Intelligent Notification Systems

The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy will make its recommendations during the summer of 2003. These recommendations are expected to fully endorse the development of a U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS). The form of the U.S. IOOS is emerging. Requirements have been identified, and a blueprint for the U.S. IOOS has been developed. The system would address national coastal issues as well as make a significant contribution to the larger Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS). The federal backbone components are central to the IOOS blueprint. The observing system foundation formed by the federal backbone and the services the backbone provides are critical to developing and sustaining the IOOS. The National Data Buoy Center (NDBC), a part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Weather Service (NWS), manages the Marine Observation Program (MOP) and operates the NWS Marine Observation Network (MON). The MON is a core element of the U.S. IOOS federal backbone. The NWS MON is an integrated, sustained ocean observation, information and product delivery system that operates in all U.S. coastal waters, as well as the offshore waters of the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans and the Gulf of Mexico. The system consists of headland and moored buoy data acquisition platforms and real-time processing and information delivery systems, as well as drifters, floats, and voluntary observing ships. The MON produces quality controlled real-time data and products that serve the NOAA storm warning and forecast mission and support research and operational requirements of other federal, state, regional, local, academic and private sponsors. Within the context of the IOOS blueprint, NOAA's NDBC has established strategic alliances with several Regional Observation Networks. This paper presents an overview of these alliances and discusses how they are evolving into full-fledged partnerships. Partnerships that will realize the goals of the U.S. IOOS.

Research issues in real-time database systems: Survey paper

Abstract. Since movement between countries has become easier for people, preventing the spread of various infectious diseases occurring around the world has become an international public health challenge. The use of “disease maps” in infectious disease prevention can encourage a range of studies on patterns of occurrence and modes of transmission to create thematic visual guides charting the geographical spread of diseases, and infectious disease research agencies around the world are conducting epidemiological surveillance for tracking and analyzing the occurrence of infectious diseases. In the case of Japan, influenza is a recurring and widespread infectious disease for which surveillance programs involving mapping are ongoing. With the development of Information-Communication Technology (ICT), surveillance information is easily accessible on the Web to both medical professions and ordinary citizens, as are online Geographical Information Systems (GIS) utilizing these data. Adapting to these transformations in the environment of information delivery requires that disease maps reflect an accurate grasp of local trends and real-time information delivery. Most studies of disease mapping have focused on the technical dimensions of the utilization of disease maps and WebGIS, and very little research has evaluated the use of disease maps and the quality of surveillance information on a regional scale. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to examine the current status of utilization of disease maps in Japan and issues for health crisis management, with a focus on local influenza surveillance. We conducted a survey of the websites of specialized agencies and local governments in Japan and we engaged in semi-structured interviews with officials from nine agencies that deliver epidemiological information using disease maps. The website survey assessed the quality of information provided by 82 public health institutes, 552 public health centers, 1,042 medical associations, and 1,977 local governments based on an index of 15 items measuring spatial scale along with map forms and usage. Interview items encompassed the “history of construction and management of the local surveillance system,” “users and utilization of local surveillance,” “impact of introduction and relationship with other surveillance measures,” “new developments and enhancements.” From the results of website survey, we found that only 332 agencies and local governments delivered original information on infectious disease jurisdictional districts, namely 116 public health centers, 108 medical associations, and 51 local governments. The spatial scale of surveillance generally corresponded to the jurisdictions of agencies and local governments; however, medical associations are provided at various levels, such as the county and city medical association level, municipal district level, public school district level, chome and aza (block) level, school facility level, and hospital and clinic levels. Among a total of 56 agencies and local governments conducting visualization, only few three were found to be using WebGIS. The semi-structured interviews revealed that the construction of local surveillance systems was necessary due to limitation of existing nationwide surveillance in rapid information delivery. Specialized agencies and local governments operating regional surveillance pointed out three problems of current nationwide infectious disease surveillance. First, the number of patients reported is limited because a few sentinel medical institutions report this kind of information. Second, use of the FAX information delivery system results in a time lag of two weeks for data aggregation and delivery. Third, because the minimum spatial unit is the public health center level, detailed information at the level under jurisdiction is not available. Such challenges arose amidst the crisis caused by the influenza A/H1N1pdm09 pandemic in 2009. In the aftermath of the failures of the 2009 epidemiological response, agencies and local governments cooperated with local government departments and the board of education to establish a system to collect information from all medical institutions and school facilities in the jurisdiction. Through visualizing such data as a disease map and sharing progress online, local surveillance has been effective in supporting medical consultations among local doctors, infection prevention at school facilities, and emergency response for night-time medical treatment, among other interventions. Local surveillance is informed by data in the jurisdiction of each specialized agency and local government; however, disease maps utilizing these information are maintained by 56 agencies and local governments. To construct the information delivery system on the local scale, we recommend the promotion of cooperation between agencies and local government departments and the strengthening of interactions between medical professionals, and mapping and GIS experts. In addition, it is evident that disease maps are effective for medical consultation support and infection control measures in familiar areas. From this perspective, local-scale disease maps have potential to be utilized as a communication tool for the sharing of risk management information between medical profession and residents.

