Communication on Smart City Evaluation and Reporting In UK cities: Pilots, Demos and Experiments Case

Global trends towards urbanisation are associated with wide-ranging challenges and opportunities for cities. Smart technologies create new opportunities for a range of smart city development and regeneration programmes designed to address the environmental, economic and social challenges concentrated in cities. Whilst smart city programmes have received much publicity, there has been much less discussion about the evaluation and measurement of smart city programme outcomes. Existing evaluation approaches have been criticised as non-standard and inadequate, focusing more on implementation processes and investment metrics than on city outcomes and the impacts of smart city programmes. Addressing this, the SmartDframe project aimed to examine city approaches to the evaluation of smart city projects and programmes and reporting of their impacts on city outcomes. A number of ‘smarter’ UK cities were invited to participate, with agreement by city authorities from Birmingham, Bristol, Manchester, Milton Keynes and Peterborough to be interviewed about their smart city work. The findings provide a series of smart city case studies that exemplify contemporary city practices, offering a timely, insightful contribution to city discourse about existing and best practice approaches to evaluation and reporting of complex smart city projects and programmes

Driving Performance while Engaged in MP-3 Player Interaction: Effects of Practice and Task Difficulty on PRT and Eye Movements

The purpose of this study was to examine the effects of iPod interactions on driver performance over several sessions to determine the distraction effect of iPods on driver performance, as well as to see if performance decrements declined with practice. Nineteen younger drivers (mean age = 19.4, range 18 to 22) participated in a seven-session study in the University of Calgary Driving Simulator. Drivers encountered a number of critical events such as pedestrian incursions, lead vehicle braking, and pullout vehicle events, on the roadways. These events were encountered both while driving alone and when performing iPod tasks of varying difficulty. Participants’ hazard response, frequency of collisions and eye movement measures were examined to determine if there were any changes in performance related to iPod distraction and practice effects. Increases in perception response time (PRT) and frequency of collisions were found during the difficult iPod interactions. The number and duration of glances made into the vehicle increased significantly while performing the difficult iPod interactions, reducing the number of glances made to the roadway. Over the course of the sessions, performance improved significantly in all secondary task conditions, but performance decrements still remained in the difficult iPod condition compared to the baseline

Influence of resource pulses and perennial neighbors on the establishment of an invasive annual grass in the Mojave Desert

Invasion by exotic annual grasses is one of the most significant threats to arid ecosystems in the western USA. Current theories of invasibility predict plant communities become more susceptible to invasion whenever there is an increase in the amount of unused resources. The objective of this field study was to examine how resource pulses and temporal variation in resource demand by the native shrub vegetation influences establishment of the invasive annual grass Schismus arabicus. Water and nitrogen were applied as pulses in early spring, mid-spring, or continuously throughout the growing season to plots containing either Atriplex confertifolia or Atriplex parryi shrubs. The effect of resource pulses on Schismus density and biomass was highly dependent on the seasonal timing of the resource pulses and the identity of the neighbor shrub. When resource pulses coincided with high rates of resource capture and growth of the native vegetation, density and biomass of Schismus was reduced. Schismusestablishment was greater under continuous resource supply compared to pulsed resource supply, likely because more soil resources were available at a shallow depth when resources were supplied at a continuous low rate. These results suggest that the establishment of invasive annual grasses in arid systems can be influenced by the magnitude and spatial distribution of resource pulses in addition to the seasonal timing of resource pulses

Older and Younger Driver Performance at Complex Intersections: Implications for Using Perception-Response Time and Driving Simulation

Older drivers are at increased accident risk at intersections for a variety of maneuvers. To examine why, a study was conducted to assess older driver performance at complex intersections in a driving simulator. The University of Calgary Driving Simulator was used to test healthy older drivers (65-83, M = 71.4) and younger drivers (19-22, M = 20.7). Critical scenarios included the sudden appearance of a pedestrian in an intersection, a lastsecond yellow light, an unexpected change during a left, and a vehicle violating a stoplight. Older drivers had significantly higher perception response times (PRT) than younger drivers for the latter three of the four intersection scenarios. Analysis of specific maneuvers also revealed qualitative response differences between young and old groups. In contradiction to expectation, more older drivers ran the yellow light than younger drivers. The capability of older drivers to respond under time constraints is implicated. The utility of driving simulators to assess older driver performance at intersections was limited by the prevalence of simulator sickness

Do In-Vehicle Advance Signs Benefit Older and Younger Driver Intersection Performance?

