Automating geospatial metadata generation—An integrated data management and documentation approach

Geospatial metadata have long played an important role in the management of geospatial datasets. Often employed by institutions to organise, maintain and document their geographic resources internally, metadata may also provide a vehicle for exposing marketable data assets externally when contributed to on-line geospatial exchange initiatives. In spite of the numerous benefits it affords, obstacles to the production of such geospatial surrogates are numerous. The current work proposes an approach aimed at reducing the effort associated with geospatial metadata generation through the customisation of a proprietary Geographical Information System (GIS). By coupling data preparation, management and documentation approaches with such a bespoke application, it is intended to mitigate impediments to geospatial metadata generation whilst promoting a system of data administration that safeguards the data it supports. The current prototype, implementing an extended Dublin Core geospatial profile of 23 elements, was capable of generating a total of 20 basic metadata entries. While the findings do not suggest a dispensability of human mediation in the authoring process, they do support the view that a dataset's ambient computing infrastructure has the potential to play a significant role in automating the creation of geospatial metadata.     

Establishing thermal comfort: characterization of selected performance and physical properties of fabrics used in hospital operating room uniforms

The purpose of this research was to characterize selected thermal properties of clothing fabrics available to operating room (OR) workers at the University of Alberta Hospital and to relate the thermal properties to fabric structural characteristics. In this study, we measured the thermal resistance and air permeability of fabrics obtained from surgical gowns, scrubs and warm-up jackets currently in use in ORs in a specific hospital. The results showed that the fabrics from which the surgical gowns were made provide the highest thermal insulation with lowest air permeability, while the warm-up jackets’ fabrics had the greatest air permeability with low thermal insulation values. The clothing options available to workers in the OR fall well below the predicted clothing insulation values for thermal comfort. For workers in the OR, such as anaesthesiologists, who are predominantly sedentary throughout their work shift, the lack of thermally insulating clothing options has consequences for their overall thermal comfort. This study comprises part of a larger ongoing study investigating improving the OR workers thermal comfort through clothing.     

Towards an open architecture for vector GIS

A range of open source software tools are now available to the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) analyst. However these tools are not necessarily interoperable and rarely significantly interoperable with proprietary systems. The open architectures, which have been developed for web-oriented systems, together with those proposed by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC), suggest that an open GIS architecture could be developed as an alternative to proprietary systems. The architecture would use open source components to store, translate, analyse, render and visualise GI data and would escape many of the problems of monolithic systems. Particularly what is proposed permits the loose coupling of any number of components and data stores in a manner that is both open and flexible. This paper proposes such an architecture and focuses on determining the suitability of Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG), an open vector-oriented eXtensible Markup Language (XML) grammar, as a significant component of such architecture. SVG is shown as an effective means of rendering GI data, not least because of its compatibility with the WC3 Document Object Model (DOM), permitting GIS-specific client tools to be written and transmitted to the web browser along with the SVG pages. While realising that the technology is in its infancy, the conclusion reached is that SVG currently provides a powerful solution and has enormous future potential.     

An efficient logic emulation system

The Realizer, is a logic emulation system that automatically configures a network of field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) to implement large digital logic designs, is presented. Logic and interconnect are separated to achieve optimum FPGA utilization. Its interconnection architecture, called the partial crossbar, greatly reduces system-level placement and routing complexity, achieves bounded interconnect delay, scales linearly with pin count, and allows hierarchical expansion to systems with hundreds of thousands of FPGA devices in a fast and uniform way. An actual multiboard system has been built, using 42 Xilinx XC3090 FPGAs for logic. Several designs, including a 32-b CPU datapath, have been automatically realized and operated at speed. They demonstrate very good FPGA utilization. The Realizer has applications in logic verification and prototyping, simulation, architecture development, and special-purpose execution     

Comparison of Techniques for Prediction of Mechanical Strength of Firefighters’ Protective Clothing Using Near-Infrared Spectral Data

Fire Technology - As most textile tests are destructive, non-destructive test (NDT) methods are needed to evaluate in-use firefighters’ protective clothing and to provide guidance as to when...