In Sweden close to 500 people are killed and several thousands severely injured in traffic each year. This is one of the largest health problems for society in both Sweden and the whole world. In the cars of tomorrow will the main instrument panel and the centre console be screen-based instead of the current solution with “iron instruments” and other physical devices. This future driver environment opens for a flexible and situation-dependent usage of presentation resources. The purpose of this thesis is to explore these possibilities from a warning system perspective. The project had its main focus on designing warning system concepts using the HUD and vibrotactile information in a coordinated way based on established HMI principles. Another goal for this thesis work was to generate a functional concept for demonstration and evaluation in the virtual reality lab at the University of Linköping. The method of realization was divided into three phases – information gathering, concept generation and implementation. These phases are commonly used in design projects. This way of work supplies structure to the project and makes it possible to achieve an iterative design process. The information gathering involved a thorough theoretical study of HMI, interface design and warning design. A state of the art investigation was then conducted to find out how the warning systems, relevant to this thesis, are presented today. The concept generation was divided into two parts – warning system design and visual design. The Warning system design concepts were based on different combinations from a morphologic matrix and relevant theory. Consideration was also taken to when the systems are likely to be activated and which modality, or modalities, that then was suitable to use. The visual design concepts were developed by using creative product development methods and the iterative Simulator-Based Design (SBD) theory. After concluding the concept generation was the visual design results given functionality by programming software. The visual warning system were then integrated in the simulator software and fully implemented in the simulator cockpit at the university. The implemented warning systems were then evaluated by a pilot study conducted in the simulator. Test persons were invited to the VR-lab and given an introduction to the warning systems. They were then asked to drive a predetermined route with a number of different warning system conditions. These test results were later statistically analyzed and evaluated.

Thesis (DTech (Electrical Engineering))--Cape Peninsula University of Technology, 2016. / The widespread application of nuclear science and technology has been the subject of much concern as well as nuclear safety issues. And to ensure the safety of public life, property and environment, it is indispensable to improve the emergency system for nuclear accidents and the environmental monitoring system for nuclear radiation, so that the occurrence of nuclear accidents, terrorist incidents and the resulting hazards can be prevented or minimized. Due to the benefits of radiation which were earlier and now recognized in the use of X-rays for medical diagnosis and then later with the discoveries of radiation and radioactivity, there was rush in exploiting the medical benefits which eventually led fairly to the recognition of the risks and induced harm associated with it. Thus, only the most obvious harms resulting from high doses of radiation, such as radiation burns, were initially observed and protection efforts were focused on their prevention, mainly for practitioners rather than patients. Subsequently, it was gradually recognized that there were other, less obvious, harmful radiation effects such as radiation-induced cancer, for which there is certain risk even at low doses of radiation.

Institutions have implemented many campus interventions to address student persistence/retention, one of which is Early Warning Systems (EWS). However, few research studies show evidence of interventions that incorporate noncognitive factors/skills, and psychotherapy/psycho-educational processes in the EWS. A qualitative study (phenomenological interview and document analysis) of EWS at both a public and private 4-year Florida university was conducted to explore EWS through the eyes of the administrators of the ways administrators make sense of students’ experiences and the services they provide and do not provide to assist students. Administrators’ understanding of noncognitive factors and the executive skills subset and their contribution to retention and the executive skills development of at-risk students were also explored. Hossler and Bean’s multiple retention lenses theory/paradigms and Perez’s retention strategies were used to guide the study. Six administrators from each institution who oversee and/or assist with EWS for first time in college undergraduate students considered academically at-risk for attrition were interviewed. Among numerous findings, at Institution X: EWS was infrequently identified as a service, EWS training was not conducted, numerous cognitive and noncognitive issues/deficits were identified for students, and services/critical departments such as EWS did not work together to share students’ information to benefit students. Assessment measures were used to identify students’ issues/deficits; however, they were not used to assess, track, and monitor students’ issues/deficits. Additionally, the institution’s EWS did address students’ executive skills function beyond time management and organizational skills, but did not address students’ psychotherapy/psycho-educational processes. Among numerous findings, at Institution Y: EWS was frequently identified as a service, EWS training was not conducted, numerous cognitive and noncognitive issues/deficits were identified for students, and services/critical departments such as EWS worked together to share students’ information to benefit students. Assessment measures were used to identify, track, and monitor students’ issues/deficits; however, they were not used to assess students’ issues/deficits. Additionally, the institution’s EWS addressed students’ executive skills function beyond time management and organizational skills, and psychotherapy/psycho-educational processes. Based on the findings, Perez’s retention strategies were not utilized in EWS at Institution X, yet were collectively utilized in EWS at Institution Y, to achieve Hossler and Bean’s retention paradigms. Future research could be designed to test the link between engaging in the specific promising activities identified in this research (one-to-one coaching, participation in student success workshops, academic contracts, and tutoring) and student success (e.g., higher GPA, retention). Further, because this research uncovered some concern with how to best handle students with physical and psychological disabilities, future research could link these same promising strategies for improving student performance for example among ADHD students or those with clinical depression.

