Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution.Comment: 17 pages, 6 figures, 1 supplementary fil

Participatory Patterns in an International Air Quality Monitoring Initiative

The issue of sustainability is at the top of the political and societal agenda, being considered of extreme importance and urgency. Human individual action impacts the environment both locally (e.g., local air/water quality, noise disturbance) and globally (e.g., climate change, resource use). Urban environments represent a crucial example, with an increasing realization that the most effective way of producing a change is involving the citizens themselves in monitoring campaigns (a citizen science bottom-up approach). This is possible by developing novel technologies and IT infrastructures enabling large citizen participation. Here, in the wider framework of one of the first such projects, we show results from an international competition where citizens were involved in mobile air pollution monitoring using low cost sensing devices, combined with a web-based game to monitor perceived levels of pollution. Measures of shift in perceptions over the course of the campaign are provided, together with insights into participatory patterns emerging from this study. Interesting effects related to inertia and to direct involvement in measurement activities rather than indirect information exposure are also highlighted, indicating that direct involvement can enhance learning and environmental awareness. In the future, this could result in better adoption of policies towards decreasing pollution

Impact of COVID-19 on cardiovascular testing in the United States versus the rest of the world

Objectives: This study sought to quantify and compare the decline in volumes of cardiovascular procedures between the United States and non-US institutions during the early phase of the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted the care of many non-COVID-19 illnesses. Reductions in diagnostic cardiovascular testing around the world have led to concerns over the implications of reduced testing for cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. Methods: Data were submitted to the INCAPS-COVID (International Atomic Energy Agency Non-Invasive Cardiology Protocols Study of COVID-19), a multinational registry comprising 909 institutions in 108 countries (including 155 facilities in 40 U.S. states), assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on volumes of diagnostic cardiovascular procedures. Data were obtained for April 2020 and compared with volumes of baseline procedures from March 2019. We compared laboratory characteristics, practices, and procedure volumes between U.S. and non-U.S. facilities and between U.S. geographic regions and identified factors associated with volume reduction in the United States. Results: Reductions in the volumes of procedures in the United States were similar to those in non-U.S. facilities (68% vs. 63%, respectively; p = 0.237), although U.S. facilities reported greater reductions in invasive coronary angiography (69% vs. 53%, respectively; p < 0.001). Significantly more U.S. facilities reported increased use of telehealth and patient screening measures than non-U.S. facilities, such as temperature checks, symptom screenings, and COVID-19 testing. Reductions in volumes of procedures differed between U.S. regions, with larger declines observed in the Northeast (76%) and Midwest (74%) than in the South (62%) and West (44%). Prevalence of COVID-19, staff redeployments, outpatient centers, and urban centers were associated with greater reductions in volume in U.S. facilities in a multivariable analysis. Conclusions: We observed marked reductions in U.S. cardiovascular testing in the early phase of the pandemic and significant variability between U.S. regions. The association between reductions of volumes and COVID-19 prevalence in the United States highlighted the need for proactive efforts to maintain access to cardiovascular testing in areas most affected by outbreaks of COVID-19 infection

Abstract

Developing and deploying end-to-end applications for sensor networks in a realistic (business) context remains highly complex. We identify two main reasons for this complexity: the need for interoperability between applications and the underlying system software, and the need to integrate functionality that runs on different types of hardware platforms. This position paper argues for an integrated, generic software architecture for sensor applications. This architecture is the blueprint of a middleware platform that can be assembled with components and customised for three types of sensor platforms in such a way that it contains minimal but sufficient functionality to meet the application requirements. In this way, software developers can be relieved from the lowest level details, which optimises man power efficiency while still allowing to exploit a system’s resource capabilities in the most optimal way

Towards a Software Architecture for Sensor Middleware

Developing and deploying end-to-end applications for sensor networks in a realistic (business) context remains highly complex. We identify two main reasons for this complexity: the need for interoperability between applications and the underlying system software, and the need to integrate functionality that runs on different types of hardware platforms. This position paper argues for an integrated, generic software architecture for sensor applications. This architecture is the blueprint of a middleware platform that can be assembled with components and customised for three types of sensor platforms in such a way that it contains minimal but sufficient functionality to meet the application requirements. In this way, software developers can be relieved from the lowest level details, which optimises man power efficiency while still allowing to exploit a system’s resource capabilities in the most optimal way.nrpages: 7status: publishe

A middleware pattern to support complex sensor network applications

Most current sensor middleware solutions focus on delivering a particular subset of typical middleware services. Because of this, they only meet the requirements of a, rather limited, set of applications. It is reasonable to expect that a wide variety of applications will be deployed in an industrial WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) environment (e.g. in a harbor that handles container transport). To support such heterogeneous applications, general purpose middleware solutions are needed. We propose a hierarchical layered middleware pattern to handle this heterogeneity. This middleware pattern combines three recurring themes: application management, data management and network service management. These themes were identified by studying state-of-the-art middleware solutions and generalizing common aspects. Combining these three themes allows constructing a middleware which is more general purpose. This makes it useful for a wide variety of heterogeneous applications that will be used in complex WSN environments.status: publishe