Designing awareness support for distributed cooperative design teams

Motivation Awareness is an integral part of remote collaborative work and has been an important theme within the CSCW research. Our project aims at understanding and mediating non-verbal cues between remote participants involved in a design project. Research approach Within the AMIDA project we focus on distributed 'cooperative design' teams. We especially focus on the 'material' signals - signals in which people communicate through material artefacts, locations and their embodied actions. We apply an ethnographic approach to understand the role of physical artefacts in co-located naturalistic design setting. Based on the results we will generate important implications to support remote design work. We plan to develop a mixed-reality interface supported by a shared awareness display. This awareness display will provide information about the activities happening in the design room to remotely located participants. Findings/Design Our preliminary investigation with real-world design teams suggests that both the materiality of designers' work settings and their social practices play an important role in understanding these material signals that are at play. Originality/Value Most research supporting computer mediated communication have focused on either face-to-face or linguistically oriented communication paradigms. Our research focuses on mediating the non-verbal, material cues for supporting collaborative activities without impoverishing what designers do in their day to day working lives. Take away message An ethnographic approach allows us to understand the naturalistic practices of design teams, which can lead to designing effective technologies to support group work. In that respect, the findings of our research will have a generic value beyond the application domain chosen (design teams).

Entrenchment of GIS technology for enterprise solutions in Maryland's state and local government

Beginning in 1974, the State of Maryland created spatial databases under the MAGI (Maryland's Automated Geographic Information) system. Since that early GIS, other state and local agencies have begun GISs covering a range of applications from critical lands inventories to cadastral mapping. In 1992, state agencies, local agencies, universities, and businesses began a series of GIS coordination activities, resulting in the formation of the Maryland Local Geographic Information Committee and the Maryland State Government Geographic Information Coordinating Committee. GIS activities and system installations can be found in 22 counties plus Baltimore City, and most state agencies. Maryland's decision makers rely on a variety of GIS reports and products to conduct business and to communicate complex issues more effectively. This paper presents the status of Maryland's GIS applications for local and state decision making.

Prior storm experience moderates water surge perception and risk

Background How accurately do people perceive extreme water speeds and how does their perception affect perceived risk? Prior research has focused on the characteristics of moving water that can reduce human stability or balance. The current research presents the first experiment on people's perceptions of risk and moving water at different speeds and depths. Methods Using a randomized within-person 2 (water depth: 0.45, 0.90 m) ×3 (water speed: 0.4, 0.8, 1.2 m/s) experiment, we immersed 76 people in moving water and asked them to estimate water speed and the risk they felt. Results Multilevel modeling showed that people increasingly overestimated water speeds as actual water speeds increased or as water depth increased. Water speed perceptions mediated the direct positive relationship between actual water speeds and perceptions of risk; the faster the moving water, the greater the perceived risk. Participants' prior experience with rip currents and tropical cyclones moderated the strength of the actual–perceived water speed relationship; consequently, mediation was stronger for people who had experienced no rip currents or fewer storms. Conclusions These findings provide a clearer understanding of water speed and risk perception, which may help communicate the risks associated with anticipated floods and tropical cyclones.

Protecting web 2.0 services from botnet exploitations

Recently, botnet, a network of compromised computers, has been recognized as the biggest threat to the Internet. The bots in a botnet communicate with the botnet owner via a communication channel called Command and Control (C & C) channel. There are three main C & C channels: Internet Relay Chat (IRC), Peer-to-Peer (P2P) and web-based protocols. By exploiting the flexibility of the Web 2.0 technology, the web-based botnet has reached a new level of sophistication. In August 2009, such botnet was found on Twitter, one of the most popular Web 2.0 services. In this paper, we will describe a new type of botnet that uses Web 2.0 service as a C & C channel and a temporary storage for their stolen information. We will then propose a novel approach to thwart this type of attack. Our method applies a unique identifier of the computer, an encryption algorithm with session keys and a CAPTCHA verification.

ÉLET [LIFE]

Élet [pronounced air-let] is the Hungarian word for Life. The work is informed by the lyrics of six songs performed by French cover band Nouvelle Vague. Whilst Élet [Life] is created to be absorbed and interpreted openly by each individual, at the core of the choreography lies a desire to move forwards, to communicate – to be seen and heard. The work embraces aspects such as loneliness, joy and tension that we experience in our lives and relationships. As the movement opens out from these ideas, the physical shapes of our personal moments are infused with the elements of sound, colour and rhythm. A rich translation of personal movements through life.

