Sanfilippo, F., & Rañó, I. (2023). Mimicking the Sense of Smell of Search and Rescue (SAR) Dogs: a Bio-inspired Steering Framework for Quadruped Robots. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (pp. 892–901). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: Due to their sense of smell and ability to explore areas for missing people, dogs are valuable for search and rescue (SAR). Canines can discover humans under water, under snow, and even beneath crumbling structures because they can smell human scent. Building unmanned autonomous quadruped robots with canine agility is an attractive step to fully replicate the capabilities of dogs. Robots with legs are already capable of mimicking some of the physical traits of dogs, such as the capacity to traverse rough terrain. However, they would need to replicate also the level of sensory perception of a dog to successfully perform SAR operations. To achieve this, a navigation strategy that uses a direct sensor-motor coupling by following the principles of the Braitenberg vehicles is adopted in this work. This paper represents one of the first steps towards the connection of bio-inspired sensor-based steering mechanisms and bio-inspired locomotion for quadruped robots.
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Yu, X., Chen, J., & Liu, J. (2023). Examining the influence of social media on individual’s protective action taking during Covid-19 in China. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (pp. 295–308). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: In the context of COVID-19, this study utilizes the Social Mediated Crisis Communication Model (SMCC) and the Protective Action Decision Model (PADM) to investigate the relationship between social media users' protective actions and crisis information during public health crises in China. By constructing a structural equation model, this study aims to identify the influencing factors that affect social media users' personal’s cognitive, emotional, and behavioral reactions given crisis relevant information. Results findings are that warning information can significantly increase risk perception; emotional responses are not significantly affected by warning information and risk perception; risk perception has a negative impact on information gathering and sharing behavior; risk perception has a significant mediating effect on the relationship between information features and protective action.
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Lorscheidt, J., Wehbe, B., Cesar, D., Becker, T., & Vögele, T. (2023). Increasing diver safety for heavy underwater works by Sonar-to-Video Image Translation. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (pp. 166–176). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: Supervision of technical dives is particularly important in emergency and disaster response operations to ensure the safety of divers in unexplored locations with uncertain conditions. Diver monitoring relies primarily on voice communication and a video stream that gives the operator a first-person view of the diver. However, in many cases underwater visibility can drop to just a few centimeters, leaving the diver only able to feel his way with his hands and the operator depended only on voice communication, making it very difficult for both of them to identify upcoming hazards. In the DeeperSense research project, we are attempting to reduce the limitations caused by poor underwater visibility by using a sonar in combination with an AI-based algorithm designed to translate the sonar signal into a visual image that is independent of the turbidity of the water and gives an overview of the situation where the eye can no longer see anything. Laboratory results show that visual information can be recovered from sonar data.
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Wang, D. (2023). Public Cognition and Perception on Social Media in Crisis. In Jaziar Radianti, Ioannis Dokas, Nicolas Lalone, & Deepak Khazanchi (Eds.), Proceedings of the 20th International ISCRAM Conference (pp. 1081–1082). Omaha, USA: University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Abstract: Microblogging platforms have been increasingly used in crisis, facilitating more participatory communication between official response channels and affected communities. Despite the potential benefits, research has shown that disaster response organizations could not effectively utilize social media data due to data deluge (Knox 2022). To better understand the information needed for disaster response, we turn to the National Incident Management System Guidance for public information officers (PIOs) (NIMS Basic Guidance for PIOs 2020), the primary spokesperson for emergency management organizations. The guidance indicates that PIOs use social media for two major purposes, supporting their operational needs and gauging public perception of risk and incident response. To support the operational needs, the crisis informatics literature has heavily focused on information types supporting situational awareness, including serviceable, eyewitness or actionable information. However, the information representing public perception, such as people’s cognitive and perceptual processes in response to incidents, has been less addressed at scale. To bridge the gap between quantitative study in crisis informatics and information representing cognitive and perceptual processes and better support the task of PIOs, I focus on the study of people’s cognitive and perceptual processes on social media for my research. Cognitive and perceptual processes refer to the way that people pay attention to or process environmental inputs, including the mental activities of acquisition, processing or evaluation of environmental cues, social cues, and warnings. These processes reveal people’s perception of- and decision-making in response to potential threats. With this focus, I seek to answer the following research question: How could people’s cognitive and perceptual processes be inferred from their social media activities in crisis to benefit stakeholders in incident response? My interest in tracing this overall theme through a varied range of sub-tasks produces three more specific research questions: RQ1. How can information exposure and attention be operationalized to highlight cognitive and perceptual processes? RQ2. How do people’s perception of risk communications from stakeholders vary in crisis? RQ3. How could a principled and scalable pipeline be designed to identify people’s cognitive and affective perceptions on Twitter? I took cues from the Protective Action Decision Model (Lindell and Perry 2012) and leveraged baselines in the literature to address these research questions. To address the first research question, I proposed a metric that conceptualized and operationalized the predecision process. The proposed metric was incorporated into a pipeline and applied to two real-word events to recommend messages that represent the shift of collective attention of those locally affected with a specialized focus on cognitive and perceptual processes. To address the second research question, I went beyond the perception of risks to include perceptions of risk communications by stakeholders. I performed an empirical study of the relation between risk communications by stakeholders and different kinds of public perceptions (Lindell and Perry 2012). To address the third research question, I proposed a future work to provide benchmark coding schemes, datasets and models to quantitatively identify information representing cognitive and perceptual processes. I will leverage existing benchmark datasets in the literature (Olteanu et al. 2014; Imran et al. 2016; Alam et al. 2018; Zahra et al. 2020; Rudra et al. 2017; Mazloom et al. 2018; Purohit et al. 2018) and coding schemes in qualitative studies (Trumbo et al. 2016; Demuth et al. 2018) and create benchmark classification models.
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Thomas J. Huggins, Wenbo Zhang, & Eva Yang. (2023). Evaluating Flood-Related Decision-Making and the Role of Information Technologies. In V. L. Thomas J. Huggins (Ed.), Proceedings of the ISCRAM Asia Pacific Conference 2022 (pp. 45–55). Palmerston North, New Zealand: Massey Unversity.
Abstract: The proposed research consists of an innovative research design and piloting to compare traditional and contemporary approaches to loss-related decisions, concerning flooding risk in particular. By developing and implementing the integration of multiple methods, the proposed research aims to provide detailed and compelling evidence of how disaster-related decisions can be evaluated using an out-of-frame (capacity) and out-of-sample (occurrence) criterion, i.e. instead of taking a more reductive approach to real world problems. Together with other research being conducted around the world, the current initiative will address the contemporary scientific problem of whether traditionally axiomatic or ecological rationality should be used for evaluating disaster-related decisions. Where ecological rationality is found to be more effective, the same research will inform how ecologically rational approaches to flood risk can be improved through promoting particular areas of an information display or interface under particular conditions.
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