There are several generally accepted suppositions concerning the cost and benefits of real-time information systems. These suppositions expect that real-time systems can generate sufficient benefits to offset the higher costs of processing relative to traditional batch processing systems. The objective of this study was to examine in actual operating environments the generally accepted notions of costs and benefits of real-time systems that were supplied by a computer utility. These suppositions were examined by analyzing the empirical data of six matched firms. The cost and benefits of the information systems of three companies which used a computer utility real-time system were compared to the costs and benefits of three similar companies which used private batch processing systems. The findings of the research were the reverse of expectations. The data analysis strongly suggested that the real-time information did not produce any significant information benefits, but that the real-time data processing costs were less than the comparative batch data processing costs. The primary reason the results differed from expectations is that the real-time information was not fruitfully used. The findings of the study suggest that real-time information system benefits are not gained automatically, but can be achieved only if the systems are meaningfully integrated into the management process.

Evaluation of Real-Time Transit Information Systems: An information demand and supply approach

Given the increasing interest in real-time bus information, quantifying the value of such information from a user’s perspective is useful for transport modelers and service planners. Although a number of studies have investigated several other aspects of real-time bus information systems, there is a lack of studies that compare the disutility associated with the bus headway of a scheduled arrival information system and that of a real-time information system from a user’s perspective. In addition, no analyses in the literature examined the value of real-time information as affected by trip purpose and weather, which is important especially for the cities in which the weather remains below zero degrees during winter. The primary objectives of this research are to elucidate these issues. A stated preference survey describing the choice between scheduled and real-time information systems was conducted in Calgary, Canada. A total of 426 people participated in the survey, and each person was presented with three randomly selected choice situations. This data set was utilized to estimate the coefficients in different utility functions using a mixed logit model, which avoided several major limitations of a standard multinomial logit model. It was found that the disutility of the headway of a real-time information system was about half of the disutility of a scheduled information system. The analysis also showed that there was a nonlinear trend for the real-time information system, in which people found a higher disutility rate for a longer headway. Further, the value of real-time information availability was normally distributed in the population, with a mean of $0.50 and a standard deviation of $0.40. The results also revealed that the value of real-time information was significantly different when the weather was below and above 0 °C, those values were $0.59 and $0.41, respectively. Many of the findings obtained here are novel and have implications for both theory and practice. Particularly, they are important for transport modelers and service planners to design or adjust the headway for a desired level of service for a given (or a change in) bus arrival information type.

The objective of this research is to study the application of Web services technology in distributed real-time data delivery systems, as well as to determine the appropriate contexts in which such a design can be considered. We focus on distributed real-time systems and more specifically, on distributed soft real-time systems, which stand to benefit most from the use of Web services technology. We provide a means to evaluate the inclusion of Web services-based middleware in real-time system design. The decision to use the standardized data representation and communications protocols of Web services can bring tremendous value and benefit to both the service provider and the end user of a real-time system; however, the temporal performance of such systems is a critical factor. This research examines the most significant general performance considerations applicable to such systems and more specifically, provides a model to be used in the determination of whether a given system configuration can meet a specific soft real-time performance target.

Real-time transit passenger information systems are intended to improve the level of service provided by transit agencies. For example, passengers are given real-time information on the expected arrival times of buses on various routes at bus stops. These real-time systems reflect emerging applications in public transit, and methods to evaluate their benefits are limited. An evaluation method is presented that focuses on the potential benefits of bus arrival information systems to passengers waiting at bus stops. Passenger arrivals and transit bus operations are modeled as a stochastic system in which the operator uses real-time bus location data to provide bus arrival-time information that maximizes passengers' utilities. Simulation results reveal the nature of the dependence of system benefits on the type of real-time data available to the operator and the bus operations characteristics. An application to an existing bus transit system demonstrates the feasibility of the developed method and its role in assessing the value of real-time bus arrival information systems to passengers.

Understanding the need for better service delivery with effective and efficient performance of a project, we conducted a study on the new Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The purpose was focusing on realizing the delivery of real time information to commuters and providing operators real time feedback from commuters and other stakeholders in the transportation industry, for better service. Our research uses mixed approaches on collecting data, both qualitative and quantitative techniques were used for a deeper understanding of the system and quality collection of necessary data. Statistical hypothesis testing was used in testing the collected data from the two surveys conducted before and after the use of the proposed solution. The conclusions show that giving commuters real time information on simple and mobile way has improved their commuting, also we could make many improvement to the system, due to the changes made by receiving real time feedbacks from commuters. Moreover, city awareness has improved among the commuters by using the proposed solution, they are able to locate various interesting and important places along the routes of bus rapid transit system.

