Universal design of ICT for emergency management: A systematic literature review and research agenda

The primary objectives of this article are to give a systematic overview of the current state of the emerging research field of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Emergency Management, and to highlight high-impact research opportunities to ensure that the increasing introduction of ICT in Emergency Management can contribute to removing barriers instead of adding more barriers, in particular for the elderly and people with disabilities. A systematic review on various literature with respect to Universal Design, ICT and Emergency Management between 2008 to 2018 was employed in this study, and reviewed systematically using a predefined framework. The ultimat…

Sudoku – A Language Description Case Study

A complete language description includes the structure as well as constraints, textual representation, graphical representation, and behaviour (transformation and execution). As a case study in language description, we consider Sudoku as a language, where a Sudoku puzzle is an instance of the language. Thus we are able to apply meta-model-based technologies for the creation of a language description for Sudoku, including correctness checking of a puzzle, and solving strategies. We identify what has to be expressed and how this can be done with the technology available today.

Noen aspekter ved implementasjon og ytelse for kryptosystemer basert på elliptiske kurver

Masteroppgave i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi 2003 - Høgskolen i Agder, Grimstad I den senere tid har kryptografi basert på elliptiske kurver blitt tatt i bruk i økende grad. De fleste av dagens implementasjoner baserer seg på kurver på Weierstrassform, y2z + a1xyz + a3yz2 = x3 + a2x2z + a4xz2 + a6z3. Hesseform av elliptiske kurver, x3 +y3 +z3 = Dxyz, har en del egenskaper som gjør den velegnet til bruk i kryptografi. Basert på antall grunnoperasjoner som utføres i algoritmene, bør Hesseform være bedre enn Weierstrassform ytelsesmessig. I dette arbeidet utfører vi en del hastighetstester av punktoperasjoner på kurver på kort Weierstrass- og Hesseform. Vi har implementert algoritm…

Secure Information Sharing in an Industrial Internet of Things

This paper investigates how secure information sharing with external vendors can be achieved in an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). It also identifies necessary security requirements for secure information sharing based on identified security challenges stated by the industry. The paper then proposes a roadmap for improving security in IIoT which investigates both short-term and long-term solutions for protecting IIoT devices. The short-term solution is mainly based on integrating existing good practices. The paper also outlines a long term solution for protecting IIoT devices with fine-grained access control for sharing data between external entities that would support cloud-based dat…

LanguageLab - A Meta-modelling Environment

In the LanguageLab language workbench, we build on a component-based approach to language specification that facilitates the specification of all aspects of a computer language in a consistent manner, taking into account best practices in meta-modelling and language design. The workbench allows operation on a suitable abstraction level, and also focuses on user-friendliness and a low threshold to getting started, in order to make it useful for teaching of meta-modelling and language design and specification. The platform is open for third party language modules and facilitates rapid prototyping of DSLs, re-use of language modules, and experiments with multiple concrete syntaxes. The platfor…

Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management

The primary objectives of this article are to give a systematic overview of the current state of the emerging research field of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Emergency Management, and to highlight high-impact research opportunities to ensure that the increasing introduction of ICT in Emergency Management can contribute to removing barriers instead of adding more barriers, in particular for the elderly and people with disabilities. A systematic review on various literature with respect to Universal Design, ICT and Emergency Management between 2008 to 2018 was employed in this study, and reviewed systematically using a predefined framework. The ultimat…

Universal Design of ICT for Emergency Management from Stakeholders’ Perspective

While Universal Design principles have been adopted in many areas to ensure that products and services are usable for the broadest possible diversity of users, there is still an open area when it comes to the emergency management domain. This article aims at providing a systematic overview of the current state of the emerging research field of Universal Design of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) for Emergency Management, and to highlight high-impact research opportunities to ensure that the increasing introduction of ICT in Emergency Management can contribute to removing barriers instead of adding more barriers, in particular for the elderly and people with disabilities. A sys…

ViSPE: A Graphical Policy Editor for XACML

In this paper we present the Visual Security Policy Editor (ViSPE), a policy-maker-friendly graphical editor for the eXtensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML). The editor is based on the programming language Scratch and implemented in Smalltalk. It uses a graphical block-based syntax for declaring access control polices that simplifies many of the cumbersome and verbose parts of XACML. Using a graphical language allows the editor to aid the policy-maker in building polices by providing visual feedback and by grouping blocks and operators that fit together and also indicating which blocks that stick together. It simplifies building policies while still maintaining the basic structure…

