Context-Aware Systems: A More Appropriate Response System to Hurricanes and Other Natural Disasters

AbstractA context-aware system may be defined as a system that can understand the context of a given situation and either share this context with other systems for their response or respond by itself. Context has many definitions such as additional information that further describes a given situation. However, the definition of context is very contentious – what is considered context in one system may be considered unimportant in another.In this paper, we focus on the ability of context-aware systems to respond to external events, in particular incoming hurricanes, in an appropriate, authorised and regular manner. Hurricanes are often problematic in that they may be difficult to predict, in terms of direction and intensity, and require immediate and appropriate responses. We look at how this system will respond to an authorised set of stimuli using a pre-defined sequence and set of behavioural rules. The response produced by the system will be appropriate depending on the context of the stimuli received

The punitive transition in youth justice: reconstructing the child as offender

The transition from ‘child’ to ‘offender’ status can be fasttracked when offending is formally recognised through formal disposal, with children treated increasing punitively as they progress through the Youth Justice System. The status and ‘offenderising’ transitions of children who offend is socio-historically contingent, not only on their behaviour, but on political, socio-economic, societal, systemic and demography. We support this perspective through a periodised re-examination of four socio-historical trajectories in the construction of the ‘youth offender’: conflict, ambivalence and bifurcation (1908-1979); depenalising diversion and back to justice (1980-1992), fast-tracking the child to offender transition (1993-2007) and tentative depenalisation (2008 to present)