7,279 research outputs found
Artificial intelligence and visual analytics in geographical space and cyberspace: Research opportunities and challenges
In recent decades, we have witnessed great advances on the Internet of Things, mobile devices, sensor-based systems, and resulting big data infrastructures, which have gradually, yet fundamentally influenced the way people interact with and in the digital and physical world. Many human activities now not only operate in geographical (physical) space but also in cyberspace. Such changes have triggered a paradigm shift in geographic information science (GIScience), as cyberspace brings new perspectives for the roles played by spatial and temporal dimensions, e.g., the dilemma of placelessness and possible timelessness. As a discipline at the brink of even bigger changes made possible by machine learning and artificial intelligence, this paper highlights the challenges and opportunities associated with geographical space in relation to cyberspace, with a particular focus on data analytics and visualization, including extended AI capabilities and virtual reality representations. Consequently, we encourage the creation of synergies between the processing and analysis of geographical and cyber data to improve sustainability and solve complex problems with geospatial applications and other digital advancements in urban and environmental sciences
Crime mapping and spatial analysis
Crime maps are becoming significant tools in crime and justice. Advances in the areas of information
technology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) have opened new opportunities
for the use of digital mapping in crime control and prevention programs. Crime maps are also
valuable for the study of the ecology and the locational aspects of crime. Maps enable areas of
unusually high or low concentration of crime to be visually identified. Maps are however only
pictorial representations of the results of more or less complex spatial data analyses.
A hierarchical model dealing with crime analysis is proposed and applied to the regional analysis
of crime in Tehran, the model helps to identify spatial concentration of crimes in specific
area (area based method). In area-based methods, crime data are aggregated into geographical
areas such as blocks, precincts, and for each area, the analyst computes a measure of crime
value. Multicriteria evaluation concept has been used to assess the crime rate in various blocks a
discrete (part) of Tehran city. In this part we used two methods for crime density assessment:
âą Crime assessment based on crime per block,
âą Crime assessment based on density of crime per population.
After determination of hot spots based on two methods mentioned above spatial function is
used to find suitable location to establish new police station or direct patrol to the hot spots to
reduce of crime
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Report on Training of Health Professionals on Climate and Health
The role of climate in health is currently enjoying a high profile among the international community in terms of demonstrating climate risk management and adaptation to a changing climate. The effect of climate variability and change on heath is a serious issue for most sub-Saharan African countries. Among the diseases that have public health importance in Ethiopia are malaria, meningitis and acute watery diarrhea. Understanding the relationship of climate and health in Ethiopia would be a tremendous help in early containment of these diseases. In Ethiopia, before the establishment of a Climate and Health Working Group (CHWG), which includes the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Meteorological Agency among other partners, the sharing of information among the two key players was minimal. The goal of this working group is to create a climate-informed health sector that routinely requests and uses appropriate climate information to improve the effectiveness of health interventions. In order to meet its goals, the working group, in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), organized a six-day training course for health professionals on climate and health. In this training, the Summer Institute course "Climate Information for Public Health" (held for the past two years at IRI in New York), was adapted and implemented. The Summer Institute has involved four Ethiopian participants, one from the National Meteorological Agency (NMA), and three from the Ministry of Health. They played a key role in facilitating some of the course lectures themselves and in identifying local professionals who could also contribute to the curriculum. The general goal of the six-day training was to build the national capacity in order to utilize climate information for decision-making in the health sector at national and regional state levels. The training was comprised of three components: core lectures, practical sessions, and short recap presentations by the participants. Sixteen participants were involved in the training. The selection of the participants was done in consultation with the Federal Ministry of Health. Participants came primarily from the Public Health Emergency Management Units of regional and federal health bureaus and were chosen for their roles in the decision-making around the prevention and control of climate-sensitive diseases. Three types of evaluation were carried out, a pre- and post-test, as well as an overall evaluation. The pre- and post-test helped to evaluate the level of knowledge about climate and health before and after the training. The latter helped in evaluating the organization of the overall training. Generally, the evaluations revealed that the training helped to increase the knowledge of the links between climate and health, as well as the use of climate information for decision-making in the public health sector. This training is the first of its kind organized in Ethiopia, especially at a national level. Most of the participants agreed on the suitability of the content, design and delivery of the course and showed their interest in organizing similar training initiatives in their respective home institutions. It is possible to recommend that this training should be extended to the regional health bureau level, with the already trained participants taking the primary responsibility of facilitating these follow-on activities with the close support of the CHWG. The collaboration of the regional branch offices of the National Meteorological Agency, with respect to using climate information, would play a crucial role in this endeavor. The most important point is to sustain this training and update its contents accordingly. The future research agenda and evidence generation efforts of the CHWG and its members should also focus on other climate sensitive diseases. Even though participants did not indicate there were always established ties to local universities in different parts of the country, these potential partnerships should be addressed in sharing the knowledge of the use of climate information for public health decision-making and in prioritizing locally important diseases. The training was held at UNECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between November 31st and December 5th, 2009. Financial and technical support was provided by IRI with funding from the Google.org sponsored project "Building Capacity to Produce and Use Climate and Environmental Information for Improving Health in East Africa.
