Real-time decision making for autonomous city vehicles

This paper addresses the topic of real-time decision making by autonomous city vehicles. Beginning with an overview of the state of research, the paper presents the vehicle decision making & control systemarchitecture, explains the subcomponents which are relevant for decision making (World Model and Driving Maneuver subsystem), and presents the decision making process. Experimental test results confirmthe suitability of the developed approach to deal with the complex real-world urban traffic.

Multiple criteria-based real-time decision making by autonomous city vehicles

This paper addresses the topic of real-time decision making for autonomous city vehicles, i.e. the autonomous vehicles’ ability to make appropriate driving decisions in city road traffic situations. After decomposing the problem into two consecutive decision making stages, and giving a short overview about previous work, the paper explains how Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) can be used in the process of selecting the most appropriate driving maneuver.

Real-time decision making by driverless city vehicles : a discrete event driven approach

This thesis addresses the topic of real-time decision making by driverless (autonomous) city vehicles, i.e. their ability to make appropriate driving decisions in non-simplified urban traffic conditions. After addressing the state of research, and explaining the research question, the thesis presents solutions for the subcomponents which are relevant for decision making with respect to information input (World Model), information output (Driving Maneuvers), and the real-time decision making process. TheWorld Model is a software component developed to fulfill the purpose of collecting information from perception and communication subsystems, maintaining an up-to-date view of the vehicle’s environment, and providing the required input information to the Real-Time Decision Making subsystem in a well-defined, and structured way. The real-time decision making process consists of two consecutive stages. While the first decision making stage uses a Petri net to model the safetycritical selection of feasible driving maneuvers, the second stage uses Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) methods to select the most appropriate driving maneuver, focusing on fulfilling objectives related to efficiency and comfort. The complex task of autonomous driving is subdivided into subtasks, called driving maneuvers, which represent the output (i.e. decision alternatives) of the real-time decision making process. Driving maneuvers are considered as implementations of closed-loop control algorithms, each capable of maneuvering the autonomous vehicle in a specific traffic situation. Experimental tests in both a 3D simulation and real-world experiments attest that the developed approach is suitable to deal with the complexity of real-world urban traffic situations.

Listening to the talk of the city: media and urban informatics in community consultation for architectural and urban design

The discipline of architecture focuses on designing the built environment in response to the needs of society, reflecting culture through materials and forms. The physical boundaries of the city have become blurred through the integration of digital media, connecting the physical environment with the digital. In the recent past the future was imagined as highly technological; Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is set in 2019 and introduces a polluted world where supersized screens inject advertisements in the cluttered urban space. Now, in 2014 screens are central to everyday life, but in a completely different way in respect to what had been imagined. Through ubiquitous computing and social media, information is abundant. Digital technologies have changed the way people relate to urban form supporting discussion on multiple levels, allowing citizens to be more vocal than ever before. Bottom-up campaigns to oppose anticipated developments or to suggest intervention in the way cities are designed, are a common situation in several parts of the world. For some extent governments and local authorities are trying to engage with developing technologies, but a common issue is that social media cannot be controlled or filtered as can be done with more traditional consultation methods. We question how designers can use the affordances of urban informatics to obtain and navigate useful social information to inform architectural and urban design. This research investigates different approaches to engage communities in the debate on the built environment. Physical and digital discussions have been initiated to capture citizens’ opinions on the use and design of public places. Online platforms, urban screens, mobile apps and guerrilla techniques are explored in the context of Brisbane, Australia.

City that enjoys life

A travel article about lifestyle and architecture in Vancouver, Canada. I arrived in Vancouver on a Sunday morning and followed the smell of crepes to a café that had opened early. It was warm, and the outside tables were filling up. The others had a last-night look about them, except a family that smiled as they took the table next to mine. There were no shoppers yet, but the mall was busy with walkers and cyclists. Here and there the down-and-out found seats in the sun; their shadows ran the length of shop fronts...

