Developing a unified set of information covering accessibility at public transport terminals

There is a political wish in Europe to switch more passenger and freight transport from the use of individual cars to public transport methods. Travel planners, consisting of both static and dynamic information, are considered to be a means for encouraging or supporting this shift. An approach to assess the need for information covering the universal design (UD) of terminals and an approach to collect this information are described. The motivation for these studies is the on-going work in Norway to establish a national terminal register that provides basic information for travel planners. The idea of 'universal design' is gaining more and more attention in Norway and it is quickly becoming a politically interesting goal to design and develop the transport services according to guidelines for UD. Terminal accessibility varies greatly. If a disabled person plans a journey, information covering accessibility of the terminals involved in the possible journey is important. However, this type of information is of interest to many other groups of travellers too, for example, people with a baby carriage or with a lot of luggage. The work was done in close cooperation with representatives of all different types of user groups     

Dual‐pathway DenseNets with fully lateral connections for multimodal brain tumor segmentation

Multimodal medical image data provide different structured and functional information, which helps segment brain tumor and gets a reliable and accurate diagnosis. Segmenting brain tumors in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is a challenging task because brain tumors can be at any location with changeable shape and size. Existing deep neural networks for brain tumor segmentation use few connections to fuse multilevel information. To make use of multilevel information from multimodal MRIs, we propose dual‐pathway DenseNets with fully lateral connections (DP‐DenseNets), a three‐dimensional (3D) fully convolutional neural network that uses dense connectivity to construct dual‐pathway architecture to multimodal brain tumor segmentation problem. Each two similar imaging modalities have a pathway, for one thing, the bottom‐up pathway with dense connectivity is developed for extracting features; another, the top‐down pathway concatenates the features of the bottom‐up pathway in all layers. Dual pathways with different loss functions and fully lateral connectivity from the bottom‐up pathway to the top‐down pathway provide an abundant combination of different levels of features. Comparing to these fusion schemes such as input‐level fusion and later‐level fusion, this architecture leverages semantics from low to high levels, which is provided by fully lateral connectivity. Our model is evaluated on the dataset from Brain Tumor Segmentation Challenge 2017 (BRATS 2017), and the experiments show that our method achieves better performance than other 3D networks.     

An event-driven manufacturing information system architecture for Industry 4.0

Future manufacturing systems need to be more flexible, to embrace tougher and constantly changing market demands. They need to make better use of plant data, ideally utilising all data from the entire plant. Low-level data should be refined to real-time information for decision-making, to facilitate competitiveness through informed and timely decisions. The Line Information System Architecture (LISA), is presented in this paper. It is an event-driven architecture featuring loose coupling, a prototype-oriented information model and formalised transformation services. LISA is designed to enable flexible factory integration and data utilisation. The focus of LISA is on integration of devices and services on all levels, simplifying hardware changes and integration of new smart services as well as supporting continuous improvements on information visualisation and control. The architecture has been evaluated on both real industrial data and industrial demonstrators and it is also being installed at a large automotive company. This article is an extended and revised version of the paper presented at the 2015 IFAC Symposium on Information Control in Manufacturing (INCOM 2015). The paper has been restructured in regards to the order and title of the chapters, and additional information about the integration between devices and services aspects have been added. The introduction and the general structure of the paper now better highlight the contributions of the paper and the uniqueness of the framework.     

A service-oriented grid infrastructure for biomedical data and compute services

Service-oriented Grid technologies are increasingly utilized for the realization of future biomedical IT infrastructures since they offer unprecedented opportunities for the integration of advanced analysis and simulation applications as well as distributed heterogeneous data sources and information systems. The European Union's @neurIST project is developing a Grid-based IT infrastructure for the management of all processes linked to research, diagnosis, and treatment development for complex and multifactorial diseases encompassing data repositories, computational analysis services, and information systems handling multiscale, multimodal information at distributed sites. This paper provides an overview of the @neurIST Grid middleware and outlines the infrastructure offered for the provision of advanced compute and data services to support computationally demanding modeling and simulation tasks and to access heterogeneous distributed data sources through semantic integration.     

面向自由行旅游的导游服务设计

目的针对自由行旅游中存在的文化体验不够深入、路线规划不完善等问题展开研究与分析,提出利用信息化平台提供个性化、灵活的导游服务,以满足自由行游客的旅游需求,提升用户体验质量。方法通过定性、定量方法,研究并分析在旅游过程中自由行游客对导游服务的具体需求,并将其转化为导游服务信息平台的具体功能。提出了实时导游和预约导游两种模式,梳理了导游服务从预约到相互评价整个服务过程的任务流程,建立了基于移动终端的导游服务系统信息架构,设计了人机交互界面,最后利用改进的整体评估可用性问卷对交互原型进行评估。结论基于分时租赁模式构建的导游服务信息平台能为游客提供灵活、快捷和个性化的导游预约服务,能有效提升自由行游客的导游服务体验。     

