A Perfect Storm: Environmental Justice and Air Quality Impacts of Offshore Oil and Gas Development in the Arctic Outer Continental Shelf

The Arctic Outer Continental Shelf is the next great legal battleground over oil and gas resources, environmental protection, and environmental justice.  The Arctic is home to an array of sensitive ecological resources and a large Native Alaskan population that relies heavily on the natural environment for food and supplies.  The Arctic Ocean also holds a vast amount of untapped oil and gas resources that had previously been largely inaccessible because of harsh climatic conditions and withdrawals of large swaths of the Shelf by Congress and multiple presidents.  However, climate change is melting Arctic sea ice and opening up previously inaccessible areas.  In addition, President Trump is pushing to expand oil and gas development everywhere, including the Arctic.  If President Trump’s plans prevail against the many legal challenges seeking to protect the Arctic, Native Alaskans will face a multitude of threats to their health, safety, and way of life.Scholars, journalists, and environmental groups have already illuminated the threats of oil spills and climate change.  This Comment focuses on a less discussed impact of offshore oil and gas development: air pollution and its effects on Native Alaskans.  Onshore oil and gas development has already been polluting the air of Alaskan communities, causing increases in respiratory illnesses and other health problems, and leading to climate change, which is disrupting the natural environment upon which Native Alaskans depend for food and supplies.  A new era of offshore development would amplify these problems and create new and unique challenges that disproportionately burden Native Alaskan communities.This Comment makes two novel contributions.  First, it illuminates the erratic history and disjointed nature of air quality regulation on the Outer Continental Shelf.  Second, this Comment highlights how the federal government’s current regulatory structure for offshore air emissions uniquely fails Native Alaskans who are seeking to protect their health and way of life.  In addition, this Comment makes some recommendations for statutory and regulatory changes to better address the environmental justice impacts of air pollution from offshore oil and gas development in the Arctic

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Deploying rural community wireless mesh networks

Inadequate Internet access is widening the digital divide between town and countryside, degrading both social communication and business advancements in rural areas. Wireless mesh networking can provide an excellent framework for delivering broadband services to such areas. With this in mind, Lancaster University deployed a WMN in the rural village of Wray over a three-year period, providing the community with Internet service that exceeds many urban offerings. The project gave researchers a real-world testbed for exploring the technical and social issues entailed in deploying WMNs in the heart of a small community

iCapture: Facilitating Spontaneous User-Interaction with Pervasive Displays using Smart Devices

Abstract. The eCampus project at Lancaster University is an inter-disciplinary project aiming to deploy a wide range of situated displays across the University campus in order to create a large per-vasive communications infrastructure. At present, we are conducting a series of parallel research activities in order to investigate how the pervasive communications infrastructure can support the daily needs of staff, students and visitors to the University. This paper introduces one of our current research investigations into how one is able to mediate spontaneous interaction with the pervasive display infrastructure through camera equipped mobile phones (i.e. smart devices).

Intrusion Detection Systems for Community Wireless Mesh Networks

Wireless mesh networks are being increasingly used to provide affordable network connectivity to communities where wired deployment strategies are either not possible or are prohibitively expensive. Unfortunately, computer networks (including mesh networks) are frequently being exploited by increasingly profit-driven and insidious attackers, which can affect their utility for legitimate use. In response to this, a number of countermeasures have been developed, including intrusion detection systems that aim to detect anomalous behaviour caused by attacks. We present a set of socio-technical challenges associated with developing an intrusion detection system for a community wireless mesh network. The attack space on a mesh network is particularly large; we motivate the need for and describe the challenges of adopting an asset-driven approach to managing this space. Finally, we present an initial design of a modular architecture for intrusion detection, highlighting how it addresses the identified challenges