Feasibility study of using augmented reality in geotechnical site inspection

Landslides are the most widespread geological event. They can cause big amounts of deaths as well as economic losses. There are several processes of monitoring, although the visual inspection in the early stages of the movements should be enhanced. On the other hand, the construction industry is at the edge of digitalisation and emergent technologies are being developed and implemented, such as Augmented Reality, BIM and 3D printing. This thesis, hence, aims to propose an Augmented Reality app with the objective of enhancing visual geotechnical on-site inspections in order to make them more effective and mitigate future risks

Social Work Promoting Community and Environmental Sustainability: A Workbook for Social Work Practitioners and Educators (Volume 1)

Incredible work is being done all over the world by social workers addressing issues at the nexusof community and environmental sustainability. Whether you are a longtime supporter of socialworkers investing in social and environmental sustainability work, or you are new and curiousabout the topic, we hope this resource will inspire and equip you. It is formatted as a workbook,with short lessons accompanied by exercises that help you apply the lessons theoretically and inyour own practice.This book is intended as a tool for international social work practitioners, students, and educatorsto help advance the Global Agenda for Social Work and Social Development theme of “workingtoward environmental sustainability”. The four themes of the Global Agenda are interwoven andall equally important; there is no way to help those in social, economic, and/or political perilwithout also looking at their physical environment, both natural and built. It is imperative that wesee the bigger picture and acknowledge these inextricable links as we engage in work at all levelsto address global injustices by promoting community and environmental sustainability

Towards Urban Resilience - Proceedings - International Workshop - Barcelona 2017

The complexity of urban systems and the uncertainty of the impact of urbanization and climate change ask for new ways of thinking about planning objectives and solidarity in action. Cities are complex, adaptive systems of networked services and infrastructures. Growing urban populations, the concentration of resources and capital, unclear contingency planning, the often inadequate and environmentally unsound water supply and sewage management, the menacing continual destruction of ecosystems, and out-dated infrastructures and buildings, all present massive challenges to city planning. With the goal of strengthening resilience, there has been a lasting change of perspective in planning. The scope has been broadened from a specialized viewpoint to an interdisciplinary understanding of interactions and processes within the cityscape. Resilience is an anticipatory principle that transcends risk reduction and attempts to mitigate the effects of system failures while increasing capacities. The overall aim is to combine resilience strategies and sustainability by: i) enhancing sustainable urbanization ii) improving ecosystems and nature-based solutions iii) developing climate change adaptation and mitigation iv) strengthening community-based approaches and social resilience Developing a network is an important step to promote resource-sensitive urban design and enable educational and professional shift towards resilience and sustainability. Thus, the International Workshop at UIC Barcelona in cooperation with UN-Habitat’s City Resilience Profiling Programme (CRPP) and TU Darmstadt will offer the possibility to bring innovative ideas on resilience to discussion. The joint research hub, Urban Resilience Institute (URI), in cooperation with UN-Habitat CRRP aims to analyse practices and processes in the design of resilient and sustainable cities. The hub will gather young researchers from the European Joint Doctorate Programme within the Mundus Urbano Consortium, and from the Fellowship Programme on “Urban Infrastructures in Transition: The Case of African Cities,” as well as the research group on Critical Infrastructures at TU Darmstadt. Currently working from academic institutions based in Europe, researchers from Germany, India, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Uganda, and Spain, will present their research projects in four sessions covering the topics of: critical infrastructures, resource-sensitive urban design, housing and land management, and post-crisis emergency reconstruction; opening for discussion on conceptional approaches “towards urban resilience” with international researchers, Master- and PhD-students. Sessions: A_Critical Infrastructures: As the dependency on technology increases, there is a growing need to reflect on the role of infrastructures to sustain human activities. Infrastructures are critical for the functioning of society, not only as the physical components in cities, or ‘hardware,’ but also as structures embedded with the intangible essence of human groups and our understanding of them in specific contexts and throughout time. B_Resource-sensitive Urban Design: In face of rapid urbanization and the negative impacts of climate change on natural and built environments, this session calls analysis of practices and processes of resource-sensitive urban design. Urban design can contribute towards an educational and professional shift towards resilience and sustainability by focusing on integrative approaches, such as district-based networks, low-impact approaches, and climate-adaptive planning and building. C_Resilience and Multi-level Governance: This session seeks cross-scalar and multi-level frameworks which help in understanding cities as complex and adaptive systems. Contributions should problematize urbanization processes and include tools and strategies which explain scalar arrangements of nature and power. The role of international and global frameworks will deem necessary in laying the base for transition and transformation of cities, and to contribute to the development of urban resilience. D_Post-Crisis Emergency Reconstruction and Upgrading: This session aims at understanding refugee camps as a form of urbanization and sets the basis for rethinking camp design and their temporality. Contributions should bridge social structures and their physical transformations, as a means for their integral regeneration. This session looks at examples where resilience in the social fabric of informal settlements and low housing estates can create a sense of belonging and act as a force for their physical upgrading

