Computer Vision for Multimedia Geolocation in Human Trafficking Investigation: A Systematic Literature Review

The task of multimedia geolocation is becoming an increasingly essential component of the digital forensics toolkit to effectively combat human trafficking, child sexual exploitation, and other illegal acts. Typically, metadata-based geolocation information is stripped when multimedia content is shared via instant messaging and social media. The intricacy of geolocating, geotagging, or finding geographical clues in this content is often overly burdensome for investigators. Recent research has shown that contemporary advancements in artificial intelligence, specifically computer vision and deep learning, show significant promise towards expediting the multimedia geolocation task. This systematic literature review thoroughly examines the state-of-the-art leveraging computer vision techniques for multimedia geolocation and assesses their potential to expedite human trafficking investigation. This includes a comprehensive overview of the application of computer vision-based approaches to multimedia geolocation, identifies their applicability in combating human trafficking, and highlights the potential implications of enhanced multimedia geolocation for prosecuting human trafficking. 123 articles inform this systematic literature review. The findings suggest numerous potential paths for future impactful research on the subject

Privacy in the Smart City - Applications, Technologies, Challenges and Solutions

Many modern cities strive to integrate information technology into every aspect of city life to create so-called smart cities. Smart cities rely on a large number of application areas and technologies to realize complex interactions between citizens, third parties, and city departments. This overwhelming complexity is one reason why holistic privacy protection only rarely enters the picture. A lack of privacy can result in discrimination and social sorting, creating a fundamentally unequal society. To prevent this, we believe that a better understanding of smart cities and their privacy implications is needed. We therefore systematize the application areas, enabling technologies, privacy types, attackers and data sources for the attacks, giving structure to the fuzzy term “smart city”. Based on our taxonomies, we describe existing privacy-enhancing technologies, review the state of the art in real cities around the world, and discuss promising future research directions. Our survey can serve as a reference guide, contributing to the development of privacy-friendly smart cities

Iconic architecture through the lens of Instagram: the case studies of the Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao and the Dongdaemun Design Plaza, Seoul

Architecture has played an enormous role in the branding of cities, initially through cultural institutions such as museums, which have become the preferred platform for the expression of iconic architecture to boost the image of a city’s modernity and economic prosperity, and to express its civic pride. In recent years the seemingly endless potential of social media has allowed the consumption of architecture to surpass the boundaries of space and time. The instant image sharing and dissemination of Instagrammably photogenic iconic architecture has made the notion of ‘iconicity’ more questionable than it might have been before the social media era. This research aims to explore the manner in which contemporary iconic architecture is represented in social media, with a specific focus on the manner in which such architectural imagery moulds ‘iconicity’ in architecture; in doing so, it investigates the ways in which city image is incorporated into the social imagery of architecture. Using the two case studies of Frank Ghery’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and Zaha Hadid’s Dongdaemun Design Plaza and Park in Seoul, the thesis scrutinises user-generated photographic images and accompanying textual descriptions, which were downloaded from Instagram. The empirical work involves a two-part multi-method approach combining visual content analysis and discourse analysis, using an adaptation of Panofsky’s Iconology, which was borrowed from art history. A general picture of the representational practices of Instagram images was gained through content analysis; this is followed by qualitative readings of individual images using Panofsky’s iconographic-iconological method. The results demonstrate that there are key elements that convey architectural iconicity in Instagram images. These include: (a) the heightened aesthetics of image-taking through the maximisation of aesthetic value in the portrayal of a building; (b) verbal texts alongside an image, which deliver information on the building; and (c) geographic associations through geo-tagging and hashtagging, and textual components, such as a caption and comments. The findings further indicate that, given that a majority of images are depicted in relation to architectural context, this context, in other words, the place in which a building is situated, is essential for the reception and perception of iconicity in the building. The present study is cross-disciplinary in nature, which serves as an important contribution to academic research into place branding by bringing together architecture, city branding, and social media. This is the first time that the Panofsky model of iconology has been applied to the field of place branding

