An investigation of a process for environmental banking appropriate to Queensland

This thesis examines the advanced North American environmental mitigation schemes for their applicability to Queensland. Compensatory wetland mitigation banking, in particular, is concerned with in-perpetuity management and protection - the basic concerns of the Queensland public about its unique environment. The process has actively engaged the North American market and become a thriving industry that (for the most part) effectively designs, creates and builds (or enhances) environmental habitat. A methodology was designed to undertake a comprehensive review of the history, evolution and concepts of the North American wetland mitigation banking system - before and after the implementation of a significant new compensatory wetland mitigation banking regulation in 2008. The Delphi technique was then used to determine the principles and working components of wetland mitigation banking. Results were then applied to formulate a questionnaire to review Australian marketbased instruments (including offsetting policies) against these North American principles. Following this, two case studies established guiding principles for implementation based on two components of the North American wetland mitigation banking program. The subsequent outcomes confirmed that environmental banking is a workable concept in North America and that it is worth applying in Queensland. The majority of offsetting policies in Australia have adopted some principles of the North American mitigation programs. Examination reveals that however, they fail to provide adequate incentives for private landowners to participate because the essential trading mechanisms are not employed. Much can thus be learnt from the North American situation - where private enterprise has devised appropriate free market concepts. The consequent environmental banking process (as adapted from the North American programs) should be implemented in Queensland. It can then focus here on engaging the private sector, where the majority of naturally productive lands are managed.

An architecture for user configurable mobile collaborative geographic applications

Geographic information is increasingly being touted for use in research and industrial projects. While the technology is now available and affordable, there is a lack of easy to use software that takes advantage of geographic information. This is an important problem because users are often researchers or scientists who have insufficient software skills, and by providing applications that are easier to use, time and financial resources can be taken from training and be better applied to the actual research and development work. A solution for this problem must cater for the user and research needs. In particular it must allow for mobile operation for fieldwork, flexibility or customisability of data input, sharing of data with other tools and collaborative capabilities for the usual teamwork environment. This thesis has developed a new architecture and data model to achieve the solution. The result is the Mobile Collaborative Annotation framework providing an implementation of the new architecture and data model. Mobile Collaborative Mapping implements the framework as a Web 2.0 mashup rich internet application and has proven to be an effective solution through its positive application to a case study with fieldwork scientists. This thesis has contributed to research into mobile computing, collaborative computing and geospatial systems by creating a simpler entry point to mobile geospatial applications, enabling simplified collaboration and providing tangible time savings.

Assessment of the suitability of public mobile data networks for aircraft telemetry and control purposes

This paper provides a review of the state of the art relevant work on the use of public mobile data networks for aircraft telemetry and control proposes. Moreover, it describes the characterisation for airborne uses of the public mobile data communication systems known broadly as 3G. The motivation for this study was the explore how this mature public communication systems could be used for aviation purposes. An experimental system was fitted to a light aircraft to record communication latency, line speed, RF level, packet loss and cell tower identifier. Communications was established using internet protocols and connection was made to a local server. The aircraft was flown in both remote and populous areas at altitudes up to 8500 ft in a region located in South East Queensland, Australia. Results show that the average airborne RF levels are better than those on the ground by 21% and in the order of - 77dbm. Latencies were in the order of 500ms (1/2 the latency of Iridium), an average download speed of 0.48Mb/s, average uplink speed of 0.85Mb/s, a packet of information loss of 6.5%. The maximum communication range was also observed to be 70km from a single cell station. The paper also describes possible limitations and utility of using such communications architecture for both manned and unmanned aircraft systems.

Mobile communication in power distribution application

This paper investigates how to interface the wireless application protocol (WAP) architecture to the SCADA system running distributed network protocol (DNP) in a power process plant. DNP is a well-developed protocol to be applied in the supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system but the system control centre and remote terminal units (RTUs) are presently connected through a local area network. The conditions in a process plant are harsh and the site is remote. Resources for data communication are difficult to obtain under these conditions, thus, a wireless channel communication through a mobile phone is practical and efficient in a process plant environment. The mobile communication industries and the public have a strong interest in the WAP technology application in mobile phone networks and the WAP application programming interface (API) in power industry applications is one area that requires extensive investigation.

Out of touch? On the lack of emotional support over the mobile phone

Findings from an Australian case study of adult women expose general, light and basic use of mobile phones. Participants used their mobile phone mainly for coordination and to a lesser extent for practicing intrinsic interactions motivated by emotional support purposes. This paper focuses on social and emotional support over the mobile phone. Though crucial to individuals, emotional support seems to be a neglected area of research among mobile communication studies, all the more so when focusing on adult women. This study addresses this literature gap. The empirical findings are based on a case study of 26 women over 35 years of age residing in one coastal Australian town. The research design included a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods. This paper examines the communication methods adult women use for social and emotional support, and analyses reasons and social implications of this limited intrinsic communication use pattern over the mobile phone.