A catalogue of dosemeters and dosimetric services within Europe--an update

The catalogue of dosemeters and dosimetric services within the European Union (EU) Member States and Switzerland that was issued by EURADOS in the year 2000 has been updated and extended with information on dosimetric services in the new EU Member States and Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, and Ukraine. The total number of dosimetric services in these European countries is now estimated to be about 200. The present catalogue is based on information collected from 90 European dosimetric services, among which 34 questionnaires from 32 services were obtained over the years 2001-2004 for the first time. This article assesses and updates the present use of personal dosemeters and the extent to which occupationally exposed persons in Europe are monitored with dosemeters able to measure the operational quantity-personal dose equivalent, H(P)(d). The perspective of joining EU by the new countries accelerated the implementation of the EU Basic Safety Standard Directive to their national regulations. As a result, all newly investigated services reported their ability to measure H(P)(d). The catalogue provides information on the dosemeters, dose calculation and background subtraction algorithms, calibration methods, energy and angular response, and performance.     

Automatic cervical cancer segmentation in multimodal magnetic resonance imaging using an EfficientNet encoder in UNet++ architecture

Automatic cervical cancer segmentation in multimodal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) is essential because tumor location and delineation can support patients' diagnosis and treatment planning. To meet this clinical demand, we present an encoder–decoder deep learning architecture which employs an EfficientNet encoder in the UNet++ architecture (E-UNet++). EfficientNet helps in effectively encoding multiscale image features. The nested decoders with skip connections aggregate multiscale features from low-level to high-level, which helps in detecting fine-grained details. A cohort of 228 cervical cancer patients with multimodal MRI sequences, including T2-weighted imaging, diffusion-weighted imaging, apparent diffusion coefficient imaging, contrast enhancement T1-weighted imaging, and dynamic contrast-enhanced imaging (DCE), has been explored. Evaluations are performed by considering either single or multimodal MRI with standard segmentation quantitative metrics: dice similarity coefficient (DSC), intersection over union (IOU), and 95% Hausdorff distance (HD). Our results show that the E-UNet++ model can achieve DSC values of 0.681–0.786, IOU values of 0.558–0.678, and 95% HD values of 3.779–7.411 pixels in different single sequences. Meanwhile, it provides DSC values of 0.644 and 0.687 on three DCE subsequences and all MRI sequences together. Our designed model is superior to other comparative models, which shows the potential to be used as an artificial intelligence tool for cervical cancer segmentation in multimodal MRI.     

A survey of users of the new British Library Patent Information Centre

The British Library acts as the national patent library in the UK. The patent library moved into a new, purpose-built building in London in 1999, to join other parts of the national library. A market research study was commissioned to study the changes in use of the patent library brought about both by the move and by other factors such as the increased accessibility of patent information on the Internet. The study looked at, for instance, the geographical location and type of business of users, their reason for searching (for themselves or for others, for checking originality, technical background, etc.), the extent to which users actually visited the library, what attributes they required of the services provided, and their use of Internet resources. The results reported include some comparisons with regional patent libraries in the UK. The article concludes that users' requirements have changed significantly, especially as a result of the impact of the Internet, and that the services provided need to adapt to these changes. The study results are being further analysed to determine the best way forward for these services.     

Exposure data and risk indicators for safety performance assessment in Europe

The objective of this paper is the analysis of the state-of-the-art in risk indicators and exposure data for safety performance assessment in Europe, in terms of data availability, collection methodologies and use. More specifically, the concepts of exposure and risk are explored, as well as the theoretical properties of various exposure measures used in road safety research (e.g. vehicle- and person-kilometres of travel, vehicle fleet, road length, driver population, time spent in traffic, etc.). Moreover, the existing methods for collecting disaggregate exposure data for risk estimates at national level are presented and assessed, including survey methods (e.g. travel surveys, traffic counts) and databases (e.g. national registers). A detailed analysis of the availability and quality of existing risk exposure data is also carried out. More specifically, the results of a questionnaire survey in the European countries are presented, with detailed information on exposure measures available, their possible disaggregations (i.e. variables and values), their conformity to standard definitions and the characteristics of their national collection methods. Finally, the potential of international risk comparisons is investigated, mainly through the International Data Files with exposure data (e.g. Eurostat, IRTAD, ECMT, UNECE, IRF, etc.). The results of this review confirm that comparing risk rates at international level may be a complex task, as the availability and quality of exposure estimates in European countries varies significantly. The lack of a common framework for the collection and exploitation of exposure data limits significantly the comparability of the national data. On the other hand, the International Data Files containing exposure data provide useful statistics and estimates in a systematic way and are currently the only sources allowing international comparisons of road safety performance under certain conditions.     