Recommended from our members
Report on Training of Health Professionals on Climate and Health
The role of climate in health is currently enjoying a high profile among the international community in terms of demonstrating climate risk management and adaptation to a changing climate. The effect of climate variability and change on heath is a serious issue for most sub-Saharan African countries. Among the diseases that have public health importance in Ethiopia are malaria, meningitis and acute watery diarrhea. Understanding the relationship of climate and health in Ethiopia would be a tremendous help in early containment of these diseases. In Ethiopia, before the establishment of a Climate and Health Working Group (CHWG), which includes the Federal Ministry of Health and the National Meteorological Agency among other partners, the sharing of information among the two key players was minimal. The goal of this working group is to create a climate-informed health sector that routinely requests and uses appropriate climate information to improve the effectiveness of health interventions. In order to meet its goals, the working group, in collaboration with the International Research Institute for Climate and Society (IRI), organized a six-day training course for health professionals on climate and health. In this training, the Summer Institute course "Climate Information for Public Health" (held for the past two years at IRI in New York), was adapted and implemented. The Summer Institute has involved four Ethiopian participants, one from the National Meteorological Agency (NMA), and three from the Ministry of Health. They played a key role in facilitating some of the course lectures themselves and in identifying local professionals who could also contribute to the curriculum. The general goal of the six-day training was to build the national capacity in order to utilize climate information for decision-making in the health sector at national and regional state levels. The training was comprised of three components: core lectures, practical sessions, and short recap presentations by the participants. Sixteen participants were involved in the training. The selection of the participants was done in consultation with the Federal Ministry of Health. Participants came primarily from the Public Health Emergency Management Units of regional and federal health bureaus and were chosen for their roles in the decision-making around the prevention and control of climate-sensitive diseases. Three types of evaluation were carried out, a pre- and post-test, as well as an overall evaluation. The pre- and post-test helped to evaluate the level of knowledge about climate and health before and after the training. The latter helped in evaluating the organization of the overall training. Generally, the evaluations revealed that the training helped to increase the knowledge of the links between climate and health, as well as the use of climate information for decision-making in the public health sector. This training is the first of its kind organized in Ethiopia, especially at a national level. Most of the participants agreed on the suitability of the content, design and delivery of the course and showed their interest in organizing similar training initiatives in their respective home institutions. It is possible to recommend that this training should be extended to the regional health bureau level, with the already trained participants taking the primary responsibility of facilitating these follow-on activities with the close support of the CHWG. The collaboration of the regional branch offices of the National Meteorological Agency, with respect to using climate information, would play a crucial role in this endeavor. The most important point is to sustain this training and update its contents accordingly. The future research agenda and evidence generation efforts of the CHWG and its members should also focus on other climate sensitive diseases. Even though participants did not indicate there were always established ties to local universities in different parts of the country, these potential partnerships should be addressed in sharing the knowledge of the use of climate information for public health decision-making and in prioritizing locally important diseases. The training was held at UNECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, between November 31st and December 5th, 2009. Financial and technical support was provided by IRI with funding from the Google.org sponsored project "Building Capacity to Produce and Use Climate and Environmental Information for Improving Health in East Africa.
Proceedings of the 2004 ONR Decision-Support Workshop Series: Interoperability
In August of 1998 the Collaborative Agent Design Research Center (CADRC) of the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly), approached Dr. Phillip Abraham of the Office of Naval Research (ONR) with the proposal for an annual workshop focusing on emerging concepts in decision-support systems for military applications. The proposal was considered timely by the ONR Logistics Program Office for at least two reasons. First, rapid advances in information systems technology over the past decade had produced distributed collaborative computer-assistance capabilities with profound potential for providing meaningful support to military decision makers. Indeed, some systems based on these new capabilities such as the Integrated Marine Multi-Agent Command and Control System (IMMACCS) and the Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) had already reached the field-testing and final product stages, respectively.
Second, over the past two decades the US Navy and Marine Corps had been increasingly challenged by missions demanding the rapid deployment of forces into hostile or devastate dterritories with minimum or non-existent indigenous support capabilities. Under these conditions Marine Corps forces had to rely mostly, if not entirely, on sea-based support and sustainment operations. Particularly today, operational strategies such as Operational Maneuver From The Sea (OMFTS) and Sea To Objective Maneuver (STOM) are very much in need of intelligent, near real-time and adaptive decision-support tools to assist military commanders and their staff under conditions of rapid change and overwhelming data loads.
