112.social: Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Crisis App for Bidirectional Communication between Emergency Services and Citizens

Emergencies threaten human lives and overall societal continuity, whether or not the crises and disasters are induced by nature, such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes, or by human beings, such as accidents, terror attacks and uprisings. In such situations, not only do citizens demand information about the damage and safe behaviour, but emergency services also require high quality information to improve situational awareness. For this purpose, there are currently two kinds of apps available: General-purpose apps, such as Facebook Safety Check or Twitter Alerts, already integrate safety features. Specific crisis apps, such as KATWARN in Germany or FEMA in the US, provide information on how to behave before, during and after emergencies, and capabilities for reporting incidents or receiving disaster warnings. In this paper, we analyse authorities’ and citizens’ information demands and features of crisis apps. Moreover, we present the concept, implementation and evaluation of a crisis app for incident reporting and bidirectional communication between authorities and citizens. Using the app, citizens may (1) report incidents by providing a category, description, location and multimedia files and (2) receive broadcasts and responses from authorities. Finally, we outline features, requirements and contextual factors for incident reporting and bidirectional communication via mobile app

112.SOCIAL: Design and Evaluation of a Mobile Crisis App for Bidirectional Communication between Emergency Services and Citizen

Emergencies threaten human lives and overall societal continuity, whether or not the crises and disasters are induced by nature, such as earthquakes, floods and hurricanes, or by human beings, such as accidents, terror attacks and uprisings. In such situations, not only do citizens demand information about the damage and safe behaviour, but emergency services also require high quality information to improve situational awareness. For this purpose, there are currently two kinds of apps available: General-purpose apps, such as Facebook Safety Check or Twitter Alerts, already integrate safety features. Specific crisis apps, such as KATWARN in Germany or FEMA in the US, provide information on how to behave before, during and after emergencies, and capabilities for reporting incidents or receiving disaster warnings. In this paper, we analyse authorities’ and citizens’ information demands and features of crisis apps. Moreover, we present the concept, implementation and evaluation of a crisis app for incident reporting and bidirectional communication between authorities and citizens. Using the app, citizens may (1) report incidents by providing a category, description, location and multimedia files and (2) receive broadcasts and responses from authorities. Finally, we outline features, requirements and contextual factors for incident reporting and bidirectional communication via mobile app

ODIN: Da un progetto europeo ad applicazioni reali

ODIN: Da un progetto europeo ad applicazioni real

ODIN: Da un progetto europeo ad applicazioni reali

ODIN: Da un progetto europeo ad applicazioni real

Environmental pollution and health effects in the Quirra area, Sardinia (Italy)

Quirra is a village located in the Italian island of Sardinia, close to a big military base where ballistic missiles and weapons are tested. In the past years and recently, the zone has been called to the attention of the media due to the so-called "Quirra syndrome", an apparently off-normal incidence of illnesses in that zone. The media indicated a possible cause of the above situation in the military use of Depleted Uranium. The paper carries out a statistical assessment to verify if the "Quirra syndrome" exists, in order to evaluate health effects. Moreover, one of the causes of possible pollution - electromagnetic fields due to military warfare use - is addressed, by means also of experimental measurements carried out on site. The results show that, on one side, the so-called "Quirra syndrome" has epidemiological relevance, and, on the other, the measured levels of electromagnetic fields show artificial pollution and require more investigation

Nuclear Powered Submarines as Hazards For The Marine Environment

Hundreds of nuclear-powered submarines (NPS) have been manufactured since 1953; some 160 are still in operation. Decommissioning NPS is a major, delicate and costly task. There have been many incidents with NPS during their 50 years operational period: Most of these emergencies resulted in serious radiological and ecological consequences. In the Mediterranean, the effects of marine pollution due to NPS have been under recent investigation following the October 2003 accident to the US nuclear submarine Hartford in Sardinia (Italy). Preliminary studies indicated that no apparent environmental release had taken place as a direct result of the accident. However, further analyses detected traces of Pu-239 in several of the algal species, indicative of anthropogenic pollutants. Furthermore, several samples showed concentrations of radially distributed alpha tracks (forming "hot spots") emanating from micron-sized point sources. The concentrated, extremely localized occurrence of these nuclides cannot be explained in terms of left-over worldwide nuclear pollution. A local source seems more plausible. Our ongoing sampling programme has revealed that: some of the high alpha/hot spot levels measured in February 2004 have decreased markedly during subsequent months, others have decreased only slightly, and others still have remained unchanged: a clear indication that different nuclides are present. We are now analyzing 2005 samples

Fault classification tool for high pressure water jet pumps

In this work a set of indexes able to define a suitable \u201cfootprint\u201d of a Waterjet system has been investigated. A on-line and non-intrusive monitoring and diagnostic system has been designed implementing an algorithm defined on the basis of the proposed indexes

Dal rilievo topografico alla rappresentazione virtuale

Le applicazioni 3D danno la possibilita di lavorare direttamente con il volume dei corpi solidi nello spazio geometrico a tre dimensioni, quale metafora della realtà. Quando la rappresentazione virtuale della realtà è costruita partendo da dati accurati derivanti dalla sua discretizzazione, come i dati rilevati durante una campagna di rilevamento, e dalla riproduzione fedele dei progetti tecnici 2D, il modello tridimensionale assume un'elevata efficacia, sia comunicativa che tecnico-progettuale. Con queste premesse, la rappresentazione assurge ad avere una valenza scientifica e diviene un utile strumento per i professionisti che hanno la necessita di dare "vita tridimensionale" alle idee, ai progetti ed ai prototipi, che possono essere realizzati virtualmente prima ancora che diventino realizzazioni reali. Accomunati dagli stessi intenti e condividendo la stessa vision, la MESTOR e l'Assessorato ai LL. PP del Comune di Catania, hanno avviato una proficua collaborazione, coordinata dal 4° Servizio "Progettazione e Realizzazione Nuovo Verde e Arredo Urbano" della V Direzione LL.PP, che ha portato alia modellazione e rendering del piu famoso giardino di Catania, nell'ambito degli interventi di "Recupero e Valorizzazione del Verde Storico Giardino Bellini"

A cooperative monitoring and diagnostic architecture for PV systems

The use of the solar energy, due to the low efficiency of the conversion process, requires to optimize and maintain along the time the efficiency of the converting chain. This requires a monitoring of the system and a proper analysis of the data. The analysis of the failure modes of the system allows to define a monitoring system architecture that implements monitoring, diagnostic and prognostic. A discussion about the main futures of that system is provided. The core of this system is represented by the sensor unit devoted to evaluate voltage, current, temperature of the panels and directly supplied by the PV panel to be monitored

A Novel Method for the Rotor Fault Detection in Small Inverter-Fed Induction Motors

It is known that when a rotor fault occurs, an induction machine draws an alternative power at twice the rotor frequency. In previous work the authors have shown how to employ this phenomenon in order to detect rotor faults in small inverter fed induction machines. In particular, a rotor fault index has been presented and tested supposing that the AC drive main supply is single phase. Starting from this approach, in the present paper two new rotor fault indexes suitable for three-phase input AC drives will be proposed. Furthermore, their capability to detect early rotor faults in different conditions has been evaluated through an extensive experimental activity. Some results will be presented