Hurricanes and tropical storms occur very frequently in the Central American and Caribbean Region (CA&CR). These extreme weather events produce a lot of rain and consequently a lot of flooding. Damages and loses have been estimated to amount to 13.4 billion dollars in the last ten years. Flood Warning Systems (FEWS) are a key preventive strategy to reduce risk. Technological progress is improving the resources made available for FEWS to be more viable. In spite of the international support for FEWS and the fast development of ICT, there are very few countries in the CA&CR that have succeeded in developing fully operational warning systems that are functioning in a sustainable manner for a long period of time. There is disconnection between the community-based systems and the centralized systems, as well as between the National Meteorological Services (NMS) and the National Hydrological Services (NHS) which tend to work many times in isolation. The general purpose of this work is to unravel the dysfunction/chaos of the way early warning systems are done and provide guidelines to integrate flood warning system at all scales to be used in operational forecasting, particularly for countries in the CA&CR. Flood warning can be seen as a set of sub-systems in which forecasting is only one of those sub-systems. A conceptual framework has been proposed to classify flood warning systems using the spatial and temporal scale at which the flood warning systems operate, subdividing them into Global, Regional, National and Local FEWS. In practice, these systems are not operated in an integrated manner. Emerging technology is available to allow the integration of global- and local-scale forecasting resources in the CA&CR. The Tethys Platform has a series of online tools applicable to flood forecasting. A workflow is given for the use of four apps in Tethys for flood forecasting: (i) Stream flow Prediction Tool; (ii) Reservoir operation tool; (iii) Hydro Viewer Hispaniola; Flood Map Visualization tool.

In some environments, there is a serious mismatch between the perceived (psychoacoustic) urgency of a warning and its situational urgency. In addition, many auditory warnings are not detectable within their environments. This research examined several prominent pulse parameters which affect the perceived urgency and detection time of auditory warning signals. These elements included pulse format (multitone sequential, multitone simultaneous, and rising sawtooth frequency-modulated pulse formats), pulse level (65 dBC and 79 dBC), and time between pulses (0 ms, 150 ms, and 300 ms). The environments of interest were those settings with steady-state broadband machinery noise. Conditions included a loading task which presented additional attentional demands upon the subject during the signal detection task. Free-modulus magnitude estimation quantified the relationship between auditory signal parameters and changes in perceived urgency. The method of paired comparisons was used to compare the perceived urgency of the auditory stimuli. Simple reaction time measured signal detectability. Signal effects were analyzed using a multivariate approach. Results indicated that there was a small but statistically significant relationship between perceived urgency and detection time. As perceived urgency increased, detection time decreased. Both perceived urgency and detection time were influenced by pulse level and format. The higher pulse level resulted in a greater perceived urgency of the signal and shorter detection time. Sequential signals were rated as less urgent than the other pulse formats, and subjects took longer to detect their occurrence. Under most conditions, there was no significant difference in the perceived urgency or detection time of simultaneous and frequency-modulated pulses. Time between pulses (inter-pulse interval) affected only perceived urgency, not detection time. The shorter the time between pulses, the greater the perceived urgency of the signal. / Ph. D.

