Approach For Information Dissemination Research Articles

A Systematic Review of Social Marketing Interventions Promoting Occupational Health and Safety

Background Unintentional and preventable workplace injuries are a common occurrence across employment contexts. Campaign and intervention initiatives are often implemented to promote health and safety in the workplace. However, to date, scarce research has reviewed the manner in which social marketing principles have been used to inform these efforts. Focus of Article The current review seeks to address this gap by completing a systematic review of occupational health and safety interventions that utilize social marketing approaches. Research Question This review sought to identify key trends and characteristics across occupational health and safety social marketing efforts such as what topics, theories, and design characteristics are most often used to inform these initiatives. The review also sought to determine how effective social marketing tactics were in promoting behavior change. Method In total, 4,354 article titles and abstracts were reviewed across four databases. Ultimately, 11 articles reviewed met the set inclusion criteria, were reviewed, and subsequently analyzed. Results Results indicated that social marketing interventions typically addressed behaviors related to construction safety, agricultural safety, and safety within healthcare environments. While little continuity existed among information dissemination approaches specified, it was clear that many interventions used some form of traditional media (e.g., print, radio, etc.) as a mainstay of their approach. Further, most were effective in promoting behavior change. Importance to the Social Marketing Field While this review identified vital information relating to the development and implementation of occupational health and safety initiatives, clear gaps exist in how key campaign elements, messaging approaches, and strategies are documented in the literature. Recommendations for Research and Practice Practitioners can and should use information identified from this review to guide the development of social marketing interventions. Further, this work also provides important guidance on best practices for documenting features and outcomes of future social marketing efforts.

Awareness of India's national health insurance scheme (PM-JAY): a cross-sectional study across six states.

The literature suggests that a first barrier towards accessing benefits of health insurance in low- and middle-income countries is lack of awareness of one's benefits. Yet, across settings and emerging schemes, limited scientific evidence is available on levels of awareness and their determinants. To fill this gap, we assessed socio-demographic and economic determinants of beneficiaries' awareness of the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Yojana (PM-JAY), the national health insurance scheme launched in India in 2018, and their awareness of own eligibility. We relied on cross-sectional household (HH) survey data collected in six Indian states between 2019 and 2020. Representative data of HHs eligible for PM-JAY from 11 618 respondents (an adult representative from each surveyed HH) were used. We used descriptive statistics and multivariable logistic regression models to explore the association between awareness of PM-JAY and of one's own eligibility and socio-economic and demographic characteristics. About 62% of respondents were aware of PM-JAY, and among the aware, 78% knew that they were eligible for the scheme. Regression analysis confirmed that older respondents with a higher educational level and salaried jobs were more likely to know about PM-JAY. Awareness was lower among respondents from Meghalaya and Tamil Nadu. Respondents from Other Backward Classes, of wealthier socio-economic status or from Meghalaya or Gujarat were more likely to be aware of their eligibility status. Respondents from Chhattisgarh were less likely to know about their eligibility. Our study confirms that while more than half of the eligible population was aware of PM-JAY, considerable efforts are needed to achieve universal awareness. Socio-economic gradients confirm that the more marginalized are still less aware. We recommend implementing tailored, state-specific information dissemination approaches focusing on knowledge of specific scheme features to empower beneficiaries to demand their entitled services.

Using PPP Information to Implement a Global Real-Time Virtual Network DGNSS Approach