MODELLING VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT FOR ADVANCED NAVAL SIMULATION

This thesis proposes a new virtual simulation environment designed as element of an interoperable federation of simulator to support the investigation of complex scenarios over the Extended Maritime Framework (EMF). Extended Maritime Framework is six spaces environment (Underwater, Water surface, Ground, Air, Space, and Cyberspace) where parties involved in Joint Naval Operations act. The amount of unmanned vehicles involved in the simulation arise the importance of the Communication modelling, thus the relevance of Cyberspace. The research is applied to complex cases (one applied to deep waters and one to coast and littoral protection) as examples to validate this approach; these cases involve different kind of traditional assets (e.g. satellites, helicopters, ships, submarines, underwater sensor infrastructure, etc.) interact dynamically and collaborate with new autonomous systems (i.e. AUV, Gliders, USV and UAV). The use of virtual simulation is devoted to support validation of new concepts and investigation of collaborative engineering solutions by providing a virtual representation of the current situation; this approach support the creation of dynamic interoperable immersive framework that could support training for Man in the Loop, education and tactical decision introducing the Man on the Loop concepts. The research and development of the Autonomous Underwater Vehicles requires continuous testing so a time effective approach can result a very useful tool. In this context the simulation can be useful to better understand the behaviour of Unmanned Vehicles and to avoid useless experimentations and their costs finding problems before doing them. This research project proposes the creation of a virtual environment with the aim to see and understand a Joint Naval Scenario. The study will be focusing especially on the integration of Autonomous Systems with traditional assets; the proposed simulation deals especially with collaborative operation involving different types of Autonomous Underwater Vehicles (AUV), Unmanned Surface Vehicles (USV) and UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle). The author develops an interoperable virtual simulation devoted to present the overall situation for supervision considering also the sensor capabilities, communications and mission effectiveness that results dependent of the different asset interaction over a complex heterogeneous network. The aim of this research is to develop a flexible virtual simulation solution as crucial element of an HLA federation able to address the complexity of Extended Maritime Framework (EMF). Indeed this new generation of marine interoperable simulation is a strategic advantage for investigating the problems related to the operational use of autonomous systems and to finding new ways to use them respect to different scenarios. The research deal with the creation of two scenarios, one related to military operations and another one on coastal and littoral protection where the virtual simulation propose the overall situation and allows to navigate into the virtual world considering the complex physics affecting movement, perception, interaction and communication. By this approach, it becomes evident the capability to identify, by experimental analysis within the virtual world, the new solutions in terms of engineering and technological configuration of the different systems and vehicles as well as new operational models and tactics to address the specific mission environment. The case of study is a maritime scenario with a representation of heterogeneous network frameworks that involves multiple vehicles both naval and aerial including AUVs, USVs, gliders, helicopter, ships, submarines, satellite, buoys and sensors. For the sake of clarity aerial communications will be represented divided from underwater ones. A connection point for the latter will be set on the keel line of surface vessels representing communication happening via acoustic modem. To represent limits in underwater communications, underwater signals have been considerably slowed down in order to have a more realistic comparison with aerial ones. A maximum communication distance is set, beyond which no communication can take place. To ensure interoperability the HLA Standard (IEEE 1516 evolved) is adopted to federate other simulators so to allow its extensibility for other case studies. Two different scenarios are modelled in 3D visualization: Open Water and Port Protection. The first one aims to simulate interactions between traditional assets in Extended Maritime Framework (EMF) such as satellite, navy ships, submarines, NATO Research Vessels (NRVs), helicopters, with new generation unmanned assets as AUV, Gliders, UAV, USV and the mutual advantage the subjects involved in the scenario can have; in other word, the increase in persistence, interoperability and efficacy. The second scenario models the behaviour of unmanned assets, an AUV and an USV, patrolling a harbour to find possible threats. This aims to develop an algorithm to lead patrolling path toward an optimum, guaranteeing a high probability of success in the safest way reducing human involvement in the scenario. End users of the simulation face a graphical 3D representation of the scenario where assets would be represented. He can moves in the scenario through a Free Camera in Graphic User Interface (GUI) configured to entitle users to move around the scene and observe the 3D sea scenario. In this way, players are able to move freely in the synthetic environment in order to choose the best perspective of the scene. The work is intended to provide a valid tool to evaluate the defencelessness of on-shore and offshore critical infrastructures that could includes the use of new technologies to take care of security best and preserve themselves against disasters both on economical and environmental ones

Virtual Reality Games for Motor Rehabilitation

This paper presents a fuzzy logic based method to track user satisfaction without the need for devices to monitor users physiological conditions. User satisfaction is the key to any product’s acceptance; computer applications and video games provide a unique opportunity to provide a tailored environment for each user to better suit their needs. We have implemented a non-adaptive fuzzy logic model of emotion, based on the emotional component of the Fuzzy Logic Adaptive Model of Emotion (FLAME) proposed by El-Nasr, to estimate player emotion in UnrealTournament 2004. In this paper we describe the implementation of this system and present the results of one of several play tests. Our research contradicts the current literature that suggests physiological measurements are needed. We show that it is possible to use a software only method to estimate user emotion

