Improving data forwarding in mobile social networks with infrastructure support: a space-crossing community approach

In this paper, we study two tightly coupled issues: space-crossing community detection and its influence on data forwarding in Mobile Social Networks (MSNs) by taking the hybrid underlying networks with infrastructure support into consideration. The hybrid underlying network is composed of large numbers of mobile users and a small portion of Access Points (APs). Because APs can facilitate the communication among long-distance nodes, the concept of physical proximity community can be extended to be one across the geographical space. In this work, we first investigate a space-crossing community detection method for MSNs. Based on the detection results, we design a novel data forwarding algorithm SAAS (Social Attraction and AP Spreading), and show how to exploit the space-crossing communities to improve the data forwarding efficiency. We evaluate our SAAS algorithm on real-life data from MIT Reality Mining and University of Illinois Movement (UIM). Results show that space-crossing community plays a positive role in data forwarding in MSNs in terms of delivery ratio and delay. Based on this new type of community, SAAS achieves a better performance than existing social community-based data forwarding algorithms in practice, including Bubble Rap and Nguyen's Routing algorithms. © 2014 IEEE.

Failures in communication through documents and documentation across the perioperative pathway.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To explore how communication failures occur in documents and documentations across the perioperative pathway in nurses' interactions with other nurses, surgeons and anaesthetists. BACKGROUND: Documents and documentation are used to communicate vital patient and procedural information among nurses, and in nurses' interactions with surgeons and anaesthetists, across the perioperative pathway. Previous research indicates that communication failure regularly occurs in the perioperative setting. DESIGN: A qualitative study was undertaken. METHODS: The study was conducted over three hospitals in Melbourne, Australia. One hundred and twenty-five healthcare professionals from the disciplines of surgery, anaesthesia and nursing participated in the study. Data collection commenced in January 2010 and concluded in October 2010. Data were generated through 350 hours of observation, two focus groups and 20 semi-structured interviews. A detailed thematic analysis was undertaken. RESULTS: Communication failure occurred owing to a reliance on documents and documentation to transfer information at patient transition points, poor quality documents and documentation, and problematic access to information. Institutional ruling practices of professional practice, efficiency and productivity, and fiscal constraint dominated the coordination of nurses', surgeons' and anaesthetists' communication through documents and documentation. These governing practices configured communication to be incongruous with reliably meeting safety and quality objectives. CONCLUSIONS: Communication failure occurred because important information was sometimes buried in documents, insufficient, inaccurate, out-of-date or not verbally reinforced. Furthermore, busy nurses were not always able to access information they required in a timely manner. Patient safety was affected, which led to delays in treatment and at times inadequate care. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Organisational support needs to be provided to nurses, surgeons and anaesthetists so they have sufficient time to complete, locate, and read documents and documentation. Infrastructure supporting communication technologies should be implemented to enable the rapid retrieval, entry, and dispersion of information.

Failures in communication through documents and documentation across the perioperative pathway

Aims and objectives: To explore how communication failures occur in documents and documentations across the perioperative pathway in nurses' interactions with other nurses, surgeons and anaesthetists. Background: Documents and documentation are used to communicate vital patient and procedural information among nurses, and in nurses' interactions with surgeons and anaesthetists, across the perioperative pathway. Previous research indicates that communication failure regularly occurs in the perioperative setting. Design: A qualitative study was undertaken. Methods: The study was conducted over three hospitals in Melbourne, Australia. One hundred and twenty-five healthcare professionals from the disciplines of surgery, anaesthesia and nursing participated in the study. Data collection commenced in January 2010 and concluded in October 2010. Data were generated through 350 hours of observation, two focus groups and 20 semi-structured interviews. A detailed thematic analysis was undertaken. Results: Communication failure occurred owing to a reliance on documents and documentation to transfer information at patient transition points, poor quality documents and documentation, and problematic access to information. Institutional ruling practices of professional practice, efficiency and productivity, and fiscal constraint dominated the coordination of nurses', surgeons' and anaesthetists' communication through documents and documentation. These governing practices configured communication to be incongruous with reliably meeting safety and quality objectives. Conclusions: Communication failure occurred because important information was sometimes buried in documents, insufficient, inaccurate, out-of-date or not verbally reinforced. Furthermore, busy nurses were not always able to access information they required in a timely manner. Patient safety was affected, which led to delays in treatment and at times inadequate care. Relevance to clinical practice: Organisational support needs to be provided to nurses, surgeons and anaesthetists so they have sufficient time to complete, locate, and read documents and documentation. Infrastructure supporting communication technologies should be implemented to enable the rapid retrieval, entry, and dispersion of information.