Differential GNSS (DGNSS) has been demonstrated to provide reliable, high-quality range correction information enabling real-time navigation with centimeter to sub-meter accuracy, which is required for applications such as connected and autonomous vehicles. However, DGNSS requires a local reference station near each user. For a continental or global scale implementation, this information dissemination approach would require a dense network of reference stations whose construction and maintenance would be prohibitively expensive. Precise Point Positioning (PPP) affords more flexibility as a public service for Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) receivers, but its State Space Representation (SSR) format is not supported by most receivers in the field or on the market. This article proposes a novel Virtual Network DGNSS (VNDGNSS) approach and an optimization algorithm that is key to its implementation. The approach capitalizes on the existing PPP infrastructure without the need for new physical reference stations. Specifically, no reference station is needed in the local vicinity of any user. By connecting to public GNSS SSR data services, a VNDGNSS server maintains current information about satellite code bias, satellite orbit and clock, and atmospheric models. Construction of the Radio Technical Commission for Maritime Services (RTCM) Observation Space Representation (OSR) messages from this SSR information requires both the signal time-of-transmission and the satellite position at that time which are consistent with the time-of-reception for each client. This article presents an algorithm to determine these quantities. Then the VNDGNSS computes and transmits RTCM OSR messages to user receivers. This approach achieves global dissemination coverage for real-time navigation without the need for additional local base stations near each user. The results of real-time stationary and moving platform evaluations are included, using u-blox M8P and ZED-F9P receivers. The performance surpasses the Society of Automotive Engineering (SAE) specification (68% of horizontal error <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\leqslant$</tex-math></inline-formula> 1.5 m and vertical error <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$\leqslant$</tex-math></inline-formula> 3 m) and shows significantly better horizontal performance than GNSS Open Service (OS). The moving tests also show better horizontal performance than the ZED-F9P receiver with Satellite Based Augmentation Systems (SBAS) enabled and achieve the lane-level accuracy (95% of horizontal errors less than 1 m).

Unfolding social learning parameters behind the selection of information sources against cyclones: A perspective of information seeking behavior research

The impact of social learning on disaster management has been widely studied. However, few studies have investigated the key attributes of social learning that impact the selection of preferred information sources about coastal cyclones. A mixed-methods approach was adopted to collect data by conducting 35 in-person interviews and a survey of 323 participants of Sundarban, a coastal region of West Bengal, India. Descriptive statistics helped to identify preferred information sources, whereas, structural equation modelling revealed four social learning attributes, namely Quality, Scale, Attachment with Place and Learning Process, having an impact on participants' information source preferences during a disaster. In-depth analysis of interview data suggested four indicators, i.e., Credibility, Availability, Accuracy and Frequency, that an individual considered when prioritizing within selected sources. The findings offer guidelines to officials for using the most useful sources and information dissemination approaches to inform vulnerable populations in the event of a disaster.

Providing a Roadmap for Future Research Agenda: A Bibliometric Literature Review of Sustainability Performance Reporting (SPR)

The concept of sustainability reporting is now an essential tool through which organisations demonstrate accountability to their stakeholders. The increasing market pressure coupled with the awareness of the consequences of organisations’ activities suggests the need for organisations to report their sustainability credentials. Sustainability performance reports should provide adequate information on organisations’ social, economic, and environmental performance. However, the current process through which organisations communicate their sustainability performance to stakeholders is questionable and remains a significant concern. This study assessed the current state and direction of research on sustainability performance reporting by conducting a bibliometric literature review of peer-reviewed studies on sustainability performance reporting published between 1987 and 2022. The findings highlight the misconceptions between sustainability and CSR when reporting organisations’ sustainability performance. Furthermore, businesses and scholars prioritise reporting instead of communication with stakeholders. The observed lack of engagement with stakeholders indicates that the reported performance may not reflect the impact of business activities on the three dimensions of sustainability. Rather than adopting a one-way information dissemination approach, this study concludes that the desired performance can only be achieved through two-way communication with stakeholders.

A conservative expected travel time approach for traffic information dissemination under uncertainty

Travel time is important for both users and planners. Travel time variability widely exists in transportation systems. Positive skew with a long/fat upper tail is a basic characteristic of travel time variability, which poses great challenges to reporting travel time information to the public. There are two main approaches for disseminating travel time variability information: the traditional expected value and the percentile-based value. They are either unreliable when facing highly-skewed travel time variability, difficult to understand, or sensitive to individual risk preference. Motivated by this observation, this paper develops a conservative expected travel time (CET) approach to enhance the information reliability and maintain simplicity, which is formulated as a two-stage problem: (1) reshaping the travel time distribution, and (2) minimizing the expected value of the reshaped distribution. The features of the CET and the relationship between the CET and traditional measures are explored in both theoretical and numerical dimensions.

