by definition MTC applications are structured as graphs of discrete tasks, with explicit input and output dependencies forming the graph edges. However, MTC applications have significant features that distinguish them from typical HTC applications. In particular, different engineering constraints for hardware and software must be met in order to support these applications. HTC applications have traditionally run on platforms such as grids and clusters, through either workflow systems or parallel programming systems. MTC applications, in contrast, will often demand a short time to solution, may be communication intensive or data intensive, and may comprise very short tasks. Therefore, hardware and software for MTC must be engineered to support the additional communication and I/O and must minimize task dispatch overheads. The hardware of large-scale HPC systems, with its high degree of parallelism and support for intensive communication, is well suited for MTC applications. However, HPC systems often lack a dynamic resource-provisioning feature, are not ideal for task communication via the file system, and have an I/O system that is not optimized for MTC-style applications. Hence, additional software support is likely to be required to gain full benefit from the HPC hardware

5G Smart and innovative Healthcare services: opportunities, challenges and prospective solutions

Due to its abilities to boost productivity, reduce costs and enhance user experiences, smart healthcare is widely recognised as a potential solution to reduce pressures on existing health systems. Since the new era of 5G will unite enhanced connectivity, improved cloud-based storage and interconnection of an array of devices and services, a massive boost in the digital transformation of healthcare is expected. In this transformation process, healthcare services such as medical diagnosis, treatment and remote surgery will be facilitated by a range of technologies such as Internet of Things, Robotics and Artificial Intelligence, among others, that will advance further under 5G. Moreover, real-time health services will become a reality and will offer people with quality care and improved experiences. On the other hand, different challenges can hinder the proliferation of 5G smart and innovative healthcare solutions, including security and heterogeneous devices. This chapter presents how 5G will boost digital transformation of healthcare through delivery and consumption of smart and innovative healthcare services, while probing into key hurdles in the process as well as prospective solutions

Interactive Visual Analytics for Agent-Based Simulation: Street-Crossing Behavior at Signalized Pedestrian Crossing

To design a pedestrian crossing area reasonably can be a demanding task for traffic planners. There are several challenges, including determining the appropriate dimensions, and ensuring that pedestrians are exposed to the least risks. Pedestrian safety is especially obscure to analyze, given that many people in Stockholm cross the street illegally by running against the red light. To cope with these challenges, computational approaches of trajectory data visual analytics can be used to support the analytical reasoning process. However, it remains an unexplored field regarding how to visualize and communicate the street-crossing spatio-temporal data effectively. Moreover, the rendering also needs to deal with a growing data size for a more massive number of people. This thesis proposes a web-based interactive visual analytics tool for pedestrians' street-crossing behavior under various flow rates. The visualization methodology is also presented, which is then evaluated to have achieved satisfying communication and rendering effectiveness for maximal 180 agents over 100 seconds. In terms of the visualization scenario, pedestrians either wait for the red light or cross the street illegally; all people can choose to stop by a buffer island before they finish crossing. The visualization enables the analysis under multiple flow rates for 1) pedestrian movement, 2) space utilization, 3) crossing frequency in time-series, and 4) illegal frequency. Additionally, to acquire the initial trajectory data, Optimal Reciprocal Collision Avoidance (ORCA) algorithm is engaged in the crowd simulation. Then different visualization techniques are utilized to comply with user demands, including map animation, data aggregation, and time-series graph