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World Smart Cities Outlook 2024
No full textThe World Smart Cities Outlook 2024 provides a comprehensive analysis of the current state of people-centred smart city development globally. Serving as a foundational reference for drafting the International Guidelines on People-Centred Smart Cities, the report offers qualitative and quantitative insights into smart city trends, challenges and opportunities, including fresh data on regional variations, the digital divide, skills gaps and much more. It evaluates the impact of smart city technologies and strategies on sustainability, resilience, equity, social inclusion, accessibility and quality of life.The report highlights best practices, successful case studies, and key drivers for future developments while offering recommendations and guidelines to policymakers, local and national governments, intergovernmental organizations and other stakeholders. It emphasizes the need to create a collaborative ecosystem to foster innovation and sustainable urbanization, which includes capacity building, knowledge sharing, adequate strategies, policies frameworks, leadership support, resource allocation, oversight and monitoring mechanisms to ensure sustainability, inclusivity and compliance with human rights considerations in the digital space.Through its blend of primary and secondary data, interviews and case studies, the Outlook is structured into thematic chapters, addressing topics such as public digital infrastructure, collaborative ecosystems, digital services, and policy frameworks, culminating in strategic recommendationsAs a first of its kind within UN-Habitat, the report is a vital tool for member states, UN agencies, and development partners, guiding smart city policies and projects to achieve sustainable urban transformation. This report establishes a precedent for periodic updates, ensuring continued relevance and the evolution of evidence-based knowledge to inform sustainable and inclusive urban digital transformation efforts globally. The report is published on a biennial basis
A New Zero Waste Design for a Manufacturing Approach for Direct-Drive Wind Turbine Electrical Generator Structural Components
Get PDFAn integrated structural optimization strategy was produced in this study for direct-drive electrical generator structures of offshore wind turbines, implementing a design for an additive manufacturing approach, and using generative design techniques. Direct-drive configurations are widely implemented on offshore wind energy systems due to their high efficiency, reliability, and structural simplicity. However, the greatest challenge associated with these types of machines is the structural optimization of the electrical generator due to the demanding operating conditions. An integrated structural optimization strategy was developed to assess a 100-kW permanent magnet direct-drive generator structure. Generated topologies were evaluated by performing finite element analyses and a metal additive manufacturing process simulation. This novel approach assembles a vast amount of structural information to produce a fit-for-purpose, adaptative, optimization strategy, combining data from static structural analyses, modal analyses, and manufacturing analyses to automatically generate an efficient model through a generative iterative process. The results obtained in this study demonstrate the importance of developing an integrated structural optimization strategy at an early phase of a large-scale project. By considering the typical working condition loads and the machine’s dynamic behavior through the structure’s natural frequencies during the optimization process coupled with a design for an additive manufacturing approach, the operational range of the wind turbine was maximized, the overall costs were reduced, and production times were significantly diminished. Integrating the constraints associated with the additive manufacturing process into the design stage produced high-efficiency results with over 23% in weight reduction when compared with conventional structural optimization techniques
Practices and educational affordances of sound in the postcolonial Hong Kong protests
Get PDFSound has been theorised for its functional role as informative agent in political advocacy and participation in political studies, yet the investigation on the pedagogical potential has been largely absent. This paper examines the pedagogical impact and educational affordances of sound through a case study of the political struggles in post-colonial Hong Kong. Among the series of large-scale disputes, the use of sound is multifaceted and has invited knowledge through different means including social media sonification, practices of sound as protesting tactics, and the alternative position, representation, facilitate understanding and learning of sound within the postcolonial framework. These sonic practices revealed the educational affordances of sound that goes beyond the conventional function to transfer knowledge and information, serving as a catalyst to sustain political resistance and make available the opportunity to learn through participatory studies and reflective practices. Within the postcolonial Hong Kong context, sound extends the political confrontation to the non-physical and affective space, where the listeners could afford to recognise and engage in the actualisation of sound. It also unfolded social discourses that characterised the postcoloniality of Hong Kong and revealed the evolving power relation among citizens and authorities
Salient Complexities of Engaging External Consultants in Information Systems Projects
Get PDFProject sponsors have sought to develop the necessary competence to address various challenges they face during project development, implementation and exploitation by employing different initiatives including the engagement and use of external consultants. However, doing so is associated with a number of consequences, including a significant risk of exacerbating project complexities. With this in mind, we set out in this study to examine the salient differences in the key project complexities between projects engaging consultants and those not engaging consultants. Data is obtained from 146 project management practitioners engaged in projects in Canada and the United States. Data analysis is undertaken using 3-way Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). Findings as relates to the key complexities associated with information systems projects, points to the manifestation of six broad dimensions of complexity namely (i) ‘Variety’ (ii) ‘Control’ (iii) ‘Criticality’ (iv) ‘Scope and repetition’ (v) ‘Information’ and (vi) ‘Dependence’. As relates to how consultant engagement changes the salience of these key project complexities, we find that consultant engagement leads to more varied and stronger structural complexity and higher salience of interpersonal and organisational complexity
