Radio Frequency over Fibre Optics Repeater for Mission-Critical Communications: Design, Execution and Test

This paper presents a technical solution that addresses mission-critical communications by extending the radio frequency coverage area using a flexible and scalable architecture. One of the main objectives is to improve both the reaction time and the coordination between mission-critical practitioners, also called public protection and disaster relief users, that operate in emergency scenarios. Mission-critical services such as voice and data should benefit from reliable communication systems that offer high availability, prioritization and flexible architecture. In this paper, we considered Terrestrial Trunked Radio (TETRA), the mobile radio standard used for mission-critical communications, as it has been designed in this respect and is widely used by first responder organizations. Even if RF coverage is designed before network deployment and continuously updated during the lifetime of the technology, some white areas may exist and should be covered by supplementary base stations or repeaters. The model presented in this paper is an optical repeater for TETRA standard that can offer up to 52.6 dB downlink, 65.6 dB uplink gain and up to 3.71 km coverage distance in a radiating cable installation scenario. The design in not limited, as it can be extended to several different mobile radio standards using the same principle. Flexibility and scalability attributes are taken into consideration, as they can build a cost-effective deployment considering both capital and operational expenditures.

An Assessment of the Knowledge and Practice of Telemedicine Among Medical Doctors in University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), Ituku-ozalla, Enugu State, Nigeria.

Background: The outbreak of the novel SARS-COV-2 virus, created a paradigm shift in the practice of medicine, a speciality well known for its integration of clinical expertise and manual dexterity in the management of its patients. Telemedicine, a previously less conventional approach in developing countries, has now come to the forefront of patient care. This study assessed the knowledge and practice of telemedicine among doctors in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital, Ituku-Ozalla in Enugu state.Methodology: A questionnaire-based survey was used to obtain relevant information among 149 doctors in the University of Nigeria Teaching Hospital (UNTH), including their knowledge and awareness of telemedicine, its relevance and impact on the clinical outcomes of patients as well as factors limiting its use. Data was analyzed and presented in tables, graphs and pie charts.Results: There were 149 doctors, who were mostly aged 15 – 30 years (63%). Most 146 (98%) have heard about telemedicine but only 100 (67.3%) have consulted using telemedicine. Doctors were more likely to employ telemedical consultation for follow-up and emergency scenarios but least likely to use telemedicine for first-time visits and the management of chronic diseases.Conclusion: There is a good knowledge of telemedicine among medical doctors in UNTH but ICT illiteracy, inadequate patient-doctor interaction, patients’ preference, lack of internet access, high cost of set-up and maintenance and ethical issues were some of the factors limiting its practice.

Responsiveness and Adaptability of Healthcare Facilities in Emergency Scenarios: COVID-19 Experience

The COVID-19 pandemic revealed many vulnerabilities of the contemporary built environment along with limited preparedness and low efficiency in mitigating unexpected and unprecedented challenges. This article discusses the efficiency and responsiveness of basic hospital spatial layouts in three different scenarios: normal operation; the segregation of a large number of patients and still providing them with access to emergency healthcare, typical for a pandemic; and a sudden, extremely high number of admissions typical for compound disasters and terrorist attacks. A set of parameters and a method for general adaptability assessment (GAAT) that can be used as a tool in decision-making processes as well as evaluation of both existing facilities and the new models for resilient hospitals resulting from the experience of the pandemic are proposed. The paper emphasizes why factors among which adaptability, convertibility, and scalability should be at the very core of hospital development and management strategies. It also discusses new models of adaptable healthcare facilities that enable day-to-day operations to continue alongside a pandemic, and other emergency scenarios.

Rapid Reconstruction of 3D Structural Model Based on Interactive Graph Cuts

The image-based 3D reconstruction technique has been applied in many scenarios of civil engineering, such as earthquake prevention and disaster reduction, construction monitoring, and intelligent city construction. However, the traditional technique is time-consuming, and the modeling efficiency has become a bottleneck limiting its application in emergency scenarios. In this paper, a rapid reconstruction method is proposed which combines the traditional image-based 3D reconstruction technique and an interactive graph cuts algorithm. Firstly, a sequence of images is collected around the target structure. Then, the images are preprocessed using the interactive iterative graph cuts algorithm to extract the target from each image. Finally, the resulting sequence of images is used to perform the 3D reconstruction. During the preprocessing, only a few images require manual intervention while the rest can be processed automatically. To verify the modeling accuracy of the proposed method, a column that has been destroyed is selected as a target for 3D reconstruction. The results show that compared with the traditional method, the modeling efficiency of the fast reconstruction method is doubled. In addition, the modeling accuracy is 97.65%, which is comparable to the modeling accuracy of the traditional method (97.73%); as well, by comparing the point clouds, the alignment between the two models is tremendously close, with tiny difference. The proposed rapid reconstruction method can be applied in emergency scenarios, such as rapid assessment in post-disaster situations.