Sharpening our tools – translating research into practice

Providing culturally appropriate health communication tools at a community level, whilst meeting funding objectives set by Government led initiatives, can be challenging. Literature states that a translational research framework fostering community communication can encourage the development of appropriate communication tools to facilitate transfer of health information between community and researchers. Reflections from initial Need for Feed cooking and nutrition education program trials in remote Indigenous communities across Cape York indicated program resources were neither meeting community nor researchers needs. In response, a translational research framework was modelled with collaborative partnerships formed between researchers and community with the aim of modifying current resources. Local working groups were established to facilitate communication and guide continual remodelling and retrial of resources for successive programs. Feedback from working groups indicated community members wanted resources with more pictures and less words. Partnership with Chronic Disease Resources Online (CDRO) led to the development of pictorial resources including 3 evaluation tools, 27 recipe sets and 10 education support materials. Between June to December 2012 resources were trialled across 4 Cape York communities with 69 school aged children and 4 community elders. Qualitative data has indicated high satisfaction with modified pictorial resources, proving pictorial resources to be an effective and culturally appropriate method to both communicate health messages to community and facilitate flow of evaluation data to researchers. A translational research framework fostering communication between community and researchers can potentially enhance the quality of health communication tools.

Vote with your feet : local community polling on urban screens

Falling prices have led to an ongoing spread of public displays in urban areas. Still, they mostly show passive content such as commercials and digital signage. At the same time, technological advances have enabled the creation of interactive displays potentially increasing their attractiveness for the audience, e.g. through providing a platform for civic discourse. This poses considerable challenges, since displays need to communicate the opportunity to engage, motivate the audience to do so, and be easy to use. In this paper we present Vote With Your Feet, a hyperlocal public polling tool for urban screens allowing users to express their opinions. Similar to vox populi interviews on TV or polls on news websites, the tool is meant to reflect the mindset of the community on topics such as current affairs, cultural identity and local matters. It is novel in that it focuses on a situated civic discourse and provides a tangible user interface, tackling the mentioned challenges. It shows one Yes/No question at a time and enables users to vote by stepping on one of two tangible buttons on the ground. This user interface was introduced to attract people’s attention and to lower participation barriers. Our field study showed that Vote With Your Feet is perceived as inviting and that it can spark discussions among co-located people.

Skill development in first year law students : an evaluation of peer assisted learning across two law units

Universities no longer equip graduates solely with the content knowledge of their discipline, but also with prospective employment skills. Professions also seek graduates who can ‘collaborate, share skills and knowledge, and communicate their ideas effectively’ (Kruck and Reif, 2001, p 37). However, as admission to university does not always guarantee that one is well equipped for the task, first year students also need guidance in the development of academic skills. This session describes two models of peer assisted learning embedded within the Torts and Legal Foundations B units at the Faculty of Law, Queensland University of Technology, and how they are used to supplement student understanding of substantive law with the development of academic and work-related skills. Student perceptions of the programs developed are considered, together with the challenges faced. Session participants will be asked to contribute to a discussion of these challenges and to offer ideas on their redress.

Towards a global framework for advertising self regulation

One of the forces which has indelibly shaped marketing is the internet. It has not only changed the way we communicate, but our marketing practices and our advertising self-regulation process (Kerr, Mortimer, Dickinson and Waller 2012). This special session seeks to build a new global framework to regulate advertising activity in this uncharted online environment. It looks back to how advertising has been traditionally self-regulated and looks forward to identify the key issues for marketers, consumers, regulators and the media. This special session explores and reinforces the fundamental purpose of the conference, as well as addressing the urgent needs of marketers, consumers and regulators.

The role of core protest group members in sustaining protest against controversial construction and engineering projects

Community-based protests against major construction and engineering projects are becoming increasingly common as concerns over issues such as corporate social accountability, climate change and corruption become more prominent in the public's mind. Public perceptions of risk associated with these projects can have a contagious effect, which mismanaged can escalate into long-term and sometimes acrimonious protest stand-offs that have negative implications for the community, firms involved and the construction industry as a whole. This paper investigates the role of core group members in sustaining community-based protest against construction and engineering projects. Using a thematic story telling approach which draws on ethnographic method and social contagion theories, it presents an in-depth analysis of a single case study - one of Australia's longest standing community protests against a construction project. It concludes that core group members play a critical role, within anarchic structures which provide a high degree of spontaneity and improvisation, in sustaining movement continuity by building collective identity, mobilising resources and a moving interface which developers find hard to communicate with.