Equity-Advancing Practices at Public Transit Agencies in the United States

Consistent with federal anti-discrimination and environmental justice law and guidance, public transportation agencies must evaluate the extent to which their decisions benefit and burden different people and groups and they must also conduct public engagement during decision-making. Assessing benefits and burdens and facilitating engagement are critically important for achieving transportation equity. In practice, quantitative analyses of plan impacts can be used to highlight and mitigate disparate benefits and burdens, but analyses are often conducted after major decisions have already been made and agencies have substantial flexibility in data collection and analysis. Public engagement can also affect equity-related outcomes, but agencies still rely heavily on public meetings and one-way information dissemination approaches that alienate potential participants. Considering the shortcomings associated with quantitative analysis and traditional public engagement as well as the open-ended nature of existing regulatory guidance, there is a need to understand the broad range of approaches that public transit agencies use to pursue equity-related goals. In this review of practice, we summarize six measures that agencies are using to advance transportation equity. Each measure is described using information gleaned from semi-structured interviews and primary source materials. We also identify challenges and shortcomings inherent in each approach using perspectives from the academic literature. The results will be useful for practitioners seeking equitable public transit systems and desiring to go beyond the standard approaches suggested by federal law and guidance.

Reaching “hard to reach” workers: Evaluating approaches to disseminate worker safety information via the Mexican consular network

Mexican immigrants suffer a disproportionately large number of work-related injuries and deaths given their share of the workforce. Barriers of language, culture, and mistrust are often cited as factors that complicate efforts to reach these workers with occupational safety and health (OSH) interventions. By partnering with the Mexican government and its consulate network in the United States, researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were able to assess the impact of four different information dissemination approaches (posters, passively distributed brochures, actively distributed brochures, and video kiosks) in Spanish in a five-phase study. Exit interviews conducted with Mexicans seeking consular services indicated that while nearly all respondents considered OSH to be of importance, significant differences in impact measures, such as noticing the materials and liking of content, were found when comparing the different approaches. Despite these differences, even the least effective approaches were noticed by large numbers of individuals and significantly increased their stated behavioral intentions regarding OSH. Considering all materials together, significantly more participants reported liking the materials (p < 0.001) than did not, learning something new (p < 0.01), trusting the information (p < 0.05), intending to seek out additional OSH information (p < 0.01), and intending to speak to their bosses about OSH (p < 0.05). These findings contribute to building an evidence base for moving research knowledge into practice, which is an essential, but often overlooked, element of occupational safety and health research, particularly among workers from underserved communities.

A V2I BASED APPROACH TO MULTICAST IN VEHICULAR NETWORKS

The present research work proposes a novel approach for efficient information dissemination in Vehicular Networks using V2I based communication. This approach makes use of the V2I communication to establish the connectivity between the cloud server and the vehicle. The approach is focused on finding the utility of existing IoT protocols in the Vehicular Networks. The foundation of this work relies in the (Message Queue Telemetry Transport Protocol) MQTT protocol, IoT and IaaS. The paper presents the background technologies used in the work and propose the approach. The proposed approach has been experimentally tested and found significant results.

A Data Distribution Algorithm Based on Neighbors’ Locations in VANET

Abstract Effective data distribution algorithm plays an important role in the Vehicular Ad Hoc Networks (VANETs). However, the broadcast storm often appears when VANET uses broadcast to communicate which means some nodes receive too many packages to deal with. Moreover, the algorithm often becomes inefficient due to the frequency changes in the different network densities. To address these issues, the beacons are used to judge the network state and then the nodes can select the corresponding data distribution mode under different vehicle densities.Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has better performance in the coverage rate, delivery rate, and packet loss rate than the Flooding and the AID(An adaptive approach for information dissemination).

Barriers, potentialities, and actions for implementation of sustainable energy procedures in Brazilian federal universities

AbstractMany universities around the world have served as active centers for research on climate change. However, there are several barriers to their activities, stemming from the nature of research, resources, and the structure of institutions. This document provides an overview of barriers, potential factors, and activities to develop and implement sustainable energy processes in public higher education institutions (HEIs) in Brazil. The research was conducted from March to April of 2018 with representatives of HEIs (rectors or prorectors of research). A total of 63 invitations to respond to the Survey‐monkey survey were emailed, and responses were received from 32 universities. The research concludes by proposing measures that can be taken to make the issue of climate change more present and effective in university research and teaching activities. This includes changes in research, information dissemination, and teaching approaches to better support actions to address climate change. In Brazil, there are many potentialities in terms of natural resources, but actions for implementation are still incipient. Further efforts and investment in research and development will be required.