Rural realities: digital communication challenges for rural Australian local governments

Purpose – This article explores challenges for rural Australian local governments during the transition to high-speed broadband infrastructure. Despite the National Broadband Network’s promised ubiquitous connectivity, significant access discrepancies remain between rural and urban areas.Methodology – Empirical findings are drawn from a full-day workshop on digital connectivity, which included participants from seven rural local governments in New South Wales, Australia. Thematic analysis of the workshop transcript was undertaken in order to extrapolate recurring nuances of rural digital exclusion. Findings – Rural communities face inequitable prospects for digital inclusion, and authorities confront dual issues of accommodating connected and unconnected citizens. Many areas have no or poor broadband access, and different digital engagement expectations are held by citizens and local governments. Citizens seek interactive opportunities, but rural authorities often lack the necessary resources to offer advanced participatory practices. Research limitations/implications – While this research draws from a small sample of government officials, their insights are nonetheless heuristically valuable in identifying connectivity issues faced in rural Australia. These issues can guide further research into other regions as well as civic experiences of digital inclusion. Practical/social implications – There is a need to reconceive Australia’s current policy approach to broadband. Greater rural digital inclusion may be achieved by focusing on connectivity as a public interest goal, targeting infrastructure developments to suit local contexts, and implementing participatory digital government practices. Originality/value – The actions suggested would help ensure equity of digital inclusion across Australian municipal areas. Without such changes, there is a risk of rural citizens facing further marginalisation through digital exclusion.

Performance of project alliancing in Australasia: a digest of infrastructure development from 2008 to 2013

Project and program alliances have been an accepted form of project procurement for public infrastructure engineering projects in Australia and New Zealand (Australasia). Alliancing often provides best value and superior value for money when compared to traditional approaches such as Design and Construct, however considerable debate continues about its success and applicability. This paper reports on three studies of completed construction project alliance performance in 2008, 2010 and 2012. Consolidated findings are presented on 61 project alliances, data is analysed and emerging trends discussed. Recent government policy changes in Australia at Federal and State level have led to a decline in the number of project alliances, however, while the volume of alliance activity is declining it still represents billions of dollars of infrastructure construction work being undertaken. Results also revealed that communication and trust between the executive leadership and operational management teams was a major factor contributing to the functioning of the alliance. Furthermore, the research identifies several key factors that were necessary preconditions for successful alliances.

A Management Tool for the Replication of Operating Systems in Wireless Communication Networks

To simplify computer management, various administration systems based on wired connections adopt advanced techniques to manage software configuration. Nevertheless, the strong relation between hardware and software makes for an individualism of that management, besides penalizing computational mobility and ubiquity. All these issues lead to degradation of scalability, flexibility and the facility to install and maintain distributed applications. This article presents an environment for centralized wireless communication network management, named WSE-OS (Wireless Sharing Environment - Operating Systems): a model based on Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) which associates virtualization techniques and safe remote access systems to create a distributed architecture as a base for a managing system. WSE-OS is capable of accomplishing the replication of operating system images using wireless communication network, besides offering abstraction of hardware to its clients, making the management more flexible and independent of wired connections. Results obtained from this work indicate that WSE-OS allows disseminating, through a single software configuration, the execution of data related to operating system images in client computers. WSE-OS can also be used as a management tool for operating systems in a wireless network.

Information and communication technologies for disaster risk management in the Caribbean

Includes bibliography.