125 INTRODUCING AN IN SITU SIMULATION PROGRAMME IN AN INTENSIVE CARE UNIT

This North London hospital has a 14-bed Intensive Care Unit (ICU). As a small District General ICU, staff exposure to emergency scenarios can be infrequent. Lack of practice can lead to a reduction in staff confidence and knowledge when these scenarios are encountered, especially during the COVID pandemic. The ICU had not previously undertaken in situ multi-disciplinary team (MDT) simulation sessions on the unit.The aim of the study was to introduce a novel programme of MDT simulation sessions in the ICU and provide feedback with the aim of increasing both staff confidence in managing emergency scenarios and staff understanding of the impact of human factors.A team of ICU Simulation Champions created emergency scenarios that could occur in the ICU. Pre-simulation and post-simulation questionnaires were produced to capture staff opinion on topics including benefits and barriers to simulation training and confidence in managing ICU emergencies. Members of the ICU MDT would be selected to participate in simulation scenarios. Afterwards, debrief sessions would be facilitated by Simulation Champions and Airline Pilots with a particular focus on competence in managing the emergency and human factors elements, such as communication and leadership. Participants would then be surveyed with the post-simulation questionnaire.Nine simulation sessions were conducted between October 2020 and June 2021. The sessions occurred within the ICU during the working day in a designated bay with the availability of all standard ICU resources and involved multiple MDT members to aid fidelity. Feedback by Simulation Champions mainly focussed on knowledge related to the ICU emergency, whilst the Airline Pilots provided expert feedback on human factors training. Fifty-five staff members completed the pre-simulation questionnaire and 37 simulation participants completed the post-simulation questionnaire. Prior to simulation participation, 28.3% of respondents agreed they felt confident managing emergency scenarios on ICU – this figure increased to 54.1% following simulation participation. 94.4% of simulation participants agreed that their knowledge of human factors had improved following the simulation and 100% of participants wanted further simulation teaching. Figure 1 shows a thematic analysis of the responses from 31 participants who were questioned about perceived benefits from simulation teaching. Following the success of the programme, the Hospital Trust will continue to support and develop inter-speciality and inter-professional training, and have funded the appointment of an ICU Simulation Fellow to continue to lead and enhance future in situ simulation teaching on the ICU.

Study on Emergency Evacuation and Intervention Behavior of Population with Spatial Knowledge Integrity

The level of spatial knowledge integrity of a population is crucial for fire escape behavior. The use of appropriate interventions for people with different levels of spatial knowledge can effectively improve evacuation efficiency. However, different emergency situations also have different effects on evacuation behavior. In this paper, we combine spatial knowledge integrity, intervention behavior and emergency situations in a fire evacuation study. To complete this study, 128 participants were recruited using VR technology, classified into spatial knowledge completeness, and studied crowd evacuation through different intervention behaviors in different simulated emergency scenarios. The results of the study showed that participants with complete spatial knowledge had shorter evacuation distances and times. Secondly, leader interventions guided evacuation better for participants with incomplete spatial knowledge in low-hazard emergencies, while range interventions were better for participants with complete spatial knowledge. Thirdly, in high-risk emergencies, leader intervention was better than range intervention for evacuation, regardless of spatial knowledge completeness. Fourth, the interaction between spatial knowledge completeness and intervention behavior was significant, positively influencing the evacuation time and distance of participants.

Smart healthcare IoT applications based on fog computing: architecture, applications and challenges

The history of human development has proven that medical and healthcare applications for humanity always are the main driving force behind the development of science and technology. The advent of Cloud technology for the first time allows providing systems infrastructure as a service, platform as a service and software as a service. Cloud technology has dominated healthcare information systems for decades now. However, one limitation of cloud-based applications is the high service response time. In some emergency scenarios, the control and monitoring of patient status, decision-making with related resources are limited such as hospital, ambulance, doctor, medical conditions in seconds and has a direct impact on the life of patients. To solve these challenges, optimal computing technologies have been proposed such as cloud computing, edge computing, and fog computing technologies. In this article, we make a comparison between computing technologies. Then, we present a common architectural framework based on fog computing for Internet of Health Things (Fog-IoHT) applications. Besides, we also indicate possible applications and challenges in integrating fog computing into IoT Healthcare applications. The analysis results indicated that there is huge potential for IoHT applications based on fog computing. We hope, this study will be an important guide for the future development of fog-based Healthcare IoT applications.