Mozambique is one of the countries most affected by natural hazards in the world. Therefore it can benefit greatly from enhancements on its early warning system. Cell broadcast, which is a technology able to send simultaneous alert messages to all mobile phones in a geographical area has gained attention of emergency authorities since various catastrophes in the years 2000’s and increasing diffusion of the mobile network. This research has looked into the disaster risk management routines in Mozambique, interviewing relevant institutions, to identify the currently in use early warning system and analyze the circuit of information from detecting a hazard until the transmission of alert messages to the population. The goal of this research has been to identify how alert messages are sent to the population and, based on currently available infrastructure, analyze the possibilities to use Cell Broadcast to target alerts to all subscribers on specific geographic zones. It has been identified that the country already uses a solution that sends SMS to a list of phone numbers registered in a database. Nonetheless, telecommunication operators in the country are willing to cooperate with emergency authorities to design a solution in which Cell Broadcast can be used to strategically target alerts to subscribers at designated areas of risk. In this way, enabling enhanced accuracy and efficiency of the public alert system in Mozambique, with reduced time between detection and the simultaneously delivery of public alert messages to the entire population or only to people located on relevant geographic zones. Furthermore, the results also allowed to speculate on the viability of automated solutions, which can be used in combination to the enhancements that Cell Broadcast can bring to disaster risk management routines.

Ground motions caused by earthquakes may be strong enough to cause destruction of infrastructure and possibly casualties. If such past destructive earthquakes are analysed, the gained information could be used to develop earthquake warning systems that predicts and possibly reduce the damage potential of further earthquakes. The Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN) runs an automated early warning system that attempts to predict the damage of an earthquake that just got recorded, and forward the predictions to relevant government agencies. The predictions are based on, e.g. earthquake magnitude, source depth and an estimate of the size of affected human population. The purpose of this thesis is to introduce an additional parameter: earthquake intensity, which is a measure of the intensity with which the ground shakes. Based on this, a new earthquake hazard scheme, the Intensity Based Earthquake Classification (IBEC) scheme, is created. This scheme suggests alternate methods, relative to SNSN, of how earthquake classifications can be made. These methods will use an intensity database established by modelling scenario earthquakes in the open-source software ShakeMap by the U.S. Geological Survey. The database consists of scenarios on the intervals: 4.0 ≤ Mw ≤ 9.0 and 10 ≤ depth ≤ 150 kilometre, and covers the whole intensity scale, Modified Mercalli Intensity, 1.0 ≤ Imm ≤ 10.0. The IBEC classification scheme also enabled the creation of the 'Population-to-Area' criterion. It improves prediction of earthquakes that struck isolated cities, located in e.g. valleys in large mountainous areas and deserts. Even though such earthquakes are relatively uncommon, once they occur, they may cause great damage as many cities in such regions around the world often are less developed regarding resistance to ground motions. / Markrörelser orsakade av jordbävningar kan va starka nog att skada vår infrastruktur och orsaka dödsoffer. Genom att analysera forna destruktiva jordbävningar och utveckla program som försöker att förutsäga deras inverkan så kan den potentiella skada minskas. Svenska Nationella Seismiska Nätet (SNSN) driver ett automatiserat tidigt varningssystem som försöker förutsäga skadorna som följer en jordbävning som precis spelats in, och vidarebefodra denna information till relevanta myndigheter. Förutsägelserna är baserade på, t.ex. jordbävnings-magnitud och djup samt uppskattning av mänsklig population i det påverkade området. Syftet med denna avhandlingen är att introducera ytterligare en parameter: jordbävnings-intensitet, som är ett mått av intensiteten i markrörelserna. Baserat på detta skapas ett jordbävnings-schema kallat Intensity Based Earthquake Classification (IBEC). Detta schema föreslår alternativa metoder, relativt SNSN, för hur jordbävnings-klassificering kan göras. Dessa metoder använder sig av en intensitets-databas etablerad genom modellering av jordbävning-scenarios i open source-\linebreak programmet ShakeMap, skapat av U.S. Geological Survey. Databasen består av scenarior över intervallen 4.0 ≤ Mw ≤ 9.0 och 10 ≤ djup ≤ 150 kilometer, vilka täcker hela intensitetsskalan, Modified Mercalli Intensity, 1.0 ≤ Imm ≤ 10.0. IBECs klassificeringsschema har även möjliggjort skapandet av "Population-mot-Area"-kriteriet. Detta förbättrar förutsägelsen av jordbävningar som träffar isolerade städer, placerade i t.ex. dalgångar i stora bergskjedjor och öknar. Även om denna typ av jordbävningar är relativt ovanliga så orsakar dom ofta enorm skada då sådana här städer ofta är mindre utvecklade rörande byggnaders motstånd mot markrörelser.