Changing knowledge and perceptions of African indigenous vegetables: the role of community-based nutritional outreach

ABSTRACTAfrican indigenous vegetables (AIVs) have potential to sustainably address malnutrition, a growing problem in sub-Saharan Africa. Their consumption is however, limited by poor perceptions and lack of awareness of nutritional benefits. There is limited evidence of the effectiveness of community-focused information dissemination approaches in influencing participants’ perceptions and uptake of innovations in AIVs to address malnutrition. This article aims to fill this knowledge gap, using a case study focusing on pastoral communities in Monduli district in northern Tanzania. Target communities participated in a community-based nutritional outreach facilitated by the Good Seed Initiative (GSI), held at Monduli district hospital in September 2014. The results provide evidence of the achievements of the GSI intervention, and the effectiveness of alternative information dissemination approaches.

TELOS: An Approach for Distributed Graph Processing Based on Overlay Composition

The recent years have been characterised by the production of a huge amount of data. As matter of fact, human being, overall, is generating an unprecedented amount of data flowing in multiple and heterogeneous sources, ranging from scientific devices, social network, business transactions, etc. Data that is usually represented as a graph, which, due to its size, is often infeasible to process on a single machine. The direct consequence is the need for exploiting parallel and distributed computing frameworks to face this problem. This paper proposes TELOS, an high-level approach for large graphs processing. Our approach takes inspiration from overlay networks, that is a widely adopted approach for information dissemination, aggregation and computing orchestration in highly distributed systems. TELOS consists of a programming framework supporting the definition of computations on graphs as a composition of overlays, each devoted to a specific aim. The framework is implemented on the top of Apache Spark. A set of experimental results is presented to give a clear evidence of the effectiveness of our approach.

Simulation &amp; VANET : Towards a New Reliable and Optimal Data Dissemination Model

Ad hoc networks was developed in the 2000s, they was highly used in dynamic environment, particularly for intervehicular communication (VANETs : Vehicular Ad hoc Networks). Since that time, many researches and developments process was dedicated to VANET networks. These were motivated by the current vehicular industry trend that is leading to a new transport system generation based on the use of new communication technologies in order to provide many services to passengers, the fact that improves the driving and travel’s experience. These systems require traffic information sharing and dissemination, such as the alert message emitting, that be exchanged for drivers protection on the road. Sharing such information between vehicles helps to anticipate potentially dangerous situations, as well as planning better routes during congestion situations. The current paper attempts to model and simulate VANET Networks, aiming to analyze and evaluate security information dissemination approaches and mechanisms used in this type of networks in several exchanges conditions. The second objective is to identify their limitations and suggest a new improved approach. This study was conducted as part of our research project entitled “Simulation & VANETs”, where we justify and validate our approach using modeling and simulation techniques and tools used in this domain.

A process of rumour scotching on finite populations.

Rumour spreading is a ubiquitous phenomenon in social and technological networks. Traditional models consider that the rumour is propagated by pairwise interactions between spreaders and ignorants. Only spreaders are active and may become stiflers after contacting spreaders or stiflers. Here we propose a competition-like model in which spreaders try to transmit an information, while stiflers are also active and try to scotch it. We study the influence of transmission/scotching rates and initial conditions on the qualitative behaviour of the process. An analytical treatment based on the theory of convergence of density-dependent Markov chains is developed to analyse how the final proportion of ignorants behaves asymptotically in a finite homogeneously mixing population. We perform Monte Carlo simulations in random graphs and scale-free networks and verify that the results obtained for homogeneously mixing populations can be approximated for random graphs, but are not suitable for scale-free networks. Furthermore, regarding the process on a heterogeneous mixing population, we obtain a set of differential equations that describes the time evolution of the probability that an individual is in each state. Our model can also be applied for studying systems in which informed agents try to stop the rumour propagation, or for describing related susceptible–infected–recovered systems. In addition, our results can be considered to develop optimal information dissemination strategies and approaches to control rumour propagation.