A Communication Platform for Tele-monitoring and Tele-management of Type 1 Diabetes

Type 1 diabetes mellitus is a chronic disease characterized by blood glucose levels out of normal range due to inability of insulin production. This dysfunction leads to many short- and long-term complications. In this paper, a system for tele-monitoring and tele-management of Type 1 diabetes patients is proposed, aiming at reducing the risk of diabetes complications and improving quality of life. The system integrates Wireless Personal Area Networks (WPAN), mobile infrastructure, and Internet technology along with commercially available and novel glucose measurement devices, advanced modeling techniques, and tools for the intelligent processing of the available diabetes patients information. The integration of the above technologies enables intensive monitoring of blood glucose levels, treatment optimisation, continuous medical care, and improvement of quality of life for Type 1 diabetes patients, without restrictions in everyday life activities.

Individual Video Training iVT - Development of a National Infrastructure for Video-Supported Learning

Introduction: Video‐Supported Learning is particularly effective when it comes to skills and behaviors. Video registration of patient‐physician interviews, class room instruction or practical skills allow it to learners themselves, their peers, and their tutors to assess the quality of the learner's performance, to give specific feedback, and to make suggestions for improvement. Methods: In Switzerland, four pedagogical universities and two medical faculties joined to initiate the development of a national infrastructure for Video Supported Learning. The goal was to have a system that is simple to use, has most steps automated, provides the videos over the Internet, and has a sophisticated access control. Together with SWITCH, the national IT‐Support‐Organisation for Swiss Universities, the program iVT (Individual Video Training) was developed by integrating two preexisting technologies. The first technology is SWITCHcast, a podcast system. With SWITCHcast, videos are automatically uploaded to a server as soon as the registration is over. There the videos are processed and converted to different formats. The second technology is the national Single Logon System AAI (Authentification and Authorization Infrastructure) that enables iVT to link each video with the corresponding learner. The learner starts the registration with his Single Logon. Thus, the video can unambiguously be assigned. Via his institution's Learning Management System (LMS), the learner can access his video and give access to his video to peers and tutors. Results: iVT is now used at all involved institutions. The system works flawlessly. In Bern, we use iVT for the communications skills training in the forth and sixth year. Since students meet with patient actors alone, iVT is also used to certify attendance. Students are encouraged to watch the videos of the interview and the feedback of the patient actor. The offer to discuss a video with a tutor was not used by the students. Discussion: We plan to expand the use of iVT by making peer assessment compulsory. To support this, annotation capabilities are currently added to iVT. We also want to use iVT in training of practical skills, again for self as well as for peer assessment.  At present, we use iVT for quality control of patient actor's performance.

PEPSI: Privacy-Enhanced Participatory Sensing Infrastructure.

Participatory Sensing combines the ubiquity of mobile phones with sensing capabilities of Wireless Sensor Networks. It targets pervasive collection of information, e.g., temperature, traffic conditions, or health-related data. As users produce measurements from their mobile devices, voluntary participation becomes essential. However, a number of privacy concerns -- due to the personal information conveyed by data reports -- hinder large-scale deployment of participatory sensing applications. Prior work on privacy protection, for participatory sensing, has often relayed on unrealistic assumptions and with no provably-secure guarantees. The goal of this project is to introduce PEPSI: a Privacy-Enhanced Participatory Sensing Infrastructure. We explore realistic architectural assumptions and a minimal set of (formal) privacy requirements, aiming at protecting privacy of both data producers and consumers. We design a solution that attains privacy guarantees with provable security at very low additional computational cost and almost no extra communication overhead.

VISIONS Vehicular communication Improvement : solution based on IMS Operational Nodes and Services