Privacy handling for critical information infrastructures

This paper proposes an architecture and a methodology for privacy handling in Critical Information Infrastructures. Privacy is in this respect considered as both the risk of revealing person-sensitive information, for example from critical infrastructures in health institutions, but also to identify and avoid leakage of confidential information from the critical information infrastructures themselves. The architecture integrates privacy enhancing technologies into an enterprise service bus, which allows for policy-controlled authorisation, anonymisation and encryption of information in XML elements or attributes in messages on the service bus. The proposed methodology can be used to identif…

Community Segmentation and Inclusive Social Media Listening

Social media analytics provide a generalized picture of situational awareness from the conversations happening among communities present in social media channels that are that are, or risk being affected by crises. The generalized nature of results from these analytics leaves underrepresented communities in the background. When considering social media analytics, concerns, sentiment, and needs are perceived as homogenous. However, offline, the community is diverse, often segmented by age group, occupation, or language, to name a few. Through our analysis of interviews from professionals using social media as a source of information in public service organizations, we argue that practitioner…

Models, systems, and descriptions - A cross-disciplinary reflection on models

There are many different notions of models in different areas of science that are often not aligned, making it difficult to discuss them across disciplines. In this study, we look at the differences between physical models and mental models as well as the difference between static and dynamic models. Semiotics provides a philosophical underpinning by explaining meaning-making. This allows for identifying a common ground between models in different areas. We use examples from natural sciences and linguistics to illustrate different approaches and concepts and to find commonalities. This study distinguishes between systems, models, and descriptions of models. This distinction allows us to und…

Streamlining Assessment using a Knowledge Metric

Universal Design of Information Sharing Tools for Disaster Risk Reduction

International audience; Disaster information sharing tools are an important aspect of disaster resilience, and it is of utmost importance that these tools are accessible and usable for as many potential users as possible. In this paper, we evaluate the accessibility of a selection of tools for crowdsourcing disaster situation information. As our evaluation shows that the selected tools are not fully accessible, we provide recommendations for mitigation, as well as highlight the importance of further research in this area.

Digital Supply Chain Vulnerabilities in Critical Infrastructure: A Systematic Literature Review on Cybersecurity in the Energy Sector

The main purpose of this paper is to identify the current state of the art on digital supply chain cybersecurity risks in critical infrastructure and how the term resilience is used in this context. To achieve this objective, the authors applied a systematic literature review method that summarises and analyses the studies relevant for the research topic. In total 33 papers were identified. The results show that limited research is done on supply chain risks in critical infrastructure. Relevant frameworks and methods for resilience of supply chains have also been identified. These frameworks and methods could be very beneficial for a more holistic management of cybersecurity risks in the in…

Slaying the SA-Demons – Humans vs. Technology – A Content analysis

This paper examines Situation Awareness (SA) and the application of Endsley’s SA-Demons in different contexts and research areas. We perform content analysis to examine how they are used, and to what degree they are perceived as stemming from human-error or weaknesses in technology and if any suggestions for mitigation are primarily focused on the human or the technology side. Based on our findings, we propose Universal Design as a tool that can counter the effects of the SA-Demons by improving the usability and accessibility of SA-supporting technology and thereby removing barriers to SA, rather than challenging the users to overcome not only barriers that are a result of the complexity of…

Disaster Risk Reduction for All? Understanding Intersectionality in Disaster Situations

When designing digital services for citizens in a disaster situation, the diversity of its audience and their particular needs are not always sufficiently taken into account. Variables like digital equipment available, environment, disabilities, socio-economic status, etc., play a significant role in people’s ability to access and exchange important information through digital means. In this paper, we will examine some factors that lead to this inequality, and we see that they tend to boil down to a lack of awareness or focus on the diversity of the population, and this affects not only people with disabilities, but also other disadvantaged groups. More broadly, we will examine this in term…