In the light of these developments the Logistics Program Office of ONR considered it timely to provide an annual forum for the interchange of ideas, needs and concepts that would address the decision-support requirements and opportunities in combined Navy and Marine Corps sea-based warfare and humanitarian relief operations. The first ONR Workshop was held April 20-22, 1999 at the Embassy Suites Hotel in San Luis Obispo, California. It focused on advances in technology with particular emphasis on an emerging family of powerful computer-based tools, and concluded that the most able members of this family of tools appear to be computer-based agents that are capable of communicating within a virtual environment of the real world. From 2001 onward the venue of the Workshop moved from the West Coast to Washington, and in 2003 the sponsorship was taken over by ONRâs Littoral Combat/Power Projection (FNC) Program Office (Program Manager: Mr. Barry Blumenthal). Themes and keynote speakers of past Workshops have included:
1999: âCollaborative Decision Making Toolsâ Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); LtGen Paul Van Riper (USMC Ret.);Radm Leland Kollmorgen (USN Ret.); and, Dr. Gary Klein (KleinAssociates)
2000: âThe Human-Computer Partnership in Decision-Supportâ Dr. Ronald DeMarco (Associate Technical Director, ONR); Radm CharlesMunns; Col Robert Schmidle; and, Col Ray Cole (USMC Ret.)
2001: âContinuing the Revolution in Military Affairsâ Mr. Andrew Marshall (Director, Office of Net Assessment, OSD); and,Radm Jay M. Cohen (Chief of Naval Research, ONR)
2002: âTransformation ... â Vadm Jerry Tuttle (USN Ret.); and, Steve Cooper (CIO, Office ofHomeland Security)
2003: âDeveloping the New Infostructureâ Richard P. Lee (Assistant Deputy Under Secretary, OSD); and, MichaelOâNeil (Boeing)
2004: âInteroperabilityâ MajGen Bradley M. Lott (USMC), Deputy Commanding General, Marine Corps Combat Development Command; Donald Diggs, Director, C2 Policy, OASD (NII
Founding territorial sciences
International audienceThe âFounding Territorial Sciencesâ conference marked the birth of the International College of Territorial Sciences (CIST), a new research body devoted to the study of space and territory. The purpose of the conference was to answer the following question: Although the concept of territory is central to recent social changes, are we justified in seeking to establish the âterritorial sciencesâ as a new academic field or discipline?To answer this question, we need to address a number of other issues. These include:â the issues raised by interdisciplinary research in other countries; if we want to develop an international network, we will need to ensure that similar initiatives are underway in other countries and that they are compatible with the research projects of the CIST;â the issues surrounding the questions addressed by researchers in the territorial sciences; though it has defined an initial set of research questions, the GIS may need to explore other avenues;â the issues surrounding the nature of the âterritorial sciencesâ: should the territorial sciences be defined as an interdisciplinary field, i.e. as a set of disciplines brought together to understand the territorial dimension of their objects of study? Or should they be defined as an emerging discipline, the key concepts, principles and methods of which will need to be defined?The new field covers a wide range of disciplines extending well beyond the humanities and social sciences. The main theoretical and methodological challenges are to foster links between the humanities and social sciences and the life and earth sciences, the health sciences and the engineering sciences (modeling, complex systems, etc.). For example, the lack of collaboration between physicists and mathematicians working on climate change models and humanities and social science researchers concerned with the territorial impact of climate change has created a gap between global and local approaches.Finally, beyond the confines of academia, what is the proper relationship between the territorial sciences and territorial development strategies and practices?Le colloque « Fonder les sciences du territoire » a constituĂ© le lancement scientifique du GIS CIST. Il devait rĂ©pondre Ă cette question : nous savons que le territoire est au cĆur dâun grand nombre des transformations des sociĂ©tĂ©s contemporaines, mais pour autant avons-nous raison de vouloir fonder les « sciences du territoire » ? Cela supposait de rĂ©pondre Ă dâautres questions prĂ©alables :â sur la confrontation aux expĂ©riences interdisciplinaires Ă©trangĂšres dans le domaine. Si lâon veut constituer un rĂ©seau international, encore faut-il sâassurer de lâexistence dâinitiatives similaires Ă lâĂ©tranger et du degrĂ© de compatibilitĂ© avec elles ;â sur les thĂ©matiques des sciences du territoire, le GIS ayant lancĂ© de premiers axes de travail mais devant rester ouvert Ă dâautres axes possibles ;â sur la nature de ces « sciences du territoire » : doivent-elles ĂȘtre conçues comme un champ multidisciplinaire câest-Ă -dire comme un ensemble de disciplines scientifiques que lâon confronterait pour comprendre, de maniĂšre minimalement harmonisĂ©e, la dimension territoriale de leurs objets propres ? Ou doit-on aller jusquâĂ considĂ©rer quâil sâagirait dâune discipline scientifique Ă©mergente, dont il faudra alors dĂ©finir les concepts, les lois et les mĂ©thodes dâanalyse ?Le spectre des disciplines concernĂ©es est large, trĂšs au-delĂ des SHS. Car câest dans la confrontation des SHS avec les sciences de la vie et de la terre, les sciences de santĂ© et les sciences de lâingĂ©nieur (modĂ©lisation, systĂšmes complexesâŠ) que les enjeux thĂ©oriques et mĂ©thodologiques sont les plus grands. Par exemple le manque dâĂ©changes entre les physiciens ou mathĂ©maticiens qui conçoivent les modĂšles du changement climatique, et les SHS dĂ©diĂ©es Ă lâimpact territorial de ce changement climatique, se traduit par une insuffisante interaction entre les analyses globales et locales.Enfin, au-delĂ des disciplines scientifiques, comment les sciences du territoire devraient-elles se situer par rapport aux pratiques du dĂ©veloppement territorial
