U-Sense: Feasibility Study of “Human as a Sensor” in Incident Reporting Systems in a Smart Campus

Abstract

The “Human as a Sensor” paradigm provides a way of leveraging the power of individuals’ observations to benefit situational awareness via monitoring, incident detection and reporting potential issues to responsible authorities. Our research explores the feasibility of using this approach to improve situational awareness in a smart campus by prompting building occupants to perform routine checks for potential problems with building facilities. We present a feasibility study of an interactive reporting system prototype named “U-Sense” by conducting a real-world experiment for one month (n=21). Based on responses through the system and interviews with the participants, we assess the potential for this approach and propose a number of design implications for such systems including task-related aspects, human sensor availability preferences and participation motives.