Closing the Malaria Prevention Gap: Measuring and Characterizing Human Behavioral Drivers of Persistent Malaria Transmission in Sub-Saharan Africa

Malaria kills a person nearly every minute, most often a child under the age of five. While endemic in many parts of the world, a disproportionate burden of cases and deaths are borne by people living in sub-Saharan Africa. Malaria is transmitted by the female Anopheles mosquito and ongoing transmission is a direct result of the overlap between human and vector behavior, and intervention presence and use. Significant gains have been achieved, with insecticide-treated nets (ITNs) accounting for an estimated two-thirds of the reduction in malaria burden over the past two decades. However, progress has begun to stall in recent years highlighting the importance of enhanced malaria prevention efforts. The aim of this thesis is to identify opportunities to improve malaria prevention in sub-Saharan Africa by optimizing ITN access and use and identifying prevention gaps that can remain once high coverage of core vector control interventions has been achieved. This aim was realized through a range of methodological approaches, including a systematic review of the published literature, secondary analysis of large-scale survey data from ten countries in sub-Saharan Africa, primary research utilizing quantitative and qualitative methods, and development of a standardized approach for measuring human exposure to malaria vectors. This work will help to inform effective targeting of core and complementary vector control tools and social and behavior change strategies

A web-based tool for user experience studies

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia de InformáticaIn a ubicomp environment it is important to evaluate the user experience in interaction with technology and how this technology affects users in several dimensions. To assess those dimensions, what affects them and what causes them to impact users in one way or another, researchers conduct user studies and these aid researchers to answer their questions. While there are several user study techniques, these techniques are mostly not attuned to the specificities of ubicomp settings. This is where experience sampling proves to be a valuable technique, as it’s impromptu and in-situ nature caters to the specificities of ubicomp scenarios. This work focuses on studying user study techniques, with particular attention to experience sampling and, on the design and evaluation of the platform that we created to empower researchers with a flexible and general purpose user study tool. This tool allows them to easily create and manage studies and, to collect rich contextual data. From the study participants’ perspective, the tool strives to be minimally intrusive and to not impose unwanted costs (energetic or monetary). Evaluation results show that we were successful in achieving our goals in terms of internal validity but the sample size of the test study limits us in achieving generalizability (external validity) for our results.Num ambiente de computação ubíqua é importante avaliar a experiência dos utilizadores na sua interacção com a tecnologia e também, a forma como esta tecnologia afecta os utilizadores em várias dimensões. Para avaliar essas dimensões, o que as afecta e o que faz com que elas afectem os utilizadores, de uma forma ou de outra, os investigadores realizam estudos de experiência e estes, auxiliam no esclarecimento das suas questões de investigação. Embora haja várias técnicas para a realização de estudos de experiência, maioritariamente dá-se o caso de a técnica escolhida não estar calibrada para lidar com as especificidades de um cenário tecnológico como o da computação ubíqua. Este é um aspecto em que o experience sampling se revela como uma técnica valiosa, pois a sua natureza impromptu e in-situ, faz com que esta se adeqúe a estas especificidades. Este trabalho foca-se no estudo de técnicas de avaliação para estudos de experiência, com particular atenção para a técnica de experience sampling e, no desenho e avaliação da plataforma que criamos, com o intuito de empossar investigadores com uma ferramenta de estudos flexível e de âmbito geral. Esta ferramenta permite de forma fácil, a criação e gestão dos estudos e, permite a recolha de dados contextualmente ricos. Da perspectiva dos participantes em estudos a ferramenta visa ser minimamente intrusiva e não impor custos indesejados (energéticos ou monetários). Os resultados da avaliação mostram que atingimos os nossos objectivos em termos de validade interna mas, o tamanho da amostra da população do estudo de teste, limita-nos na possibilidade de obter resultados generalizáveis (validação externa)