QoS-Aware Power Allocation for Multi-UAV Aided Networks

UAV base stations (UAVBS’s) have been proposed as a revolution for the new architecture of 5G networks. The UAVBS’s can be deployed as access points to provide wireless services to users in emergency scenarios. However, it is challenging to solve the highly coupled problem for UAVBS deployment and power allocation. In the meanwhile, the hybrid analog and digital beamforming is leverage to reduce the hardware cost for beamforming in 5G networks. In this work, we first use k-means algorithm to solve the 3D placement of UAVBS’s by exploiting the optimal coverage altitude. Next, power allocation problem is resolved using the difference-of-two-convex functions (D.C.) programming algorithm. Furthermore, the quality of service (QoS) for each user is guaranteed by adjusting the transmitted power. Finally, extensive experiments are conducted to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed algorithm.

ORGANIZATION OF INTERACTION WITH VIRTUAL REALITY BASED ON A RUNNING PLATFORM FOR COMPREHENSIVE TRAINING OF SPECIALISTS

Одним из современных инструментов организации процесса обучения специалистов является использование виртуальных тренажерных комплексов, позволяющих смоделировать штатные и аварийные сценарии профессиональной деятельности и выработать необходимые компетенции у обучающихся. Существующие подходы к взаимодействию с виртуальной реальностью в рамках тренажерных комплексов основаны на использовании различного рода контроллеров, что негативно сказывается на иммерсивности процесса обучения. Контроллеры также не позволяют смоделировать физическую нагрузку, возникающую при ходьбе или беге при подготовке специалистов в ряде областей (МЧС, военная отрасль, горнодобывающая промышленность и другие). Для решения этой задачи необходимо использование различных беговых платформ. В рамках исследования выявлены определенные проблемы существующих подходов к взаимодействию с виртуальной реальностью посредством беговой платформы. Для их решения предлагается разработка новых методов управления платформой. В работе рассмотрено несколько алгоритмов управления платформой: линейный, нелинейный и нелинейный модифицированный. Представлено математическое описание алгоритмов и проведены экспериментальные исследования, позволяющие выбрать оптимальный алгоритм управления в соответствии с набором определенных метрик. Использование разработанного алгоритма управления позволит улучшить качество взаимодействия обучающего с виртуальной реальностью на беговой платформе. Полученные результаты могут быть использованы при организации процесса обучения специалистов с применением систем виртуальной реальности One of the modern tools for organizing the training process for specialists is the use of virtual training complexes, which make it possible to simulate regular and emergency scenarios of professional activity and develop the necessary competencies for students. Existing approaches to interacting with virtual reality within the framework of training complexes are based on the use of various kinds of controllers, which negatively affects the immersiveness of the learning process. The controllers also do not allow simulating the physical activity that occurs when walking or running, which is necessary when training specialists in a number of areas (Ministry of Emergency Situations, the military industry, the mining industry, and others). To solve this problem, it is necessary to use different running platforms. The study identified certain problems of existing approaches to interacting with virtual reality through a running platform. To solve them, we propose to develop new methods of platform management. The paper considers several algorithms for platform control: linear, nonlinear and nonlinear modified. We present a mathematical description of the algorithms, we carried out experimental studies, which make it possible to choose the optimal control algorithm in accordance with a set of certain metrics. The use of the developed control algorithm will improve the quality of the teacher's interaction when interacting with virtual reality on the running platform. The results obtained can be used in organizing the process of training specialists using virtual reality systems

Housing Evaluation Methodology in a Situation of Social Poverty to Guarantee Sustainable Cities: The Satisfaction Dimension for the Case of Mexico

Currently, one in eight people live in neighborhoods with social inequality and around one billion people live in precarious conditions. The significance of where and how to live and in what physical, spatial, social, and urban conditions has become very important for millions of families around the world because of mandatory confinement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, many homes in poor condition do not meet the basic requirements for residential environments in the current framework. Theoretical models for the urban evaluation of this phenomenon are a necessary starting point for urban renewal and sustainability. This study aims to generate a model for evaluating homes in a situation of social inequality (hereinafter Vrs) with indicators on physical, spatial, environmental, and social aspects. The methodology used in this study evaluates housing, taking into consideration habitability factors (physical, spatial, and constructive characteristics), as well as the qualitative characteristics assessing the satisfaction of users with the adaptation and transformation of the housing and its surroundings. The application of 51 indicators distributed in four previous parameters was established for this study. This quantification identifies the deficiencies of the dwellings and sets the guidelines for the establishment of future rehabilitation policies for adapting the dwellings to current and emergency scenarios. The innovation of this study is the construction of a tool for social research surveys designed to include individual indicators from the dwellings’ users, to provide a more dependable representation of the problems found in Vrs. The results of this research identified the deficiencies of precarious housing and could be used for applying effective proposals for improvement of habitability and their surroundings in the future. Furthermore, the results showed that when all the indicators were considered, the level of lag reached would be similar to that of a real housing situation, further confirming the suitability of the methodology applied in this investigation.