Conceptualising, evaluating and reporting social resilience in vulnerable regional and remote communities facing climate change in tropical Queensland : marine and tropical sciences research facility transition project final report

Regional and remote communities in tropical Queensland are among Australia’s most vulnerable in the face of climate change. At the same time, these socially and economically vulnerable regions house some of Australia’s most significant biodiversity values. Past approaches to terrestrial biodiversity management have focused on tackling biophysical interventions through the use of biophysical knowledge. An equally important focus should be placed on building regional-scale community resilience if some of the worst biodiversity impacts of climate change are to be avoided or mitigated. Despite its critical need, more systemic or holistic approaches to natural resource management have been rarely trialed and tested in a structured way. Currently, most strategic interventions in improving regional community resilience are ad hoc, not theory-based and short term. Past planning approaches have not been durable, nor have they been well informed by clear indicators. Research into indicators for community resilience has been poorly integrated within adaptive planning and management cycles. This project has aimed to resolve this problem by: * Reviewing the community and social resilience and adaptive planning literature to reconceptualise an improved framework for applying community resilience concepts; * Harvesting and extending work undertaken in MTSRF Phase 1 to identifying the learnings emerging from past MTSRF research; * Distilling these findings to identify new theoretical and practical approaches to the application of community resilience in natural resource use and management; * Reconsidering the potential interplay between a region’s biophysical and social planning processes, with a focus on exploring spatial tools to communicate climate change risk and its consequent environmental, economic and social impacts, and; * Trialling new approaches to indicator development and adaptive planning to improve community resilience, using a sub-regional pilot in the Wet Tropics. In doing so, we also looked at ways to improve the use and application of relevant spatial information. Our theoretical review drew upon the community development, psychology and emergency management literature to better frame the concept of community resilience relative to aligned concepts of social resilience, vulnerability and adaptive capacity. Firstly, we consider community resilience as a concept that can be considered at a range of scales (e.g. regional, locality, communities of interest, etc.). We also consider that overall resilience at higher scales will be influenced by resilience levels at lesser scales (inclusive of the resilience of constituent institutions, families and individuals). We illustrate that, at any scale, resilience and vulnerability are not necessarily polar opposites, and that some understanding of vulnerability is important in determining resilience. We position social resilience (a concept focused on the social characteristics of communities and individuals) as an important attribute of community resilience, but one that needs to be considered alongside economic, natural resource, capacity-based and governance attributes. The findings from the review of theory and MTSRF Phase 1 projects were synthesized and refined by the wider project team. Five predominant themes were distilled from this literature, research review and an expert analysis. They include the findings that: 1. Indicators have most value within an integrated and adaptive planning context, requiring an active co-research relationship between community resilience planners, managers and researchers if real change is to be secured; 2. Indicators of community resilience form the basis for planning for social assets and the resilience of social assets is directly related the longer term resilience of natural assets. This encourages and indeed requires the explicit development and integration of social planning within a broader natural resource planning and management framework; 3. Past indicator research and application has not provided a broad picture of the key attributes of community resilience and there have been many attempts to elicit lists of “perfect” indicators that may never be useful within the time and resource limitations of real world regional planning and management. We consider that modeling resilience for proactive planning and prediction purposes requires the consideration of simple but integrated clusters of attributes; 4. Depending on time and resources available for planning and management, the combined use of well suited indicators and/or other lesser “lines of evidence” is more flexible than the pursuit of perfect indicators, and that; 5. Index-based, collaborative and participatory approaches need to be applied to the development, refinement and reporting of indicators over longer time frames. We trialed the practical application of these concepts via the establishment of a collaborative regional alliance of planners and managers involved in the development of climate change adaptation strategies across tropical Queensland (the Gulf, Wet Tropics, Cape York and Torres Strait sub-regions). A focus on the Wet Tropics as a pilot sub-region enabled other Far North Queensland sub-region’s to participate and explore the potential extension of this approach. The pilot activities included: * Further exploring ways to innovatively communicate the region’s likely climate change scenarios and possible environmental, economic and social impacts. We particularly looked at using spatial tools to overlay climate change risks to geographic communities and social vulnerabilities within those communities; * Developing a cohesive first pass of a State of the Region-style approach to reporting community resilience, inclusive of regional economic viability, community vitality, capacitybased and governance attributes. This framework integrated a literature review, expert (academic and community) and alliance-based contributions; and * Early consideration of critical strategies that need to be included in unfolding regional planning activities with Far North Queensland. The pilot assessment finds that rural, indigenous and some urban populations in the Wet Tropics are highly vulnerable and sensitive to climate change and may require substantial support to adapt and become more resilient. This assessment finds that under current conditions (i.e. if significant adaptation actions are not taken) the Wet Tropics as a whole may be seriously impacted by the most significant features of climate change and extreme climatic events. Without early and substantive action, this could result in declining social and economic wellbeing and natural resource health. Of the four attributes we consider important to understanding community resilience, the Wet Tropics region is particularly vulnerable in two areas; specifically its economic vitality and knowledge, aspirations and capacity. The third and fourth attributes, community vitality and institutional governance are relatively resilient but are vulnerable in some key respects. In regard to all four of these attributes, however, there is some emerging capacity to manage the possible shocks that may be associated with the impacts of climate change and extreme climatic events. This capacity needs to be carefully fostered and further developed to achieve broader community resilience outcomes. There is an immediate need to build individual, household, community and sectoral resilience across all four attribute groups to enable populations and communities in the Wet Tropics region to adapt in the face of climate change. Preliminary strategies of importance to improve regional community resilience have been identified. These emerging strategies also have been integrated into the emerging Regional Development Australia Roadmap, and this will ensure that effective implementation will be progressed and coordinated. They will also inform emerging strategy development to secure implementation of the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan. Of most significance in our view, this project has taken a co-research approach from the outset with explicit and direct importance and influence within the region’s formal planning and management arrangements. As such, the research: * Now forms the foundations of the first attempt at “Social Asset” planning within the Wet Tropics Regional NRM Plan review; * Is assisting Local government at regional scale to consider aspects of climate change adaptation in emerging planning scheme/community planning processes; * Has partnered the State government (via the Department of Infrastructure and Planning and Regional Managers Coordination Network Chair) in progressing the Climate Change adaptation agenda set down within the FNQ 2031 Regional Plan; * Is informing new approaches to report on community resilience within the GBRMPA Outlook reporting framework; and * Now forms the foundation for the region’s wider climate change adaptation priorities in the Regional Roadmap developed by Regional Development Australia. Through the auspices of Regional Development Australia, the outcomes of the research will now inform emerging negotiations concerning a wider package of climate change adaptation priorities with State and Federal governments. Next stage research priorities are also being developed to enable an ongoing alliance between researchers and the region’s climate change response.