ML-FAS: Multi-Level Face Anonymization Scheme and Its Application to E-Commerce Systems
No full textWith the proliferation of electronic commerce, the facial data used for identity authentication and mobile payment are potentially subject to data analytics and mining attacks by third-party platforms, which has raised public privacy concerns. To tackle the issue, a novel Multi-Level Face Anonymization Scheme (ML-FAS) based on deep learning technology is proposed in this paper. First, a 4-D chaotic system is employed to construct different levels of keys with initial parameters securely distributed and managed using the Semiconductor SuperLattice Physical Unclonable Function (SSL-PUF). Secondly, under the guidance of the known prior distribution and adversarial training strategy, a noise-like cipher image is generated by the encryption network to withstand the known-plaintext attacks. Besides, different levels of recipients can leverage the identical decryption network to reconstruct the facial images with varying visual content. Compared with the existing manually designed anonymization schemes, the ML-FAS possesses several significant merits. Finally, extensive simulation experiments verified the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, including its security and robustness. The code is available at https://github.com/DonghuaJiang/ML-FAS
News media’s framing of telehealth before and during the COVID-19 pandemic
No full textThis research contributes to the literature on journalistic news framing by analyzing the portrayal of telehealth as a particularly relevant topic during the COVID-19 pandemic. Frames before and after the onset of the pandemic were examined across four news regions: Canada, Australia, the U.K., and the U.S.A. A mixed-methods news framing analysis combined computational linguistic analysis with manual coding methods and determined five general frames through which telehealth is discussed in the news. Results show differences in non-pandemic and pandemic news frames, and in national frame
Podcasting the archive: An evaluation of audience engagement with a narrative non-fiction podcast series
Get PDFThe purpose of the empirical work discussed in this paper was to explore the theme of audience engagement with digitised archive data in different formats. A comparison is drawn between experiences of interacting with an archive presented as a narrative non-fiction audio performance and the same core material displayed as online text and images. The findings derive from an analysis of data collected in interviews with participants familiar with both versions of the archive: (1) as a podcast series entitled Diary of the war, and (2) photographs in the LornaL journal on the Blipfoto platform. The interviewees exhibited greater levels of engagement with the podcast series as a form of entertainment that prompts learning and generates emotional responses. They also found the podcast series a more flexible platform for engagement. They believed that the Blipfoto journal offers greater affordances in respect of access to contextual information, and authenticity. Key to these findings is the addition of contextual resources to the core archive in each presentation. This contribution provides insights on the role of curation in promoting audience engagement with digital presentations of collections, and the extent to which archive material in digitised formats should be left to 'speak for itself'
Defining non-inferiority margins in randomised controlled surgical trials: a protocol for a systematic review
Get PDFBackground: The reporting of randomised controlled non-inferiority (NI) drug trials is poor with less than 50% of published trials reporting a justification of the NI margin. This is despite the introduction of the Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) extension on reporting of NI and equivalence in randomised trials. It is critical to set the appropriate NI margin as this choice dictates the conclusions of the trial. Methods to estimate the margin are heterogeneous but generally based on clinical judgement and statistical reasoning, and hence tailored to each clinical situation. Yet an appraisal of NI in clinical trials has not been undertaken. Therefore the aim of this systematic review is to assess the reporting and methodological quality of defining the NI margin. Surgical NI trials have been chosen as our prototype to assess this. Methods: We will conduct a systematic review of published randomised controlled trials in abdominal surgery that use an NI design. Key eligibility criteria will be: surgical intervention in at least one trial arm; adult patients and a sample size of 100 or more. Ovid MEDLINE, EMBASE and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials will be searched from inception until the date of the search. Identified studies will be assessed for reporting according to the CONSORT recommendations. The outcomes are the description of the methods for defining the NI margin, and the robustness of the NI margin estimation. The latter will be based on simulations using alternative assumptions for model parameters. The results of the simulation will be compared with the trial authors’ conclusions. Anticipated results: The review will describe and appraise the design and reporting of surgical NI trials including shortcomings thereof and allow a comparison with pharmaceutical trials. These findings will inform researchers on the appropriate design and pitfalls when conducting surgical randomised controlled trials with an NI design and promote thorough and standardised reporting of study findings. Ethics and dissemination: Ethical approval is not required and any changes to the protocol will be communicated via the registration platform. The final manuscript will be submitted to a journal for publication and the findings will be disseminated through conference presentations to inform researchers and the public
Securing IoT: Mitigating Sybil Flood Attacks with Bloom Filters and Hash Chains
Get PDFIn the evolving landscape of the Internet of Things (IoT), ensuring the security and integrity of data transmission remains a paramount challenge. Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (RPL) is commonly utilized in IoT networks to facilitate efficient data routing. However, RPL networks are susceptible to various security threats, with Sybil and flood attacks being particularly detrimental. Sybil attacks involve malicious nodes generating multiple fake identities to disrupt network operations, while flood attacks overwhelm network resources by inundating them with excessive traffic. This paper proposes a novel mitigation strategy leveraging Bloom filters and hash chains to enhance the security of RPL-based IoT networks against sybil and flood attacks. Extensive simulation and performance analysis demonstrate that this solution significantly reduces the impact of sybil and flood attacks while maintaining a low power consumption profile and low computational overhead
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