Organisations such as governments and healthcare bodies are increasingly responsible for managing large amounts of personal information, and the increasing complexity of modern information systems is causing growing concerns about the protection of these assets from insider threats. Insider threats are very difficult to handle, because the insiders have direct access to information and are trusted by their organisations. The nature of insider privacy breaches varies with the organisation’s acceptable usage policy and the attributes of an insider. However, the level of risk that insiders pose depends on insider breach scenarios including their access patterns and contextual information, such as timing of access. Protection from insider threats is a newly emerging research area, and thus, only few approaches are available that systemise the continuous monitoring of dynamic insider usage characteristics and adaptation depending on the level of risk. The aim of this research is to develop a formal framework for an adaptive early warning and response system for insider privacy breaches within dynamic software systems. This framework will allow the specification of multiple policies at different risk levels, depending on event patterns, timing constraints, and the enforcement of adaptive response actions, to interrupt insider activity. Our framework is based on Usage Control (UCON), a comprehensive model that controls previous, ongoing, and subsequent resource usage. We extend UCON to include interrupt policy decisions, in which multiple policy decisions can be expressed at different risk levels. In particular, interrupt policy decisions can be dynamically adapted upon the occurrence of an event or over time. We propose a computational model that represents the concurrent behaviour of an adaptive early warning and response system in the form of statechart. In addition, we propose a Privacy Breach Specification Language (PBSL) based on this computational model, in which event patterns, timing constraints, and the triggered early warning level are expressed in the form of policy rules. The main features of PBSL are its expressiveness, simplicity, practicality, and formal semantics. The formal semantics of the PBSL, together with a model of the mechanisms enforcing the policies, is given in an operational style. Enforcement mechanisms, which are defined by the outcomes of the policy rules, influence the system state by mutually interacting between the policy rules and the system behaviour. We demonstrate the use of this PBSL with a case study from the e-government domain that includes some real-world insider breach scenarios. The formal framework utilises a tool that supports the animation of the enforcement and policy models. This tool also supports the model checking used to formally verify the safety and progress properties of the system over the policy and the enforcement specifications.

The recent emergencies on college campuses including the Virginia Tech massacre of April, 2007, the Northern Illinois University shootings and the Union University tornado highlight the importance of disaster preparedness within the university community. This study is a survey exploring the daily rhythms of student life, the communication channels open to students and students composition and characteristics. This survey finds that students have frequent access to communication technologies which can be utilized as warning channels. The study also concludes that many students do not actively seek out information relative to emergency preparedness and the gaps in the populations knowledge require increased disaster education by the university.

Water distribution systems are vulnerable to intentional, along with accidental, contamination of the water supply. Contamination warning systems (CWS) are strategies to lessen the effects of contamination by delivering early indication of an event. Online quality monitoring, a network of sensors that can assess water quality and alert an operator of contamination, is a critical component of CWS, but utilities are faced with the decision of what locations are optimal for deployment of sensors. A sensor placement algorithm was developed and implemented in a commercial network distribution model (i.e. KYPIPE) to aid small utilities in sensor placement. The developed sensor placement tool was then validated using 12 small distribution system models and multiple contamination scenarios for the placement of one and two sensors. This thesis also addresses the issue that many sensor placement algorithms require calibrated hydraulic/water quality models, but small utilities do not always possess the financial resources or expertise to build calibrated models. Because of such limitations, a simple procedure is proposed to recommend optimal placement of a sensor without the need for a model or complicated algorithm. The procedure uses simple information about the geometry of the system and does not require explicit information about flow dynamics.