An experimental study was conducted to determine if intersection behavior of those 18 to 24 and 65+ benefited from advanced in-vehicle signs presented in a head-up display (HUD) format. The University of Calgary Driving Simulator (UCDS) was used to determine whether intersection performance improved in the presence of several advanced signs or whether unwanted adaptive behaviors occurred (e.g., increasing speed to run the light instead of stopping). Invehicle signs facilitated an increase in stopping occurrences for both younger and older drivers at intersections with relatively short yellow onsets. In addition, eye movement analysis revealed significant age effects with regard to vertical and horizontal gaze variablity, with younger drivers showing increases in vertical gaze variability compared to the older drivers. Younger drivers also looked more often and had longer percentage of durations fixating on the HUD compared to the older drivers

Older and Younger Driver Performance at Complex Intersections: Implications for Using Perception-Response Time and Driving Simulation

Older drivers are at increased accident risk at intersections for a variety of maneuvers. To examine why, a study was conducted to assess older driver performance at complex intersections in a driving simulator. The University of Calgary Driving Simulator was used to test healthy older drivers (65-83, M = 71.4) and younger drivers (19-22, M = 20.7). Critical scenarios included the sudden appearance of a pedestrian in an intersection, a lastsecond yellow light, an unexpected change during a left, and a vehicle violating a stoplight. Older drivers had significantly higher perception response times (PRT) than younger drivers for the latter three of the four intersection scenarios. Analysis of specific maneuvers also revealed qualitative response differences between young and old groups. In contradiction to expectation, more older drivers ran the yellow light than younger drivers. The capability of older drivers to respond under time constraints is implicated. The utility of driving simulators to assess older driver performance at intersections was limited by the prevalence of simulator sickness

'Redlands for Regions': Producer demonstration sites of psyllid-resistant leucaena across north Queensland

Leucaena, a tree legume with potential to greatly improve cattle performance, has not been readily adopted in northern Queensland primarily due to prevalence of the psyllid (Heteropsylla cubana) insect in higher rainfall zones. Psyllids reduce edible biomass in leaves by 40–52%, combined with a 46–83% reduction of stem yield (Bray and Woodroffe 1991). Losses to the Central Queensland beef industry due to psyllid impact on animal performance are estimated at $2 M per year (Mullen et al. 1998). Cultivar Redlands is a psyllid-resistant leucaena variety recently developed by Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and the University of Queensland

Effective use of personal health records to support emergency services

Smart City systems capture and exchange information with the aim to improve public services. Particularly, healthcare data could help emergency services to plan resources and make life-saving decisions. However, the delivery of healthcare information to emergency bodies must be balanced against the concerns related to citizens’ privacy. Besides, emergency services face challenges in interpreting this data; the heterogeneity of sources and a large amount of information available represent a significant barrier. In this paper, we focus on a case study involving the use of personal health records to support emergency services in the context of a fire building evacuation. We propose a methodology involving a knowledge engineering approach and a common-sense knowledge base to address the problem of deriving useful information from health records and, at the same time, preserve citizens’ privacy. We perform extensive experiments involving a synthetic dataset of health records and a curated gold standard to demonstrate how our approach allows us to identify vulnerable people and interpret their particular needs while avoiding the disclosure of personal information

Experiences with stacking the first four ATLAS submodules at Argonne

This note is to review our experience at Argonne with assembling the first four sumodules constructed at this location. We will try to cover all of the experiences, and at the end add some comments about changes that were incorporated into the current modules, and suggested changes that may be incorporated into future modules

Optimization of the cooling profile to achieve crack-free Yb:S-FAP crystals

Yb:S-FAP [Yb{sup 3+}:Sr{sub 5}(PO{sub 4}){sub 3}F] crystals are an important gain medium for diode-pumped laser applications. Growth of 7.0 cm diameter Yb:S-FAP crystals utilizing the Czochralski (CZ) method from SrF{sub 2}-rich melts often encounter cracks during the post growth cool down stage. To suppress cracking during cool down, a numerical simulation of the growth system was used to understand the correlation between the furnace power during cool down and the radial temperature differences within the crystal. The critical radial temperature difference, above which the crystal cracks, has been determined by benchmarking the simulation results against experimental observations. Based on this comparison, an optimal three-stage ramp-down profile was implemented and produced high quality, crack-free Yb:S-FAP crystals