Effectiveness of a puppet show on iodine knowledge, attitudes and behaviour of elementary students and the indirect effects on their parents and households in Ho Chi Minh City : a pilot study

Deficiencies in iodine levels have been shown to seriously affect a child’s intellectual development and learning capacity.1 In South-East Asia, iodine deficiency remains a major public health concern. Approximately 30% of the region’s population of 503.6 million have insufficient iodine intake, and only 61% of households have access to iodized salt.1 For this reason, it is necessary to initiate effective, community-based health promotion activities that are targeted toward populations of various ages. A puppet show is one imaginative and entertaining method of health education that has been advocated for use in communicating positive health behaviours to children.2e5 The authors undertook a literature review and found no studies assessing the effectiveness of a puppet show to teach an iodine education programme...

The impact of cataract surgery on vision-related quality of life for bilateral cataract patients in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam : a prospective study

Background To determine the impact of cataract surgery on vision-related quality of life (VRQOL) and examine the association between objective visual measures and change in VRQOL after surgery among bilateral cataract patients in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Methods A cohort of older patients with bilateral cataract was assessed one week before and one to three months after first eye or both eye cataract surgery. Visual measures including visual acuity, contrast sensitivity and stereopsis were obtained. Vision-related quality of life was assessed using the NEI VFQ-25. Descriptive analyses and a generalized linear estimating equation (GEE) analysis were undertaken to measure change in VRQOL after surgery. Results Four hundred and thirteen patients were assessed before cataract surgery and 247 completed the follow-up assessment one to three months after first or both eye cataract surgery. Overall, VRQOL significantly improved after cataract surgery (p < 0.001) particularly after both eye surgeries. Binocular contrast sensitivity (p < 0.001) and stereopsis (p < 0.001) were also associated with change in VRQOL after cataract surgery. Visual acuity was not associated with VRQOL. Conclusions Cataract surgery significantly improved VRQOL among bilateral cataract patients in Vietnam. Contrast sensitivity as well as stereopsis, rather than visual acuity significantly affected VRQOL after cataract surgery.

Prevalence and visual risk factors for falls in bilateral cataract patients in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Purpose To determine the prevalence of falls in the 12 months prior to cataract surgery and examine the associations between visual and other risk factors and falls among older bilateral cataract patients in Vietnam. Methods Data collected from 413 patients in the week before scheduled cataract surgery included a questionnaire and three objective visual tests. Results The outcome of interest was self-reported falls in the previous 12 months. A total of 13% (n = 53) of bilateral cataract patients reported 60 falls within the previous 12 months. After adjusting for age, sex, race, employment status, comorbidities, medication usage, refractive management, living status and the three objective visual tests in the worse eye, women (odds ratio, OR, 4.64, 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.85–11.66), and those who lived alone (OR 4.51, 95% CI 1.44–14.14) were at increased risk of a fall. Those who reported a comorbidity were at decreased risk of a fall (OR 0.43, 95% CI 0.19–0.95). Contrast sensitivity (OR 0.31, 95% CI 0.10–0.95) was the only significant visual test associated with a fall. These results were similar for the better eye, except the presence of a comorbidity was not significant (OR 0.45, 95% CI 0.20–1.02). Again, contrast sensitivity was the only significant visual factor associated with a fall (OR 0.15, 95% CI 0.04–0.53). Conclusion Bilateral cataract patients in Vietnam are potentially at high risk of falls and in need of falls prevention interventions. It may also be important for ophthalmologists and health professionals to consider contrast sensitivity measures when prioritizing cataract patients for surgery and assessing their risk of falls.

Did Brisbane grow smartly? Drivers of city growth 1991-2001 and lessons for current policies

Urban areas are growing unsustainably around the world; however, the growth patterns and their associated drivers vary between contexts. As a result, research has highlighted the need to adopt case study based approaches to stimulate the development of new theoretic understandings. Using land-cover data sets derived from Landsat images (30 m × 30 m), this research identifies both patterns and drivers of urban growth in a period (1991-2001) when a number of policy acts were enacted aimed at fostering smart growth in Brisbane, Australia. A linear multiple regression model was estimated using the proportion of lands that were converted from non-built-up (1991) to built-up usage (2001) within a suburb as a dependent variable to identify significant drivers of land-cover changes. In addition, the hot spot analysis was conducted to identify spatial biases of land-cover changes, if any. Results show that the built-up areas increased by 1.34% every year. About 19.56% of the non-built-up lands in 1991 were converted into built-up lands in 2001. This conversion pattern was significantly biased in the northernmost and southernmost suburbs in the city. This is due to the fact that, as evident from the regression analysis, these suburbs experienced a higher rate of population growth, and had the availability of habitable green field sites in relatively flat lands. The above findings suggest that the policy interventions undertaken between the periods were not as effective in promoting sustainable changes in the environment as they were aimed for.