Image and Video Forensics

Nowadays, images and videos have become the main modalities of information being exchanged in everyday life, and their pervasiveness has led the image forensics community to question their reliability, integrity, confidentiality, and security. Multimedia contents are generated in many different ways through the use of consumer electronics and high-quality digital imaging devices, such as smartphones, digital cameras, tablets, and wearable and IoT devices. The ever-increasing convenience of image acquisition has facilitated instant distribution and sharing of digital images on digital social platforms, determining a great amount of exchange data. Moreover, the pervasiveness of powerful image editing tools has allowed the manipulation of digital images for malicious or criminal ends, up to the creation of synthesized images and videos with the use of deep learning techniques. In response to these threats, the multimedia forensics community has produced major research efforts regarding the identification of the source and the detection of manipulation. In all cases (e.g., forensic investigations, fake news debunking, information warfare, and cyberattacks) where images and videos serve as critical evidence, forensic technologies that help to determine the origin, authenticity, and integrity of multimedia content can become essential tools. This book aims to collect a diverse and complementary set of articles that demonstrate new developments and applications in image and video forensics to tackle new and serious challenges to ensure media authenticity

Spatial and Temporal Sentiment Analysis of Twitter data

The public have used Twitter world wide for expressing opinions. This study focuses on spatio-temporal variation of georeferenced Tweets’ sentiment polarity, with a view to understanding how opinions evolve on Twitter over space and time and across communities of users. More specifically, the question this study tested is whether sentiment polarity on Twitter exhibits specific time-location patterns. The aim of the study is to investigate the spatial and temporal distribution of georeferenced Twitter sentiment polarity within the area of 1 km buffer around the Curtin Bentley campus boundary in Perth, Western Australia. Tweets posted in campus were assigned into six spatial zones and four time zones. A sentiment analysis was then conducted for each zone using the sentiment analyser tool in the Starlight Visual Information System software. The Feature Manipulation Engine was employed to convert non-spatial files into spatial and temporal feature class. The spatial and temporal distribution of Twitter sentiment polarity patterns over space and time was mapped using Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Some interesting results were identified. For example, the highest percentage of positive Tweets occurred in the social science area, while science and engineering and dormitory areas had the highest percentage of negative postings. The number of negative Tweets increases in the library and science and engineering areas as the end of the semester approaches, reaching a peak around an exam period, while the percentage of negative Tweets drops at the end of the semester in the entertainment and sport and dormitory area. This study will provide some insights into understanding students and staff ’s sentiment variation on Twitter, which could be useful for university teaching and learning management

European Handbook of Crowdsourced Geographic Information

This book focuses on the study of the remarkable new source of geographic information that has become available in the form of user-generated content accessible over the Internet through mobile and Web applications. The exploitation, integration and application of these sources, termed volunteered geographic information (VGI) or crowdsourced geographic information (CGI), offer scientists an unprecedented opportunity to conduct research on a variety of topics at multiple scales and for diversified objectives. The Handbook is organized in five parts, addressing the fundamental questions: What motivates citizens to provide such information in the public domain, and what factors govern/predict its validity?What methods might be used to validate such information? Can VGI be framed within the larger domain of sensor networks, in which inert and static sensors are replaced or combined by intelligent and mobile humans equipped with sensing devices? What limitations are imposed on VGI by differential access to broadband Internet, mobile phones, and other communication technologies, and by concerns over privacy? How do VGI and crowdsourcing enable innovation applications to benefit human society? Chapters examine how crowdsourcing techniques and methods, and the VGI phenomenon, have motivated a multidisciplinary research community to identify both fields of applications and quality criteria depending on the use of VGI. Besides harvesting tools and storage of these data, research has paid remarkable attention to these information resources, in an age when information and participation is one of the most important drivers of development. The collection opens questions and points to new research directions in addition to the findings that each of the authors demonstrates. Despite rapid progress in VGI research, this Handbook also shows that there are technical, social, political and methodological challenges that require further studies and research