Review of reconstruction efforts in Sri Lanka: Post-tsunami phase

This paper reviews the reconstruction efforts in Sri Lanka to ascertain the efficiency of post-disaster reconstruction through identifying the barriers. Even though the immediate humanitarian relief found to be more effective, long-term reconstruction was ineffective due to lack of funding, lack of knowledge to support local community, institutional constraints, and absence of coordinated management. It suggests that the reliance upon the knowledge, skills, capacities and resources of local people together with effective planning can lead the reconstruction process towards the success

Post conflict housing reconstruction: housing needs and expectations of conflict affected communities

Post conflict housing reconstruction plays an important role in establishing the country’s development and prospect of peace. Despite this importance, it was identified that there are inconsistencies between the provision of built housing and the needs of the users. Therefore many post conflict housing reconstruction projects lead to dissatisfaction on the part of residents and remodelling by themselves or rejection and abandonment. Hence it is important and necessary to address conflict affected communities’ housing reconstruction needs in post conflict housing reconstruction. With regard to this, it is worthwhile to examine the concept of housing needs in general and to explore the housing needs of conflict affected communities. Therefore this paper aims to present a synthesis of housing needs literature relevant to usual and post conflict contexts. In relevance to housing needs in general, housing preferences in a market context and adequate housing measures were identified. Following this, housing needs of conflict affected communities were identified. In a market context, housing needs were exhibited in terms of the subjective preferences of households. Adequate housing was recognized as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights and in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Hence adequate housing measures identified certain aspects of housing that must be taken into account for this purpose in any particular context. Whilst most housing considerations of conflict affected communities were similar to adequate housing measures, conflict affected communities gave greater importance to their social, cultural and religious values in post conflict housing reconstruction. In addition they considered the aspects of safety and security as being vital, and various perceptions of these communities in relation to housing reconstruction and post occupancy evaluation were important in post conflict housing reconstruction. Nevertheless, no relevant data on special housing needs of disadvantaged groups in post conflict environments were found

Knowledge management for disaster resilience: Identification of key success factors

The number of reported disasters has increased steadily over the past century and risen very sharply during the past decade. These bring about the loss of lives, property, employment and damage to the physical infrastructure and the environment. Disaster management efforts aim to reduce or avoid the potential losses from hazards, assure prompt and appropriate assistance to victims of disaster, and achieve rapid and effective recovery. While knowledge management can enhance the process of disaster management, there is a perceived gap in information coordination and sharing within the context of disaster management. Identifying key success factors will be an enabler to manage the disasters successfully. In this context, this study aims to identify and map key knowledge success factors for managing disasters successfully through capturing the good practices and lessons learned. The objective of this paper is to present the literature findings on factors which support successful disaster management. Accordingly the identified factors were classified into eight main categories as technological, social, legal, environmental, economical, functional, institutional and political

Disaster knowledge factors: benefits and challenges

Disasters bring about the loss of lives, property, employment and damage to the physical infrastructure and the environment. The number of reported disasters has increased steadily over the past century and risen very sharply during the past decade. While knowledge management can enhance the process of disaster management, there is a perceived gap in information coordination and sharing within the context of disaster management. Identification of key disaster knowledge factors will be an enabler to manage disasters successfully. This study aims to identify and map key disaster knowledge success factors in managing disasters successfully through capturing good practices and lessons learned. A list of disaster knowledge factors was first identified through a comprehensive literature review, covering the whole disaster management cycle. Based on these literature findings, semi-structured interviews were conducted among few disaster management practitioners to explore the influence and lacking areas relating to these factors in managing disasters. The objective of this paper is to present the interview findings on benefits and challenges related to the disaster knowledge factors. A comprehensive list of benefits and challenges of disaster knowledge factors in managing disasters is identified

Challenge-response trust assessment model for personal space IoT

© 2016 IEEE. Internet of Things (IoT) embraces the interconnection of identifiable devices that are capable of providing services through their cooperation. The cooperation among devices in such an IoT environment often requires reliable and trusted participating members in order to provide useful services to the end user. Consequently, an IoT environment or space needs to evaluate the trust levels of all devices in contact before admitting them as members of the space. Existing trust evaluation models are based on resources such as historical observations or recommendations information to evaluate the trust level of a device. However, these methods fail if there is no existing trust resource. This paper introduces a specific IoT environment called personal space IoT and proposes a novel trust evaluation model that performs a challenge-response trust assessment to evaluate the trust level of a device before allowing it to participate in the space. This novel challenge-response trust assessment model does not require the historical observation or previous encounter with the device or any existing trusted recommendation. The proposed challenge-response trust assessment model provides a reliable trust resource that can be used along with other resources such as direct trust, recommendation trust to get a comprehensive trust opinion on a specific device. It can also be considered as a new method for evaluating the trust value on a device

