ASTF: Visual Abstractions of Time-Varying Patterns in Radio Signals

A time-frequency diagram is a commonly used visualization for observing the time-frequency distribution of radio signals and analyzing their time-varying patterns of communication states in radio monitoring and management. While it excels when performing short-term signal analyses, it becomes inadaptable for long-term signal analyses because it cannot adequately depict signal time-varying patterns in a large time span on a space-limited screen. This research thus presents an abstract signal time-frequency (ASTF) diagram to address this problem. In the diagram design, a visual abstraction method is proposed to visually encode signal communication state changes in time slices. A time segmentation algorithm is proposed to divide a large time span into time slices.Three new quantified metrics and a loss function are defined to ensure the preservation of important time-varying information in the time segmentation. An algorithm performance experiment and a user study are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the diagram for long-term signal analyses.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

A review of the internet of floods : near real-time detection of a flood event and its impact

Worldwide, flood events frequently have a dramatic impact on urban societies. Time is key during a flood event in order to evacuate vulnerable people at risk, minimize the socio-economic, ecologic and cultural impact of the event and restore a society from this hazard as quickly as possible. Therefore, detecting a flood in near real-time and assessing the risks relating to these flood events on the fly is of great importance. Therefore, there is a need to search for the optimal way to collect data in order to detect floods in real time. Internet of Things (IoT) is the ideal method to bring together data of sensing equipment or identifying tools with networking and processing capabilities, allow them to communicate with one another and with other devices and services over the Internet to accomplish the detection of floods in near real-time. The main objective of this paper is to report on the current state of research on the IoT in the domain of flood detection. Current trends in IoT are identified, and academic literature is examined. The integration of IoT would greatly enhance disaster management and, therefore, will be of greater importance into the future

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

Advanced virtual reality applications and intelligent agents for construction process optimisation and defect prevention

Defects and errors in new or recently completed construction work continually pervade the industry. Whilst inspection and monitoring processes are established vehicles for their 'control', the procedures involved are often process driven, time consuming, and resource intensive. Paradoxically therefore, they can impinge upon the broader aspects of project time, cost and quality outcomes. Acknowledging this means appreciating concatenation effects such as the potential for litigation, impact on other processes and influence on stakeholders' perceptions—that in turn, can impede progress and stifle opportunities for process optimisation or innovation. That is, opportunities relating to for example, logistics, carbon reduction, health and safety, efficiency, asset underutilisation and efficient labour distribution. This study evaluates these kinds of challenge from a time, cost and quality perspective, with a focus on identifying opportunities for process innovation and optimisation. It reviews—within the construction domain—state of the art technologies that support optimal use of artificial intelligence, cybernetics and complex adaptive systems. From this, conceptual framework is proposed for development of real-time intelligent observational platform supported by advanced intelligent agents, presented for discussion. This platform actively, autonomously and seamlessly manages intelligent agents (Virtual Reality cameras, Radio-Frequency Identification RFID scanners, remote sensors, etc.) in order to identify, report and document 'high risk' defects. Findings underpin a new ontological model that supports ongoing development of a dynamic, self-organised sensor (agent) network, for capturing and reporting real-time construction site data. The model is a 'stepping stone' for advancement of independent intelligent agents, embracing sensory and computational support, able to perform complicated (previously manual) tasks that provide optimal, dynamic, and autonomous management functions

Crowd-sensing our Smart Cities: a Platform for Noise Monitoring and Acoustic Urban Planning

Environmental pollution and the corresponding control measurements put in place to tackle it play a significant role in determining the actual quality of life in modern cities. Amongst the several pollutant that have to be faced on a daily basis, urban noise represent one of the most widely known for its already ascertained health-related issues. However, no systematic noise management and control activities are performed in the majority of European cities due to a series of limiting factors (e.g., expensive monitoring equipment, few available technician, scarce awareness of the problem in city managers). The recent advances in the Smart City model, which is being progressively adopted in many cities, nowadays offer multiple possibilities to improve the effectiveness in this area. The Mobile Crowd Sensing paradigm allows collecting data streams from smartphone built-in sensors on large geographical scales at no cost and without involving expert data captors, provided that an adequate IT infrastructure has been implemented to manage properly the gathered measurements. In this paper, we present an improved version of a MCS-based platform, named City Soundscape, which allows exploiting any Android-based device as a portable acoustic monitoring station and that offers city managers an effective and straightforward tool for planning Noise Reduction Interventions (NRIs) within their cities. The platform also now offers a new logical microservices architecture

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2017

This Research Report presents the FY18 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs)

Air Force Institute of Technology Research Report 2020

This Research Report presents the FY20 research statistics and contributions of the Graduate School of Engineering and Management (EN) at AFIT. AFIT research interests and faculty expertise cover a broad spectrum of technical areas related to USAF needs, as reflected by the range of topics addressed in the faculty and student publications listed in this report. In most cases, the research work reported herein is directly sponsored by one or more USAF or DOD agencies. AFIT welcomes the opportunity to conduct research on additional topics of interest to the USAF, DOD, and other federal organizations when adequate manpower and financial resources are available and/or provided by a sponsor. In addition, AFIT provides research collaboration and technology transfer benefits to the public through Cooperative Research and Development Agreements (CRADAs). Interested individuals may discuss ideas for new research collaborations, potential CRADAs, or research proposals with individual faculty using the contact information in this document

High-Performance Modelling and Simulation for Big Data Applications

This open access book was prepared as a Final Publication of the COST Action IC1406 “High-Performance Modelling and Simulation for Big Data Applications (cHiPSet)“ project. Long considered important pillars of the scientific method, Modelling and Simulation have evolved from traditional discrete numerical methods to complex data-intensive continuous analytical optimisations. Resolution, scale, and accuracy have become essential to predict and analyse natural and complex systems in science and engineering. When their level of abstraction raises to have a better discernment of the domain at hand, their representation gets increasingly demanding for computational and data resources. On the other hand, High Performance Computing typically entails the effective use of parallel and distributed processing units coupled with efficient storage, communication and visualisation systems to underpin complex data-intensive applications in distinct scientific and technical domains. It is then arguably required to have a seamless interaction of High Performance Computing with Modelling and Simulation in order to store, compute, analyse, and visualise large data sets in science and engineering. Funded by the European Commission, cHiPSet has provided a dynamic trans-European forum for their members and distinguished guests to openly discuss novel perspectives and topics of interests for these two communities. This cHiPSet compendium presents a set of selected case studies related to healthcare, biological data, computational advertising, multimedia, finance, bioinformatics, and telecommunications