An Ontological Approach to Inform HMI Designs for Minimizing Driver Distractions with ADAS

ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) are in-vehicle systems designed to enhance driving safety and efficiency as well as comfort for drivers in the driving process. Recent studies have noticed that when Human Machine Interface (HMI) is not designed properly, an ADAS can cause distraction which would affect its usage and even lead to safety issues. Current understanding of these issues is limited to the context-dependent nature of such systems. This paper reports the development of a holistic conceptualisation of how drivers interact with ADAS and how such interaction could lead to potential distraction. This is done taking an ontological approach to contextualise the potential distraction, driving tasks and user interactions centred on the use of ADAS. Example scenarios are also given to demonstrate how the developed ontology can be used to deduce rules for identifying distraction from ADAS and informing future designs

Export adjustment to currency depreciation in the presence of parallel markets for foreign exchange: The experience of selected sub-Saharan African countries in the 1980s

The primary focus of this study is an empirical investigation of the implications of parallel exchange markets for export adjustment to official currency depreciation. An econometric model incorporating the features of exchange control and credit constraint was estimated using pooled data from 13 Sub-Saharan African countries. A rise in the parallel currency premium was found to adversely affect official exports; and the estimates suggest that official depreciations which are launched in the presence of large exchange-rate misalignment and which succeed in reducing the latter are likely to exert greater favourable effects on export performance than otherwise equivalent depreciations.