A User-Centered Approach to Digital Household Risk Management

Internet of Things (IoT) is expected to become as common as electricity (OECD 2016) and there is a high probability for connected homes to become central parts of critical societal. IoT technologies might access, manage and record sensitive data about citizens and, as they become more and more pervasive, unintended data breaches reports increase every week. However, most of the tools designed to protect users’ privacy and personal data on IoT devices fail to contemplate the experience of persons with disabilities, elderly and other vulnerable categories of people. As a consequence, they are forced to rely on the help of family members or other related persons with technical skills, as frequ…

Consistent Projectional Text Editors

Digital Volunteers in Disaster Response: Accessibility Challenges

The emergence of the Digital Humanitarian Volunteer (DHV) movements when disaster strikes have drawn the attention of researchers and practitioners in the emergency management and humanitarian domain. While there are established players in this rapidly developing field, there are still unresolved challenges, including accessibility of their digital tools and platforms. The purposes of this paper are twofold. First, it describes the background, impact and future potential of the DHV movement, and discusses the importance of universal design for the digital tools and platforms used for crowdsourcing of crisis information. Second, this paper shows how lack of concern for universal design and a…

Perceivability of Map Information for Disaster Situations for People with Low Vision

Digital maps have become increasingly popular in disaster situation to provide overview of information. However, these maps have also created barriers for many people, particularly people with visual impairments. Existing research on accessible maps such as tactile and acoustic maps focuses on providing solutions for blind persons to be able to perceive the information digital maps present. For people with low vision, who often rely on magnifier, good contrast and good navigation support, current digital map solutions present many challenges. In this paper we have studied two types of digital maps and their related surrounding text in the home page of disaster applications. The study focuse…

Teaching Model Driven Language Handling

Many universities teach computer language handling by mainly focussing on compiler theory, although MDD (model-driven development) and meta-modelling are increasingly important in the software industry as well as in computer science. In this article, we share some experiences from teaching a course in computer language handling where the focus is on MDD principles. We discuss the choice of tools and technologies used in demonstrations and exercises, and also give a brief glimpse of a prototype for a simple meta-model-based language handling tool that is currently being designed and considered for future use in teaching.

A Scratch-based Graphical Policy Editor for XACML

This paper proposes a policy-maker-friendly editor for the extensible Access Control Markup Language (XACML) based on the programming language Scratch. Scratch is a blocks-based programming language designed for teaching children programming, which allows users to build programs like a puzzle. We take this concept one step further with an XACML policy editor based on the graphic programming elements of Scratch implemented in Smalltalk. This allows for aiding the user on how to build policies by grouping blocks and operators that fit together and also indicating which blocks that will stick together. It simplifies building the XACML policies while still having an XACML “feel” of the graphic …

Understanding Situational Disabilities and Situational Awareness in Disasters

In this paper, a scenario-based approach augmented with personas typically used in universal design and interactive design domains is used to illustrate the occurrence of situational disabilities in emergency situations, and to show how environmental factors can trigger these situational disabilities. With the help of personas representing selected archetypical characteristics and roles, the scenarios are further examined to show how these situational disabilities can affect the situational awareness of different stakeholders, not only in the command and control centers, but also first responders in the field as well as affected members of the public. This approach provides a better underst…

Towards Efficient Teacher Assisted Assignment Marking Using Ranking Metrics

This paper describes a tool with supporting methodology for efficient teacher assisted marking of open assignments based on student answer ranking metrics. It includes a methodology for how to design tasks for markability. This improves marking efficienty and reduces cognitive strain for the teacher during marking, and also allows for easily giving feedback to students on common pitfalls and misconceptions to improve both the learning outcome for the students as well as the teacher’s productivity by reducing the time needed for marking open assignments. An advantage with the method is that it is language agnostic as well as generally being agnostic to the discipline of the course being asse…

Teaching computer language handling - From compiler theory to meta-modelling

Published version of a chapter in the book: Generative and Transformational Techniques in Software Engineering III. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-18023-1_14 Most universities teach computer language handling by mainly focussing on compiler theory, although MDA (model-driven architecture) and meta-modelling are increasingly important in the software industry as well as in computer science. In this article, we investigate how traditional compiler theory compares to meta-modelling with regard to formally defining the different aspects of a language, and how we can expand the focus in computer language handling courses to also include meta-model-based…

Evaluating Accessibility and Usability of an Experimental Situational Awareness Room

