The Continuity of Disability, Diversity and Personalisation: an Emerging Challenge for HCI

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Designing the future cities: trends and issues from the interaction design perspective

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Multi-scale analysis of the European airspace using network community detection

We show that the European airspace can be represented as a multi-scale traffic network whose nodes are airports, sectors, or navigation points and links are defined and weighted according to the traffic of flights between the nodes. By using a unique database of the air traffic in the European airspace, we investigate the architecture of these networks with a special emphasis on their community structure. We propose that unsupervised network community detection algorithms can be used to monitor the current use of the airspaces and improve it by guiding the design of new ones. Specifically, we compare the performance of three community detection algorithms, also by using a null model which takes into account the spatial distance between nodes, and we discuss their ability to find communities that could be used to define new control units of the airspace.Comment: 22 pages, 14 figure

EEG-based mental workload neurometric to evaluate the impact of different traffic and road conditions in real driving settings

Car driving is considered a very complex activity, consisting of different concomitant tasks and subtasks, thus it is crucial to understand the impact of different factors, such as road complexity, traffic, dashboard devices, and external events on the driver’s behavior and performance. For this reason, in particular situations the cognitive demand experienced by the driver could be very high, inducing an excessive experienced mental workload and consequently an increasing of error commission probability. In this regard, it has been demonstrated that human error is the main cause of the 57% of road accidents and a contributing factor in most of them. In this study, 20 young subjects have been involved in a real driving experiment, performed under different traffic conditions (rush hour and not) and along different road types (main and secondary streets). Moreover, during the driving tasks different specific events, in particular a pedestrian crossing the road and a car entering the traffic flow just ahead of the experimental subject, have been acted. A Workload Index based on the Electroencephalographic (EEG), i.e., brain activity, of the drivers has been employed to investigate the impact of the different factors on the driver’s workload. Eye-Tracking (ET) technology and subjective measures have also been employed in order to have a comprehensive overview of the driver’s perceived workload and to investigate the different insights obtainable from the employed methodologies. The employment of such EEG-based Workload index confirmed the significant impact of both traffic and road types on the drivers’ behavior (increasing their workload), with the advantage of being under real settings. Also, it allowed to highlight the increased workload related to external events while driving, in particular with a significant effect during those situations when the traffic was low. Finally, the comparison between methodologies revealed the higher sensitivity of neurophysiological measures with respect to ET and subjective ones. In conclusion, such an EEG-based Workload index would allow to assess objectively the mental workload experienced by the driver, standing out as a powerful tool for research aimed to investigate drivers’ behavior and providing additional and complementary insights with respect to traditional methodologies employed within road safety research

The MIG Framework: Enabling Transparent Process Migration in Open MPI

This paper introduces the mig framework: an Open MPI extension to transparently support the migration of application processes, over different nodes of a distributed High-Performance Computing (HPC) system. The framework provides mechanism on top of which suitable resource managers can implement policies to react to hardware faults, address performance variability, improve resource utilization, perform a fine-grained load balancing and power thermal management. Compared to other state-of-the-art approaches, the mig framework does not require changes in the application code. Moreover, it is highly maintainable, since it is mainly a self-contained solution that has required a very few changes in other already existing Open MPI frameworks. Experimental results have shown that the proposed extension does not introduce significant overhead in the application execution, while the penalty due to performing a migration can be properly taken into account by a resource manager

Fondamenti, storia e tendenze dell'HCI: la disciplina tra innovazione tecnologica e sociale

Il Parco scientifico ha ospitato dal 15 al 19 settembre 2008 una serie di incontri sul tema dell'interazione uomo macchina. L'evento è stato realizzato nell'ambito di Sardegna DistrICT, in collaborazione con il Laboratorio Open media center, il Laboratorio Visualizzazione 3D e CRS4.2008-09-15Sardegna Ricerche, Edificio 2, Località Piscinamanna 09010 Pula (CA) - ItaliaHCIM '08 - Human Computer Interaction Meeting

Global margins. From the production of marginalization to spaces of hope An interview to Ananya Roy Interview edited by Simone Tulumello and Giacomo Pozzi

Simone met Ananya on the morning of July 13, 2018, during the Congress of AESOP, the Association of European Schools of Planning, where Ananya gave the opening keynote speech, titled “Plans for freedom: Borders, cities and the struggle for justice in the age of Trumpism”. The conversation lasted approximately 40 minutes and was based on, but at moments diverged from, a number of questions jointly prepared by Simone and Giacomo. Starting from the double nature of the margin in Ananya’s work – margin as method and as object of study – the conversation then touched issues of race in the making of the contemporary city, mostly in the USA and the Global South. We also discussed representations of urban margins as places of resistance and creativity; and then questioned the return of the nation state in producing, and enforcing, (racial, gendered, class…) margins. Inspired by the topic of the AESOP congress, “Making space for hope”, we concluded by reflecting on the paths for building alternatives to the status quo, reflecting on activist and engaged research practices. By questioning the frequent romanticizing of the local, Ananya reflected on the need for a global scale in thinking change. The following is a transcription of the conversation, lightly edited for clarity, consistence and style.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Safety cases for medical devices and health IT : involving healthcare organisations in the assurance of safety

In the United Kingdom, there are more than 9000 reports of adverse events involving medical devices annually. The regulatory processes in Europe and in the United States have been challenged as to their ability to protect patients effectively from unreasonable risk and harm. Two of the major shortcomings of current practice include the lack of transparency in the safety certification process and the lack of involvement of service providers. We reviewed recent international standardisation activities in this area, and we reviewed regulatory practices in other safety-critical industries. The review showed that the use of safety cases is an accepted practice in UK safety-critical industries, but at present, there is little awareness of this concept in health care. Safety cases have the potential to provide greater transparency and confidence in safety certification and to act as a communication tool between manufacturers, service providers, regulators and patients

Should healthcare providers do safety cases? : Lessons from a cross-industry review of safety case practices

Healthcare organisations are often encouraged to learn from other industries in order to develop proactive and rigorous safety management practices. In the UK safety–critical industries safety cases have been used to provide justification that systems are acceptably safe. There has been growing interest in healthcare in the application of safety cases for medical devices and health information technology. However, the introduction of safety cases into general safety management and regulatory practices in healthcare is largely unexplored and unsupported. Should healthcare as an industry be encouraged to adopt safety cases more widely? This paper reviews safety case practices in six UK industries and identifies drivers and developments in the adoption of safety cases. The paper argues that safety cases might best be used in healthcare to provide an exposition of risk rather than as a regulatory tool to demonstrate acceptable levels of safety. Safety cases might support healthcare organisations in establishing proactive safety management practices. However, there has been criticism that safety cases practices have, at times, contributed to poor safety management and standards by prompting a “tick-box” and compliance-driven approach. These criticisms represent challenges for the adoption of safety cases in healthcare, where the level of maturity of safety management systems is arguably still lower than in traditional safety–critical industries. Healthcare stakeholders require access to education and guidance that takes into account the specifics of healthcare as an industry. Further research is required to provide evidence about the effectiveness of safety cases and the costs involved with the approach