Digital services and communications in vehicular scenarios provide the essential assets to improve road transport in several ways like reducing accidents, improving traffic efficiency and optimizing the transport of goods and people. Vehicular communications typically rely on VANET (Vehicular Ad hoc Networks). In these networks vehicles communicate with each other without the need of infrastructure. VANET are mainly oriented to disseminate information to the vehicles in certain geographic area for time critical services like safety warnings but present very challenging requirements that have not been successfully fulfilled nowadays. Some of these challenges are; channel saturation due to simultaneous radio access of many vehicles, routing protocols in topologies that vary rapidly, minimum quality of service assurance and security mechanisms to efficiently detect and neutralize malicious attacks. Vehicular services can be classified in four important groups: Safety, Efficiency, Sustainability and Infotainment. The benefits of these services for the transport sector are clear but many technological and business challenges need to be faced before a real mass market deployment. Service delivery platforms are not prepared for fulfilling the needs of this complex environment with restrictive requirements due to the criticism of some services To overcome this situation, we propose a solution called VISIONS “Vehicular communication Improvement: Solution based on IMS Operational Nodes and Services”. VISIONS leverages on IMS subsystem and NGN enablers, and follows the CALM reference Architecture standardized by ISO. It also avoids the use of Road Side Units (RSUs), reducing complexity and high costs in terms of deployment and maintenance. We demonstrate the benefits in the following areas: 1. VANET networks efficiency. VISIONS provide a mechanism for the vehicles to access valuable information from IMS and its capabilities through a cellular channel. This efficiency improvement will occur in two relevant areas: a. Routing mechanisms. These protocols are responsible of carrying information from a vehicle to another (or a group of vehicles) using multihop mechanisms. We do not propose a new algorithm but the use of VANET topology information provided through our solution to enrich the performance of these protocols. b. Security. Many aspects of security (privacy, key, authentication, access control, revocation mechanisms, etc) are not resolved in vehicular communications. Our solution efficiently disseminates revocation information to neutralize malicious nodes in the VANET. 2. Service delivery platform. It is based on extended enablers, reference architectures, standard protocols and open APIs. By following this approach, we reduce costs and resources for service development, deployment and maintenance. To quantify these benefits in VANET networks, we provide an analytical model of the system and simulate our solution in realistic scenarios. The simulations results demonstrate how VISIONS improves the performance of relevant routing protocols and is more efficient neutralizing security attacks than the widely proposed solutions based on RSUs. Finally, we design an innovative Social Network service based in our platform, explaining how VISIONS facilitate the deployment and usage of complex capabilities. RESUMEN Los servicios digitales y comunicaciones en entornos vehiculares proporcionan herramientas esenciales para mejorar el transporte por carretera; reduciendo el número de accidentes, mejorando la eficiencia del tráfico y optimizando el transporte de mercancías y personas. Las comunicaciones vehiculares generalmente están basadas en redes VANET (Vehicular Ad hoc Networks). En dichas redes, los vehículos se comunican entre sí sin necesidad de infraestructura. Las redes VANET están principalmente orientadas a difundir información (por ejemplo advertencias de seguridad) a los vehículos en determinadas zonas geográficas, pero presentan unos requisitos muy exigentes que no se han resuelto con éxito hasta la fecha. Algunos de estos retos son; saturación del canal de acceso de radio debido al acceso simultáneo de múltiples vehículos, la eficiencia de protocolos de encaminamiento en topologías que varían rápidamente, la calidad de servicio (QoS) y los mecanismos de seguridad para detectar y neutralizar los ataques maliciosos de manera eficiente. Los servicios vehiculares pueden clasificarse en cuatro grupos: Seguridad, Eficiencia del tráfico, Sostenibilidad, e Infotainment (información y entretenimiento). Los beneficios de estos servicios para el sector son claros, pero es necesario resolver muchos desafíos tecnológicos y de negocio antes de una implementación real. Las actuales plataformas de despliegue de servicios no están preparadas para satisfacer las necesidades de este complejo entorno con requisitos muy restrictivos debido a la criticidad de algunas aplicaciones. Con el objetivo de mejorar esta situación, proponemos una solución llamada VISIONS “Vehicular communication Improvement: Solution based on IMS Operational Nodes and Services”. VISIONS se basa en el subsistema IMS, las capacidades NGN y es compatible con la arquitectura de referencia CALM estandarizado por ISO para sistemas de transporte. También evita el uso de elementos en las carreteras, conocidos como Road Side Units (RSU), reduciendo la complejidad y los altos costes de despliegue y mantenimiento. A lo largo de la tesis, demostramos los beneficios en las siguientes áreas: 1. Eficiencia en redes VANET. VISIONS proporciona un mecanismo para que los vehículos accedan a información valiosa proporcionada por IMS y sus capacidades a través de un canal de celular. Dicho mecanismo contribuye a la mejora de dos áreas importantes: a. Mecanismos de encaminamiento. Estos protocolos son responsables de llevar información de un vehículo a otro (o a un grupo de vehículos) utilizando múltiples saltos. No proponemos un nuevo algoritmo de encaminamiento, sino el uso de información topológica de la red VANET a través de nuestra solución para enriquecer el funcionamiento de los protocolos más relevantes. b. Seguridad. Muchos aspectos de la seguridad (privacidad, gestión de claves, autenticación, control de acceso, mecanismos de revocación, etc) no están resueltos en las comunicaciones vehiculares. Nuestra solución difunde de manera eficiente la información de revocación para neutralizar los nodos maliciosos en la red. 2. Plataforma de despliegue de servicios. Está basada en capacidades NGN, arquitecturas de referencia, protocolos estándar y APIs abiertos. Siguiendo este enfoque, reducimos costes y optimizamos procesos para el desarrollo, despliegue y mantenimiento de servicios vehiculares. Para cuantificar estos beneficios en las redes VANET, ofrecemos un modelo de analítico del sistema y simulamos nuestra solución en escenarios realistas. Los resultados de las simulaciones muestran cómo VISIONS mejora el rendimiento de los protocolos de encaminamiento relevantes y neutraliza los ataques a la seguridad de forma más eficientes que las soluciones basadas en RSU. Por último, diseñamos un innovador servicio de red social basado en nuestra plataforma, explicando cómo VISIONS facilita el despliegue y el uso de las capacidades NGN.