New advanced emergency management facilities such as a control room which is equipped with advanced ICT technologies should consider universal design principles and ensure the accessibility and usability of some important technical functions available in the room. This paper aims at evaluating the accessibility and usability of an experimental control room. This room has a flexible architecture, i.e., the information displays are interchangeable through drag-drop system on a control-panel. We used a complementary heuristic and user testing approach. A video analysis, open questionnaire and discussion with testers were applied to detect technology usage barriers. The results show that the pr…

Formal verification of a Cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest MAC protocol

Author's version of an article published in the journal: Computer Standards & Interfaces. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.csi.2011.12.001 Cooperative communications, in which a relay node helps the source node to deliver its packets to the destination node, are able to obtain significant benefits in terms of transmission reliability, coverage extension and energy efficiency. A Cooperative Automatic Repeat reQuest (C-ARQ) MAC protocol has been recently proposed to exploit cooperative diversity at the MAC layer. in this paper, we validate the integrity and the validity of the C-ARQ protocol using formal methods. The protocol logic is modeled in SDL and implem…

Specification of modelling languages in a flexible meta-model architecture

Originally, meta-models were used to specify the structure (abstract syntax) of modelling languages. This is reflected both in meta-languages like MOF and Ecore, and the four-layer meta-model architecture. Presently, meta-modelling is used for specification of complete languages. In this situation, it turns out that the traditional meta-languages are not always expressive enough to capture all language aspects. This usually implies the use of more than one metalanguage in the meta-model architecture to cover the different language aspects. There are many approaches to address this challenge. In this paper, we analyze these approaches, and based on this analysis, we re-think the meta-model a…

On abstraction in the OMG hierarchy: systems, models, and descriptions

The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) uses a metadata hierarchy with several layers that are placed on top of each other. The traditional view is that the layers provide abstractions related to models in languages defined by meta-models. Over the years, it has been difficult to define a consistent understanding of the layers. In this paper, we propose such a consistent understanding by clarifying the relations between the different elements in the hierarchy. This is done based on the Scandinavian approach to modelling that distinguishes between systems and system descriptions. Systems can be physical, digital, or even mental, while descriptions can be programs, language descriptions, specific…

Project report : Evaluering av INSITU skogbrannøvelse

Rapporten presenterer resultater fra evaluering av en digital tabletop-øvelse arrangert av INSITU-prosjektet i april 2021, der scenarioet omfattet 3 samtidige skogbranner i Agder. Hensikt med øvelsen var å gi erfaring med hvordan situasjonsbilde kan deles fra innsatsleder til sentrale myndigheter med bruk av felles digital kartstøtte. Øvelsen involverte ca. 70 deltagere fra 20 etater og organisasjoner, i tillegg til prosjektgruppen fra INSITU.

Cyber-Security in Digital Metering Value Chain for Mountain Landslide Warning

The Norwegian Water Resources and Energy Directorate (NVE) are initiating a digitalization process that involves the use of a digital metering value chain and cloud computing. The main objective of this study is to investigate how NVE can ensure cyber-security in digital meters and the cloubased metering value chain for mountain landslide warning. The study is based on a qualitative approach including methods like document analysis and semi structured interviews used as input to a risk analysis based on the ISO 31000 standard. The risk analysis covered three different scenarios from NVE. Those three scenarios were internal, external Norwegian, and transnational value chains for metering lan…

MOF-VM: Instantiation Revisited

The Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) is based on an understanding of a hierarchy of levels that are placed on top of each other and that are connected with instantiation. For practical MDA use, it is important to be clear about the kinds of objects that reside on the different levels and the relations between them as well as relations to objects outside of the MDA domain. This article aims at enhancing the understanding of these objects and relations by relating them to a virtual MOF machine.

Universally Designed Beacon-Assisted Indoor Navigation for Emergency Evacuations

International audience; The United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) obligates national governments to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in emergency situations. This article examines the application and accessibility of state-of-the-art ICT solutions in emergency situations. Research has indeed shown that the design and implementation of evacuation procedures in emergency situations play a critical role in ensuring personal safety and protection. While research has examined the experiences of persons including persons with disabilities in emergency situations, research has yet to examine fully the role that cutting-edge in…

Languagelab 1.1 user manual

Manual for the LanguageLab platform