A decentralized approach for information dissemination in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks

Substantial research efforts on Ad hoc networks have been devoted recently to Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) to target Vehicle to Vehicle (V2V) and Vehicle to Roadside unit (V2R) communications in order to increase driver/vehicle safety, transport efficiency and driver comfort. VANETs are special subclass of Mobile Ad hoc NETworks (MANETs) for inter-vehicle communication and have relatively more dynamic nature compared to MANETs due to the rapid network topology changes. The development and implementation of efficient and scalable algorithms for information dissemination in VANETs is a major issue which has taken enormous attention in the last years. In this paper, an efficient distributed information dissemination approach is proposed, inspired by Ant-colony communication principles, such as scalability and adaptability that are useful for developing a decentralized architecture in highly dynamic networks. The main objective is to provide each vehicle with relevant information about its surrounding to allow drivers to be aware of undesirable events and road conditions. A “relevance” value into emergency messages is defined as an analog to pheromone throwing in Ant colony, to take an appropriate action. Simulations are conducted using NS2 network simulator and relevant metrics are evaluated under different node speeds and densities to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

A web based Publish-Subscribe framework for mobile computing

The growing popularity of mobile devices is permanently changing the Internet user’s computing experience. Smartphones and tablets begin to replace the desktop as the primary means of interacting with various information technology and web resources. While mobile devices facilitate in consuming web resources in the form of web services, the growing demand for consuming services on mobile device is introducing a complex ecosystem in the mobile environment. This research addresses the communication challenges involved in mobile distributed networks and proposes an event-driven communication approach for information dissemination. This research investigates different communication techniques such as polling, long-polling and server-side push as client-server interaction mechanisms and the latest web technologies standard WebSocket , as communication protocol within a Publish/Subscribe paradigm. Finally, this paper introduces and evaluates the proposed framework, that is a hybrid approach of WebSocket and event-based publish/subscribe for operating in mobile environments.

Cross-Network Information Dissemination in Vehicular Ad hoc Networks (VANETs): Experimental Results from a Smartphone-Based Testbed

In this work, we present an innovative approach for effective cross-network information dissemination, with applications to vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs). The proposed approach, denoted as "Cross-Network Effective Traffic Alert Dissemination" (X-NETAD), leverages on the spontaneous formation of local WiFi (IEEE 802.11b) VANETs, with direct connections between neighboring vehicles, in order to disseminate, very quickly and inexpensively, traffic alerts received from the cellular network. The proposed communication architecture has been implemented on Android smartphones. The obtained experimental results show that an effective cross-network information dissemination service can entirely rely on smartphone-based communications. This paves the way to future Internet architectures, where vehicles will play a key role as information destinations and sources.

Exploring the use of new technologies in participation practices in legislation

The use of information technology in governance generally, and in legislative processes specifically, has emerged as a significant trend over the last decade. The design and mobilization of such technologies in diverse settings have shown significant progress over time; however, such technologies and related practices continue to reflect limitations and difficulties. This study seeks to address a number of existing limitations in the use of technology in e-legislation. Using an applied research design combined with rapid applications development, the project examines avenues for e-participation in the current investigation-legislative practices of the Blue Ribbon Committee of the Philippine Senate. The project's applications development phase uses Web 2.0 as a platform, and combines it with electronic document and natural language techniques, thus enabling a shift from dominantly information dissemination approaches to multi-directional exchanges supported by new techniques like the automatic categorization of comments. The study explores the potential and the limitations of new technologies, and highlights the need for new institutional policies and capacity building to ensure the success and sustainability of e-participation initiatives. The technologies created can be considered as possible future directions by lawmakers in countries that are seeking to move beyond e-legislation practices that focus primarily on uni-directional information dissemination, into more participatory approaches.

GoDisco++: A gossip algorithm for information dissemination in multi-dimensional community networks

In this paper we propose GoDisco++, a gossip based approach for information dissemination in online social community networks. GoDiscoo++ uses local information available to nodes—that is information associated with a node and its neighbors. The algorithm exploits multiple relations which may exist between nodes, and applies social principles and behavior inspired decentralized mechanisms for targeted dissemination. The dissemination process works with the dual aims of (i) maximizing the spread among relevant nodes (high recall) and (ii) minimizing spamming among non-relevant nodes (high precision). Such a designed dissemination scheme can have interesting applications like probabilistic publish/subscribe, decentralized recommendation and contextual advertisement systems, to name a few. We validate the proposed approach with simulation experiments performed using real and synthetic datasets.