Microbiomics of Oral Biofilms: Driving the Future of Dental Research

Oral infectious diseases such as dental caries, periodontal disease, endodontic infections, oral candidiasis and peri-implantitis cause major health problems worldwide. All of these infectious diseases are associated with the biofilm growth mode of the oral pathogens. In the past, researchers often attempted to examine the association of single pathogens with particular dental diseases such as in the case of Streptococcus mutans acting as an aetiological agent for dental caries and the so-called “red-complex” bacteria for periodontal disease. However, with the recent advent of OMICS biology techniques such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, it is possible to gain new insights into the host-microbial interaction, microbial community structure and composition in the oral cavity. The new studies on oral microbiomics can unravel the facets of the aetiopathology of oral diseases as never seen before. This mini-review will provide an history and overview of some of the existing DNA sequencing platforms employed to study the microbiomics of oral biofilms and the exciting future ahead for dental research. DOI : https://doi.org/10.26912/sdj.2017.01.01-0

Knowledge, attitude, and practice of epilepsy in rural Sri Lanka

AbstractKnowledge, attitude, and practice in relation to epilepsy in developing countries appears to be different from that in developed countries. This study was conducted to evaluate knowledge, attitudes, expectations, sociocultural aspects, patient characteristics, disease characteristics, pattern of drug therapy, and outcome of patients with epilepsy in rural Sri Lanka. Data were collected from 207 patients attending an epilepsy clinic. In general the study shows a positive trend in knowledge, expectations and attitude toward epilepsy. Social morbidity is reported from 53.6% indicating that public attitude towards epilepsy needs to be changed. Alternative modes of treatment have been tried by 45.9%, reflecting the cultural beliefs in the society. 75% are on monotherapy and carbamazepine is the most commonly used drug. Seizure control is excellent (no seizures during the preceding 6 months) in 33.8%. Side effects of antiepileptic drugs are reported by 76.3%. Various kinds of medical morbidity have been experienced by 32.9% of patients

PredictChain: Empowering Collaboration and Data Accessibility for AI in a Decentralized Blockchain-based Marketplace

Limited access to computing resources and training data poses significant challenges for individuals and groups aiming to train and utilize predictive machine learning models. Although numerous publicly available machine learning models exist, they are often unhosted, necessitating end-users to establish their computational infrastructure. Alternatively, these models may only be accessible through paid cloud-based mechanisms, which can prove costly for general public utilization. Moreover, model and data providers require a more streamlined approach to track resource usage and capitalize on subsequent usage by others, both financially and otherwise. An effective mechanism is also lacking to contribute high-quality data for improving model performance. We propose a blockchain-based marketplace called "PredictChain" for predictive machine-learning models to address these issues. This marketplace enables users to upload datasets for training predictive machine learning models, request model training on previously uploaded datasets, or submit queries to trained models. Nodes within the blockchain network, equipped with available computing resources, will operate these models, offering a range of archetype machine learning models with varying characteristics, such as cost, speed, simplicity, power, and cost-effectiveness. This decentralized approach empowers users to develop improved models accessible to the public, promotes data sharing, and reduces reliance on centralized cloud providers

Initial trust establishment for personal space IoT systems

© 2017 IEEE. Increasingly, trust has played a crucial role in the security of an IoT system from its inception to the end of its lifecycle. A device has to earn some level of trust even before it is authenticated for admission to the system. Furthermore, once the device is admitted to the system, it may behave maliciously over time; hence its behavior must be evaluated constantly in the form of trust to ensure the integrity of the system. Currently, no mechanism exists to establish an initial trust on a device, without prior knowledge, before its admission to an IoT system. Even when trust is applicable, trust evaluation models require direct/indirect observations over time, historical data on past encounters, or third party recommendations. However, this type of past data is not available in the first encounter between the system and the device. The question is how to establish whether a device can be trusted to a level that merits further evaluation for admission into a mobile and dynamic IoT system when it encounters the system for the first time? This paper addresses this challenge by proposing a challenge-response method and a trust assessment model to establish, without prior knowledge, the initial trust that a device places on another in a mobile and dynamic environment called personal space IoT. The initial trust is established before further interaction can take place and under the assumption that only a limited window of time is available for the trust assessment. The paper describes and evaluates the proposed model theoretically and by simulation. It also describes a practical scheme for realizing the proposed solution