老龄人群的文化旅游服务平台创新设计

目的通过分析智慧旅游途径方法,获得文化旅游服务平台的创新设计思路,使老龄人群的文化旅游服务能够实现主动性、实时性,为老年人智慧出游提供研究思路,同时促进各类资源的共享和有效利用。方法老龄人群的社群协作服务,是以老龄人群生活习惯、人际交往圈为基础,阶段性、策略化地将信息技术、非物质化服务载体等创新性服务策略融入其中,将依托其原有生活圈层的社群协作服务平台进行提升、扩大化。针对老龄人群的文化旅游需求,提高旅游活动自由度,完善旅游服务平台设计。结论将信息化技术等多种形式的非物质性服务产品以更多元化、灵活的方式介入老龄人群旅游活动全程。注重阶段性、渐进式地引入服务产品,使其能根据不同需求做出对应交互体验设计的定制化服务创新,提升老龄人群旅游服务满意度。     

基于多模态信息交互的智能家居设计研究

目的 针对界面、语音等单一智能家居交互模式阻碍用户自然体验的瓶颈问题,探索基于多模态信息交互的智能家居设计方法,实现智能家居更自然、友好的用户体验。方法 基于用户日常生活多模态的自然交互特点,探索一种以多模态为特征的智能家居信息交互模式,构建了面向智能家居的多模态信息交互设计框架,并对该框架中的构成要素、交互流程、模态组织方式及多模态信息的注意度、模态密度、模态结构配置进行分析讨论。结果 智能家居多模态信息交互实现了智能家居系统的主动性、交感化信息获取和情境化的信息分析与反馈,对提升智能系统自主性,降低用户在交互过程中的认知负荷,以及实现更加自然、友好的用户体验有积极价值。结论 智能家居环境需要改变传统相对单一的人机系统信息交互方式,以多模态信息交互促进智能家居使用体验的最优化。     

A collaborative agent-based infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative enterprises

The Internet has evolved very rapidly from an information space to a market space over the past few years. There is a tendency towards implementing real-world agent-based applications based on the Internet. This paper presents some results of our recent research work towards an infrastructure for Internet-enabled collaborative agent systems. The infrastructure and the related supporting services, components, prototypes and mechanisms are initially proposed and developed for Internet-enabled collaborative agent systems in all kinds of application areas, but they are primarily targeted for implementing Internet-enabled collaborative enterprises or supply chain management systems. The general collaborative agent system architecture with the basic communication and cooperation services, domain independent components, prototypes and mechanisms are described. The benefits of implementing Internet-enabled collaborative enterprises with the proposed infrastructure are discussed. A case study on multi-plant production planning is presented. Some important implementation issues are discussed.     

Automating mode detection for travel behaviour analysis by using global positioning systemsenabled mobile phones and neural networks

Travel surveys collect trip data such as origin, destination, mode, duration, distance and purpose of trips, as well as socioeconomic and demographic data for analysis. Transportation planners, policymakers, state departments of transportation, metropolitan planning organisations, industry professionals and academic researchers use survey data to better understand the current demand and performance of the transportation infrastructure, and to plan in preparation for future growth. Next-generation travel surveys will utilise global positioning systems (GPS) to collect trip data with minimal input from survey participants. Owing to their ubiquity, GPS-enabled mobile phones are developing into a promising survey tool. TRAC-IT is a mobile phone application that collects real-time GPS data and requires minimal input from the user for data such as trip purpose, mode and vehicle occupancy. To ease survey burden on participants and enable real-time, modespecific location-based services, new techniques must be explored to derive more information directly from GPS data. As part of travel survey collection, TRAC-IT is able to passively determine trip mode using GPSenabled mobile phones and neural networks. The mode detection technique presented in this article can be optimised using a critical point, pre-processing algorithm to reduce the size of required GPS datasets obtained from GPS-enabled mobile phones, thus reducing data collection costs while conserving precious mobile phone resources such as battery life.     

Interconnected logistic networks and protocols: simulation-based efficiency assessment

Logistic networks intensely use means of transportation and storage facilities to deliver goods. However, these logistic networks are still poorly interconnected and this fragmentation is responsible for a lack of consolidation and thus efficiency. To cope with the seeming contradiction of just-in-time deliveries and challenging emissions targets, a major improvement in supply networks is sought here. This new organisation is based on the universal interconnection of logistics services, namely a Physical Internet where goods travel in modular containers for the sake of interconnection in open networks. If from a logical point of view, merging container flows should improve efficiency, no demonstration of its potential has been carried out prior to the here reported research. To reach this potentiality assessment goal, we model the asynchronous shipment and creation of containers within an interconnected network of services, find the best path routing for each container and minimise the use of transportations means. To carry out the demonstration and assess the associated stakes, we use a set of actual flows from the fast-moving consumer goods sector in France. Various transportation protocols and scenarios are tested, revealing encouraging results for efficiency indicators such as CO₂ emissions, cost, lead time, delivery travel time, and so forth. As this is a first work in the field of flows transportation, the simulation model and experiment exposes many further research avenues.     