Purpose The purpose of the study is to identify the need of a mobile based library information and service delivery system in developing countries, identify the services that are possible to provide with the help of mobile phones and their applications, design a mobile based library information and service delivery system, and identify major challenges regarding mobile based library information and service delivery systems. Design/ Methodology/ Approach The research is exploratory in nature. This paper is based on a review of literature, survey information, and on the author’s own viewpoints. A comprehensive search of scientific literature has been done along with a survey for validating the necessity of designing mobile based library information and service delivery systems. Responses to closed-ended questions in particular on 7-point Likert scales were analyzed using the descriptive analysis techniques of SPSS 20.0 and responses to other closed-ended questions were analyzed using general statistics. Findings The research indicates that users of academic libraries, especially students and faculty members, have a positive notion regarding designing and implementing a mobile based library information and service delivery system. It also reveals user opinions regarding the possible problems associated with the design and implementation of a mobile based library information and service delivery system. Originality The paper explores mobile based library information and service delivery systems for better and faster service provision to its potential users.

This paper describes a method of determining the reliability of a hardware-software complex for real-time systems at the design stage. Reliability is one of the main aspects of hardware-software real-time information processing systems. To increase hardware reliability, it is necessary to use the redundancy of structural components such as processors and interface buses. Software reliability increases through multiversion programming. As a result, a model for calculating the reliability of a multiprocessor hardware-software real-time system with heterogeneous processors and multiversion software had been obtained. The model allows to study variety of architectures for a short period of time without significant costs typical for building prototypes and assessing reliability through trial. In the conclusion, the question about possibility of optimizing a hardware-software complex reliability based on the model is raised. Also, the methods of optimization which can be used to solve this problem are specified.

The initial real-time information system for Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) is based on Global Positioning System (GPS) in Ji'nan, it can't provide accurate real-time information of buses arrival/departure at stop, and missing data of GPS is often found, especially under elevated highway or in bad weather. The papers put forward a new way to provide real-time transit information for BRT based on GPS/Signpost compound Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) technology. Compared the traditional signpost system, the upgrade system locates bus accurate position of arrival/departure at stop via the existing BRT platform facility which is called Platform Screen Doors (PSDs) system, only when the bus stops at depot within a permissible error range, the driver can open/close PSDs using Onboard transmitter to send out a signal which is received by Platform receivers which is mounted at Platform edge. Using the existing resource, the upgrade system combines GPS and Signpost or called PSDs system in this article to provide real-time information about transit services to passengers in Ji'an BRT system. The passengers are satisfied with real-time transit information, particularly accurate information of buses arrival and departure at stop. And it can make up the drawbacks of failing to disseminate bus location due to missing data of GPS.

Multimedia real-time collaborative applications or groupware real-time applications require participants to exchange real-time audio and video information over a communication network. This flow of information must preserve the causal dependency even though part of the information can be lost or can be discarded if it violates the tinting constraints imposed by a real-time interaction. In this paper we propose a communication abstraction to cope with unreliable communication networks with real-time delivery constraints: messages have a lifetime, /spl Delta/, after which their contents can no longer be used, moreover some of them can be lost. This new abstraction, called /spl Delta/-causal order, requires to deliver as much messages as possible within their lifetime in such a way that these deliveries respect causal order. An efficient protocol is proposed in the case of one-to-one communications. A variation of this protocol weld suited to broadcast communications is also shown.

A mathematical statement of the problem of building consistent schedules for executing application programs and exchanging messages for preliminary given sets of applications and messages is described. This problem arises in the design of real-time management information systems (MISs). Various approaches to the design of algorithms for solving this problem are analyzed, a greedy algorithm is proposed and described, and experimental results concerning this algorithm is presented.

Aiming to address the timely dissemination of news information, this work explores the clever utilization of data mining (DM) technology and deep learning (DL) algorithms to construct an intelligent real-time news image acquisition system to meet the urgency of news dissemination needs. First, this work introduces an intelligent real-time news image acquisition system and provides a detailed analysis of its principles and advantages. Throughout this process, the crucial role of DM technology in news image classification and automation is emphasized, especially in dealing with rapidly evolving news events. Next, the work establishes an intelligent real-time news image acquisition model based on DL algorithms, which integrates the essence of DM technology. Through this fusion, the research objective is to enhance the performance of the news image acquisition system to achieve higher real-time and accuracy, which is vital for the swift delivery of news information. Finally, this work investigates the application of the intelligent news image acquisition system in network communication to ensure its adaptability to various network communication scenarios while maintaining accuracy and real-time capabilities. The research results demonstrate that the application of DM technology in combination with DL algorithms can effectively meet the practical needs of the news industry, enhancing the automation of news image processing and enabling faster information delivery to the audience. Notably, the AlexNet model employed performs exceptionally well, achieving recognition rates of up to 99.6% after data augmentation or equalization processing, with an accuracy of 90.9% and a high specificity of 93.38%. This indicates outstanding overall classification accuracy and negative class accuracy, even when distinguishing between news and non-news scenarios. These results clearly underscore the connection between DM technology and news acquisition and editing practices, and emphasize its potential to improve the efficiency and accuracy of real-time information dissemination. The research’s contribution and innovation lie in the fusion of DM technology with DL algorithms to build an intelligent real-time news image acquisition system. This fusion enhances the automation and classification performance of news images, thereby improving the real-time and accuracy of news information. Furthermore, the work strongly emphasizes improving the real-time and accuracy of the news image acquisition system to ensure the swift delivery of information, which is of utmost importance in rapidly changing news events.