The challenge to know and control: Disease outbreak surveillance and alerts in China and India

Since the revisions to the International Health Regulations (IHR) in 2005, much attention has been turned to how states, particularly developing states, will address core capacity requirements. The question often examined is how states with poor health systems can strengthen their capacity to identify and verify public health emergencies of international concern. A core capacity requirement is that by 2012 states will have a surveillance and response network that operates from the local community to the national level. Much emphasis has turned to the health system capacity required for this task. In this article, I seek to understand the political capacity to perform this task. This article considers how the world's two most populous states,1 1. For the purposes of this paper, I use the word ‘state’ as a shorthand for the nation-state of China and India, or member state as used by the United Nations. View all notes China and India, have sought to communicate outbreak events in times of crisis and calm. I consider what this reporting performance tells us of their capacity to meet their IHR obligations given the two countries differing political institutions.

Applications of Spreadsheets in Education : The Amazing Power of a Simple Tool

This e-book is devoted to the use of spreadsheets in the service of education in a broad spectrum of disciplines: science, mathematics, engineering, business, and general education. The effort is aimed at collecting the works of prominent researchers and educators that make use of spreadsheets as a means to communicate concepts with high educational value. The e-book brings some of the most recent applications of spreadsheets in education and research to the fore. To offer the reader a broad overview of the diversity of applications, carefully chosen articles from engineering (power systems and control), mathematics (calculus, differential equations, and probability), science (physics and chemistry), and education are provided. Some of these applications make use of Visual Basic for Applications (VBA), a versatile computer language that further expands the functionality of spreadsheets. The material included in this e-book should inspire readers to devise their own applications and enhance their teaching and/or learning experience.

Workflow patterns as a means to model task succession in games – a preliminary case study

Over about the last decade, people involved in game development have noted the need for more formal models and tools to support the design phase of games. It is argued that the present lack of such formal tools is currently hindering knowledge transfer among designers. Formal visual languages, on the other hand, can help to more effectively express, abstract and communicate game design concepts. Moreover, formal tools can assist in the prototyping phase, allowing designers to reason about and simulate game mechanics on an abstract level. In this paper we present an initial investigation into whether workflow patterns – which have already proven to be effective for modeling business processes – are a suitable way to model task succession in games. Our preliminary results suggest that workflow patterns show promise in this regard but some limitations, especially in regard to time constraints, currently restrict their potential.

Urban branding : an analysis of city homepage imagery

This paper examines a practically ubiquitous, yet largely overlooked, source of city marketing, the official city homepage. The extent to which local governments use the Web as a marketing tool is explored through a comparative analysis of the images featured on the city, convention, and visitors bureau homepages in large and medium-sized U.S. cities. The article goes on to analyze the ways in which the city homepages reflect the population, geography, and built environment of a city and, through a typology of marketing themes found on the city homepages, to suggest the range of ways they may package images of city spaces to communicate a brand identity. The research contributes to an understanding of the ways in which municipalities may attempt to represent the city and suggests that most city homepage imagery is oriented toward marketing goals of tourism and attracting and retaining residents and businesses.