Benchmarking travel time estimates

Travel time estimates are widely regarded as the most practical information about traffic conditions available to individual drivers. Although there are numerous data collection and estimation methods in use today, few attempts have been made to evaluate them in a systematic manner. Even more fundamentally, there are no broadly accepted metrics to measure the quality of travel time estimates. The study exposes the methodology and tools employed to conduct a benchmark of travel time estimates in the San Francisco Bay Area. The methodology and the proposed quality measures are intended to set a standard that can be universally applied. Their use is illustrated through a sample data set collected for 24 h on one Bay Area freeway.     

Building blocks of e-commerce

This article examines the architecture of e-commerce as a set of layers, each supporting the one above it. The layers have clean interfaces, that is, they can be designed independently. We present an architecture with six layers. The lowest layer consists of a physical communication network such as local area network or public switched telephone networks. The next higher layer is the logical layer which describes the protocol used to interconnect communication systems to create internet, intranet and extranet. The services provided over the internet infrastructure, namely, e-mail, world wide web etc., are described in what is called network services layer. It is essential to ensure security of messages, documents etc., which are transmitted using network services. The messaging layer is thus concerned with encryption methods, both private and public key encryption and their applications. We call the layer above this the middleman service, which is concerned with value-added services offered by intermediaries to enable payment for services received, certify digital signatures, safely transmit documents and provide information on behalf of companies. The topmost layer is the application layer which users see. The major applications are customer-to-business (C2B) e-commerce, business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce, customer-to-consumer (C2C) e-commerce etc. We briefly explain these modes.     

基于云计算的标准化资源共享服务平台构建研究

云计算架构是实现标准资源信息共享的有效手段之一。本文通过对标准化资源共享服务平台的建设方案调查,结合云计算环境下的标准化资源共享服务平台构建研究,构建基于云计算的标准化资源共享服务平台。在介绍了标准化资源服务技术的发展现状基础上,阐述了云计算、标准化资源共享服务平台的概念、内涵及特点,设计出标准化资源共享服务平台的体系架构,并基于该平台设计了资源检索、管理、分析等多种云服务。实现政府、行业、机构、企业、专家、公众等标准化资源数字信息资源的共知共建共享,按需为用户提供个性化标准化数字资源（如查询、阅读、下载、分享等等）服务。     

National and international standards and calibration of thermoluminescence dosimetry systems

Radiation protection for radiation workers, the public, and the environment is of international concern. The use of thermoluminescence dosemeters (TLD) is an acceptable method for dose recording in most countries. For reasons of consistency and data gathering (research) it is important that a Sievert (Sv) in one part of the world equals an Sv on the other side of the globe. To this end, much work has gone into the development of standards and calibration practices for TLD systems so that they compare not only with similar systems, but also with other forms of radiation measurement. While most national laboratories provide calibration services for these systems some, as in the United States, depend on services of secondary calibration laboratories that are traceable to the national laboratories through accreditation programmes. The purpose of this paper is to explain how TLD measurements are traceable to their respective national standards for both personnel and environmental dosimetry.     

Integrated segmentation of brain tumor images for radiotherapy and neurosurgery

Segmentation of brain tumor images is an important task in diagnosis and treatment planning for cancer patients. To achieve this goal with standard clinical acquisition protocols, conventionally, either classification algorithms are applied on multimodal MR images or atlas‐based segmentation is used on a high‐resolution monomodal MR image. These two approaches have been commonly regarded separately. We propose to integrate all the available imaging information into one framework to be able to use the information gained from the tissue classification of the multimodal images to perform a more precise segmentation on the high‐resolution monomodal image by atlas‐based segmentation. For this, we combine a state of the art regularized classification method with an enhanced version of an atlas‐registration approach including multiscale tumor‐growth modeling. This contribution offers the possibility to simultaneously segment subcortical structures in the patient by warping the respective atlas labels, which is important for neurosurgical planning and radiotherapy planning. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Imaging Syst Technol, 23, 59–63, 2013     

Optimal facility location with multi-purpose trip making

We address the optimal location problem for two different types of service, designated as type-A and type-B, where some users may obtain both types of service in multi-purpose trips. We consider three user groups: (i) users of only the type-A service; (ii) users of only the type-B service; and (iii) users of both services in a single trip. We seek to locate three types of facilities: (i) type-A; (ii) type-B; and (iii) joint facilities that offer both services. We formulate a p-median-based model that minimizes the total travel distance and use it to investigate the effect of multi-purpose trip-makers on optimal facility types and locations. Examples are used to show that services tend to cluster in joint facilities, even when the proportion of multi-purpose behavior is small.