Multi-agent geo-simulation of crowds and control forces in conflict situations : models, application and analysis
Peu de modĂšles et de simulations qui dĂ©crivent les comportements de foule en situations de conflit impliquant des forces de lâordre et des armes non-lĂ©tales (NLW) existent. Ce mĂ©moire prĂ©sente des modĂšles dâagents de la foule et des forces de lâordre ainsi que des NLWs dans des situations de conflit. Des groupes ainsi que leurs interactions et actions collectives sont explicitement modĂ©lisĂ©s, ce qui repousse les approches de simulation de foule existantes. Les agents sont caractĂ©risĂ©s par des profils dâapprĂ©ciation de lâagressivitĂ© et ils peuvent changer leurs comportements en relation avec la ThĂ©orie de lâidentitĂ© sociale. Un logiciel a Ă©tĂ© dĂ©veloppĂ© et les modĂšles ont Ă©tĂ© calibrĂ©s avec des scĂ©narios rĂ©alistes. Il a dĂ©montrĂ© la faisabilitĂ© technique de modĂšles sociaux aussi complexes pour des foules de centaines dâagents, en plus de gĂ©nĂ©rer des donnĂ©es pour Ă©valuer lâefficacitĂ© des techniques dâintervention.Few models and simulations that describe crowd behaviour in conflict situations involving control forces and non-lethal weapons (NLW) exist. This thesis presents models for crowd agents, control forces, and NLWs in crowd control situations. Groups as well as their interactions and collective actions are explicitly modelled, which pushes further currently existing crowd simulation approaches. Agents are characterized by appreciation of aggressiveness profiles and they can change their behaviours in relation with the Social Identity theory. A software application was developed and the models were calibrated with realistic scenarios. It demonstrated the technical feasibility of such complex social models for crowds of hundreds of agents, as well generating data to assess the efficiency of intervention techniques
Treatment and valorization plants in materials recovery supply chain
Aim of industrial symbiosis is to create synergies between industries in order to exchange resources (by-products, water and energy) through geographic proximity and collaboration [1]. By optimizing resource flows in a âwhole-system approachâ, a minimization of dangerous emissions and of supply needs can be achieved. Resources exchanges are established to facilitate recycling and re-use of industrial waste using a commercial vehicle. Several paths can be identified in order to establish an industrial symbiosis network (Figure 1, left), in relation (i) to the life cycle phase (raw material, component, product) and (ii) to the nature (material, water, energy) of the resource flows to be exchanged. Sometimes by-products and/or waste of an industrial process have to be treated and valorized in order to become the raw materials for others. In particular, two main treatment processes can be identified: refurbishment/upgrade for re-use (Figure 1, center) and recycling for material recovery (Figure 1, right). A brief overview of technological and economic aspects is given, together with their relevance to industrial symbiosis
A Human-Centric Approach to Group-Based Context-Awareness
The emerging need for qualitative approaches in context-aware information
processing calls for proper modeling of context information and efficient
handling of its inherent uncertainty resulted from human interpretation and
usage. Many of the current approaches to context-awareness either lack a solid
theoretical basis for modeling or ignore important requirements such as
modularity, high-order uncertainty management and group-based
context-awareness. Therefore, their real-world application and extendability
remains limited. In this paper, we present f-Context as a service-based
context-awareness framework, based on language-action perspective (LAP) theory
for modeling. Then we identify some of the complex, informational parts of
context which contain high-order uncertainties due to differences between
members of the group in defining them. An agent-based perceptual computer
architecture is proposed for implementing f-Context that uses computing with
words (CWW) for handling uncertainty. The feasibility of f-Context is analyzed
using a realistic scenario involving a group of mobile users. We believe that
the proposed approach can open the door to future research on context-awareness
by offering a theoretical foundation based on human communication, and a
service-based layered architecture which exploits CWW for context-aware,
group-based and platform-independent access to information systems
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