Citizen’s right to the digital city: Urban interfaces, activism, and placemaking

Edited by thought leaders of the fields of urban informatics and urban interaction design, this book brings together case studies and examples from around the world to discuss the role that urban Interfaces, citizen action, and city making play in the quest to create and maintain not only secure and resilient, but productive, sustainable, and liveable urban environments. The book debates the impact of these trends on theory, policy, and practice. The chapters in this book are sourced from blind peer reviewed contributions by leading researchers working at the intersection of the social / cultural, technical / digital, and physical / spatial domains of urbanism scholarship. The book appeals not only to research colleagues and students, but also to a vast number of practitioners in the private and public sector interested in accessible accounts that clearly and rigorously analyse the affordances and possibilities of urban interfaces, mobile technology, and location-based services to engage people towards open, smart and participatory urban environments.

Cidade é uma palavra plural [City is a manifold word]

This text elaborates on the city as cultural construct and representation and Lisbocópio, the installation by Pancho Guedes and Ricardo Jacinto in the context of the Official Representation of Portugal at the 10. Mostra Internazionale di Architettura-La Biennale di Venezia.

“This is not a burning issue for me”: How citizens justify their use of wood heaters in a city with a severe air pollution problem

Although wood smoke pollution has been linked to health problems, wood burning remains a popular form of domestic heating in many countries across the world. In this paper, we describe the rhetoric of resistance to wood heater regulation amongst citizens in the regional Australian town of Armidale, where wood smoke levels regularly exceed national health advisory limits. We discuss how this is related to particular sources of resistance, such as affective attachment to wood heating and socio-cultural norms. The research draws on six focus groups with participants from households with and without wood heating. With reference to practice theory, we argue that citizen discourses favouring wood burning draw upon a rich suite of justifications and present this activity as a natural and traditional activity promoting comfort and cohesion. Such discourses also emphasise the identity of the town as a rural community and the supposed gemeinschaft qualities of such places. We show that, in this domain of energy policy, it is not enough to present ‘facts’ which have little emotional association or meaning for the populace. Rather, we need understand how social scripts, often localised, inform identity and practice.

Crime in rural Australia

As an academic who has spent a quarter of a century living, lecturing and researching in a rural community, I am often impressed by the discrepancies between the reality of rural life and its image in the public consciousness. At least two aspects of this are the most striking. First, there is often - especially, but not exclusively in English-speaking societies - the idea that rural communities represent the "real" or "true" aspects of a society's culture. For example, judging by the representations of rural Australia in the media, rural life is where we find the true Australian, the laconic, taciturn, but decent everyday man and woman, the "battlers", who are not corrupted by urban life. Such an attribution of genuineness to rurality is especially interesting given that the vast majority of contemporary Australians live in cities and that Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world. Second, and following from the first point, is the idea that rural areas remain somewhat behind the times, that somehow they are not quite part of the contemporary world. This is a mixed image as it combines both the negative idea of backwardness with the more positive one of a society that has not lost the virtues of stability and civility that we often feel is missing in the city. Both of these ideas combine in the popular image of rural communities as safe places in an increasingly dangerous world. In the popular mind it seems that there is an idea that whatever rural communities may lack in conveniences and sophistication, they remain places where you might walk down the street safely, leave your doors unlocked at night and raise your children confident that they will not be exposed to drugs, gangs and violence. Unfortunately, all of these ideas are fantasies. There is no reason to believe that the residents of rural communities are anymore the truer representations of Australian culture than the average suburbanite.