The Proceedings of 15th Australian Information Security Management Conference, 5-6 December, 2017, Edith Cowan University, Perth, Australia

Conference Foreword The annual Security Congress, run by the Security Research Institute at Edith Cowan University, includes the Australian Information Security and Management Conference. Now in its fifteenth year, the conference remains popular for its diverse content and mixture of technical research and discussion papers. The area of information security and management continues to be varied, as is reflected by the wide variety of subject matter covered by the papers this year. The papers cover topics from vulnerabilities in “Internet of Things” protocols through to improvements in biometric identification algorithms and surveillance camera weaknesses. The conference has drawn interest and papers from within Australia and internationally. All submitted papers were subject to a double blind peer review process. Twenty two papers were submitted from Australia and overseas, of which eighteen were accepted for final presentation and publication. We wish to thank the reviewers for kindly volunteering their time and expertise in support of this event. We would also like to thank the conference committee who have organised yet another successful congress. Events such as this are impossible without the tireless efforts of such people in reviewing and editing the conference papers, and assisting with the planning, organisation and execution of the conference. To our sponsors, also a vote of thanks for both the financial and moral support provided to the conference. Finally, thank you to the administrative and technical staff, and students of the ECU Security Research Institute for their contributions to the running of the conference

Strategies for Combining e-Learning and Serious Games

Analisar as múltiplas valências dos sistemas de aprendizagem em e-learning constitui um desafio. A educação e a comunicação estão em constante (r)evolução. Os fenómenos da globalização afetam de forma direta e/ou indireta a maioria das áreas da atividade humana e os sistemas de ensino aprendizagem não são exceção. A relação entre a utilização de ferramentas e as estratégias digitais é um ponto fulcral desta dissertação. Nesta dissertação doutoral teve como objeto a contextualização e problematização das diferentes estratégias na utilização de game-based na aprendizagem e estratégias de utilização do e-learning. A utilização de jogos sérios no âmbito das aprendizagens digitais em Portugal não é pratica comum no contexto educativo. Assim, esta dissertação foi desenvolvida para a definição de estratégias de utilização dos jogos sérios e e-learning, propondo uma utilização pedagógica dos jogos sérios em sala de aula por forma a motivar e consolidar conhecimentos adquiridos. A construção de jogos sérios com o intuito de corresponder às necessidades foi o objeto de análise da experiência controlada. O jogo sério “Alpha Patrol” foi conceptualizado, desenvolvido e testado sob responsabilidade do Centro de Investigação para Tecnologias Interactivas. O projeto de investigação envolveu diferentes etapas da investigação de forma a adoptar uma estratégia de análise, que por vezes, se mostrou difícil e ingrata. Investigar e desenvolver jogos sérios em Portugal confronta-se com ambientes indiferentes ou mesmo hostis. O preconceito de jogar (em especial no espaço de sala de aula) ainda existe. No estudo de caso que a dissertação apresenta e desenvolve foi decidido que, face a algumas limitações sociais e culturais, o objecto digital a ser analisado apresenta-se uma estrutura híbrida: livro e jogo dele extraído. A experiência controlada permitiu definir os parâmetros sobre o jogo sério criado, os elementos de motivação, a pertinência na utilização de diferentes estratégias como o livro, os quizzes e as medalhas de aprendizagem.To analyze multiple valences of learning systems in e-Learning is a challenge. Education and communication are in constant (r)evolution. The phenomena of globalization affect directly and/or indirectly most areas of human activity and learning educational systems are no exception. This doctoral dissertation focuses on the context and problematization of different strategies in the use of game-based learning and the use of e-learning strategies. The relationship between the use of tools and digital strategies is a key point of this thesis. The use of serious games in the digital learning context in Portugal is not a common practice in the educational context. Thus, this thesis was developed to define the use of elearning and serious games strategies, proposing a pedagogical approach to the use of serious games in the classroom in order to motivate and consolidate knowledge acquisition. The construction of serious games in order to meet the identified needs was the object of analysis of the controlled experiment. The serious game "Alpha Patrol" was conceptualized, developed and tested under the responsibility of the Research Center for Interactive Technologies. The research project involved different stages of the investigation in order to adopt a strategy of analysis, which sometimes proved to be difficult. Research and develop serious games in Portugal is often faced with indifference or even hostile environments. Prejudice to play as a form of knowledge acquisition (especially in the classroom) still exists. With this in mind, in the case study it was decided that the digital object had to present a hybrid structure: a book and the serious game. The controlled experiment allowed to set the parameters for the serious game created, the motivation elements, the relevance of using different strategies like the book, quizzes and learning medals

Top 10 technologies 2003 and their impact on the accounting profession

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