LTE as the future railway communication system: benefits and challenges

In this paper the main challenges associated with the migration process towards LTE, will be assessed. These challenges comprise, among others, the next key topics: Reliability, Availability Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) requirements, end to end Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, system performance in high speed scenarios, communication system deployment strategy, and system backward compatibility as well as the future system features for delivering railway services. The practical evaluation of the LTE system capabilities and performance in High Speed Railway (HSR) scenarios, require the development of an LTE demonstrator and an LTE system level simulator. Under this scope, the authors have developed an RF LTE demonstrator, as well as an LTE system level simulator, that will provide valuable information for the assessing of LTE performance and suitability in real HSR scenarios. This work is being developed under the framework of a research project to evaluate the feasibility of LTE to become the new railway communication system. The companies and universities involved in this project are: Technical University of Madrid (UPM), Alcatel Lucent Spain, ADIF (Spanish Railway Infrastructure Manager), Metro de Madrid, AT4 Wireless, the University of A Coruña (UDC) and University of Málaga (UMA).

E-Flow: A communication system for user notification in dynamic evacuation scenarios

Most of the current evacuation plans are based on static signaling, fixed monitoring infrastructure, and limited user notification and feedback mechanisms. These facts lead to lower situation awareness, in the case event of an emergency, such as blocked emergency exits, while delaying the reaction time of individuals. In this context, we introduce the E-Flow communication system, which improves the user awareness by integrating personal, mobile and fixed devices with the existing monitoring infrastructure. Our system broadens the notification and monitoring alternatives, in real time, among, safety staff, end-users and evacuation related devices, such as sensors and actuators.

Definition of a support infrastructure for replicating and aggregating families of software engineering experiments

Experimental software engineering includes several processes, the most representative being run experiments, run replications and synthesize the results of multiple replications. Of these processes, only the first is relatively well established in software engineering. Problems of information management and communication among researchers are one of the obstacles to progress in the replication and synthesis processes. Software engineering experimentation has expanded considerably over the last few years. This has brought with it the invention of experimental process support proposals. However, few of these proposals provide integral support, including replication and synthesis processes. Most of the proposals focus on experiment execution. This paper proposes an infrastructure providing integral support for the experimental research process, specializing in the replication and synthesis of a family of experiments. The research has been divided into stages or phases, whose transition milestones are marked by the attainment of their goals. Each goal exactly matches an artifact or product. Within each stage, we will adopt cycles of successive approximations (generateand- test cycles), where each approximation includes a diferent viewpoint or input. Each cycle will end with the product approval.