Mobile phones in PNG villages : an island village experience

As a new communication technology expands in a disadvantaged, rural area of a developing country, changes take place in the lives of the people in the area. The paper examines the introduction of mobile telephony into a rural village in Papua New Guinea, and contains findings from field research conducted in February 2009. The analysis is undertaken through a social lens, providing an understanding of the roles of mobile phones in this community by foregrounding the feelings, thoughts and attitudes expressed by the village people. This in turn enables a deeper understanding of the sociological effects related to the uptake of mobile telephony.

‘We would have saved her life’ : mobile telephony in an island village in Papua New Guinea

As a new communication technology expands in a disadvantaged, rural area of a developing country, changes take place in the lives of the people in the area. The paper examines the introduction of mobile telephony into a rural village in Papua New Guinea, and contains findings from field research conducted in February 2009. The analysis is undertaken through a social lens, providing an understanding of the roles of mobile phones in this community by foregrounding the feelings, thoughts and attitudes expressed by the village people. This in turn enables a deeper understanding of the sociological effects related to the uptake of mobile telephony.

From social butterfly to engaged citizen: Urban informatics, social media, ubiquitous computing, and mobile technology to support citizen engagement

Web applications such as blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing sites, and social networking systems have been termed ‘Web 2.0’ to highlight an arguably more open, collaborative, personalisable, and therefore more participatory internet experience than what had previously been possible. Giving rise to a culture of participation, an increasing number of these social applications are now available on mobile phones where they take advantage of device-specific features such as sensors, location and context awareness. This international volume of book chapters will make a contribution towards exploring and better understanding the opportunities and challenges provided by tools, interfaces, methods and practices of social and mobile technology that enable participation and engagement. It brings together an international group of academics and practitioners from a diverse range of disciplines such as computing and engineering, social sciences, digital media and human-computer interaction to critically examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology, such as social networking, mobile interaction, wikis, twitter, blogging, virtual worlds, shared displays and urban sceens, and their impact to foster community activism, civic engagement and cultural citizenship.

Impact of zooming and enhancing Region of Interests for optimizing user experience on mobile sports video

In mobile videos, small viewing size and bitrate limitation often cause unpleasant viewing experiences, which is particularly important for fast-moving sports videos. For optimizing the overall user experience of viewing sports videos on mobile phones, this paper explores the benefits of emphasizing Region of Interest (ROI) by 1) zooming in and 2) enhancing the quality. The main goal is to measure the effectiveness of these two approaches and determine which one is more effective. To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of the overall user experience, the study considers user’s interest in video content and user’s acceptance of the perceived video quality, and compares the user experience in sports videos with other content types such as talk shows. The results from a user study with 40 subjects demonstrate that zooming and ROI-enhancement are both effective in improving the overall user experience with talk show and mid-shot soccer videos. However, for the full-shot scenes in soccer videos, only zooming is effective while ROI-enhancement has a negative effect. Moreover, user’s interest in video content directly affects not only the user experience and the acceptance of video quality, but also the effect of content type on the user experience. Finally, the overall user experience is closely related to the degree of the acceptance of video quality and the degree of the interest in video content. This study is valuable in exploiting effective approaches to improve user experience, especially in mobile sports video streaming contexts, whereby the available bandwidth is usually low or limited. It also provides further understanding of the influencing factors of user experience.

A survey on usage of mobile video in Australia

The growth of powerful entertainment functions of mobile devices, in particular mobile video, has recently attracted much attention. Studies on mobile TV, one form of mobile video, have been conducted in many countries. However, little research focuses on the holistic usage of mobile video. To understand the features of such usage, we conducted an online survey in Brisbane, Australia, during the first half of 2010. Our findings reveal similarities and diversities between usage of mobile TV in particular and mobile video on the whole. The results could aid in improving the design of future studies, with a view to ultimately increase user satisfaction.

Keeping in constant touch : the predictors of young Australians’ mobile phone involvement

Little is known about the psychological underpinnings of young people’s mobile phone behaviour. In the present research, 292 young Australians, aged 16–24 years, completed an online survey assessing the effects of self-identity, in-group norm, the need to belong, and self-esteem on their frequency of mobile phone use and mobile phone involvement, conceptualised as people’s degree of cognitive and behavioural association with their mobile phone. Structural equation modelling revealed that age (younger) and self-identity significantly predicted the frequency of mobile phone use. In contrast, age (younger), gender (female), self-identity and in-group norm predicted young people’s mobile phone involvement. Neither self-esteem nor the need to belong significantly predicted mobile phone behaviour. The present study contributes to our understanding of this phenomenon and provides an indication of the characteristics of young people who may become highly involved with their mobile phone.

Using TAM to examine consumer acceptance of a mobile phone assisted smoking cessation program in Australia

This paper study examines Australian smokers’ perceptions of a potential SMS-assisted smoking cessation program. Using TAM we tested perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness and subjective norms on intentions to use this cessation program if it was available. Findings show that perceived usefulness and subjective norms were the significant predictors of intentions to use. Perceived ease of use did not directly influence this outcome instead it has an indirect influence through perceived usefulness. These preliminary findings can be built upon through introducing additional variables to help practitioners better understand consumer acceptance when marketing e-health programs such as this.