2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)最新文献

{"title":"A comparative assessment for algal biodiesel production in the Philippines","authors":"A. Ubando, I. V. Gue, A. Culaba, J. Cuello","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058177","url":null,"abstract":"Fossil fuels account for more than three-fourths of today's global energy consumption. The combustion of these fuels has contributed to the worsening of climate change and global warming. Fossil fuels are not only detrimental to the environment, but they are also not sustainable. In the Philippines, the country is heavily dependent on fossil fuels, as 40% of its energy consumption comes from oil with the majority being diesel fuel. The country must find a solution to reduce its dependency on fossil fuels. An alternative solution are biofuels, because of its reduced carbon emissions compared to fossil fuels while acting as a substitute for fuel. Biofuels production in the Philippines has already been mandated by the Biofuels Act of 2006 resulting to a mandated utilization of biofuels. The recent typhoons parasite infestation in the country has led to the decreased production of biodiesel. Microalgae is then eyed as a potential feedstock for biodiesel production, because of its high oil yield per hectare and fast growth rate. An assessment of the production of algal biofuel is needed in determining the viability of algal biodiesel production in the Philippines. This study, therefore, proposes the use of the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology as an assessment tool for the viability of the production of algal biofuel in the Philippines. This study focuses on the assessment of a cultivation system in the Philippine for biodiesel production. An Environmental Design of Industrial Products (EDIP) impact category is used for impact assessments. A previous study was already done in comparing the cultivation system with that of another algal cultivation system, however, there has not yet been a comparative study between the use of this cultivation system and with that of jatropha biodiesel production, one of the prospects for biodiesel production. Results show that the algal cultivation system has scored larger impacts due to its electricity consumptions. The fertilizer consumption of the algal cultivation system, however, shows promising results as it was able to achieve a lower impact score in certain categories.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"37 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"128666358","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"An integrated biosignals wearable system for low-cost blood pressure monitoring","authors":"Amnyah Almahouzi, Toka Alnaser, Susanne Tiraci, Y. Athavale, S. Krishnan","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058179","url":null,"abstract":"The purpose of this research is to design a device that is simple, portable, wireless, and can measure blood pressure accurately. The motivation of this study is to develop a device for people suffering from cardiovascular diseases and hypertension. Specifically, a device that is portable, wireless, and can accurately measure blood pressure. Upon determining their blood pressure, individuals can take preventive measures before serious risk to one's health can occur. The device is designed using the principles of plethysmography and electrocardiography in order to obtain the Pulse Transit Time for blood pressure calculation. The device demonstrates novelty by its light weight, portable size, and low cost. The compact, low-cost design of the proposed system could be implemented and deployed easily in developing nations wherein access to healthcare facilities is limited. This system could also be one of the many systems which measure simple body parameters for monitoring activities of daily life and disease prevention.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"125134718","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Traffic offloading problem in two-tier HetNets with D2D support for emergency communications","authors":"A. Ravichandran, A. Alnoman, N. Sharma, A. Anpalagan","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058173","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058173","url":null,"abstract":"In emergency situations such as catastrophes, the cellular infrastructure can be partially or totally damaged. For rescue teams to transmit and receive on-sight reports using live video and high quality images, the provisioning of seamless coverage with high data rates is inevitable. As cellular networks continue to evolve into more heterogeneous structures regarding the size of deployed cells, the implementation of traffic offloading strategies is essential to achieve high data rates and more power saving. In regard to network modeling, stochastic geometry has been considered in the literature as an efficient approach for modeling the locations of base stations (BSs). Moreover, stochastic geometry provides tractable mathematical expressions for key network parameters such as coverage probability and average data rate. In heterogeneous networks (HetNets), density and power of BSs in a given tier influence the volume of traffic offloaded to other tiers. However, these two parameters are generally constrained together in practical scenarios. In other words, given a BS density, the power per BS must be adjusted to satisfy the inter-tier traffic flow to maximized system throughput. Furthermore, in D2D networks the fraction of spectrum allocated to D2D links also affects the net achieved throughput. In this paper, we formulate the problem of jointly optimizing the power of small BSs (SBSs), SBS density, and the fraction of spectrum allocated for D2D communications in order to maximize system throughput for critical conditions such as rescue missions.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"19 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130185134","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Wireless energy harvesting from ambient sources for cognitive networks in rural communities","authors":"A. Obaid, Xavier N Fernando","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058175","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058175","url":null,"abstract":"Cognitive Radio Networks (CRN) offer a solution to work with low interference in electromagnetically noisy environments such as in the proximity of TV/Radio stations or high voltage power lines in rural communities. However, the extra sensing requirement of CRN nodes results in high energy consumption. This lowers battery life, which is especially problematic in cognitive sensor networks. To counter this problem, in this paper, we propose a wireless energy harvesting (WEH) scheme to harvest RF energy from the ambience. We modify the popular energy efficient MAC protocol LEACH (Low Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy) to incorporate energy harvesting. Our simulation results show RF energy harvesting is feasible only when the transmission power of the source is above 10 kW. This contrasts many papers that suggest to harvest energy from other low power wireless transmitters. Our work also shows that RF energy harvesting CRN can potentially benefit rural communities located within the high power radiation range.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"11 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127136338","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Technological aspects of traumatic spinal cord injury rehabilitation","authors":"M. C. Melo, D. R. Macedo, A. Soares, S. Krishnan","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058169","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058169","url":null,"abstract":"Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) is a lesion that occurs on the structure of the spine channel, and its origin can be traumatic or non traumatic. It has incidence in America between 24 to 54 cases per million per year. Because of many degrees of physical, psychological and social impact caused by SCI, several fronts of study are directed at treating, rehabilitating and reinsertion of this public in society. In addition, there are studies to comprehend how brain reorganization occurs after the injury; to avoid the progression of the lesion and to recover lost functionalities. There have been assistive technologies and brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) developed to improve quality of life and allow more independence and mobility to people with SCI. Many countries of Latin America have limited information about the population with SCI, and due to the high economic and social impact of SCI, there is a huge need of investment in development of technologies for treatments, rehabilitation, low cost assistive devices and BCIs, that could be practical in clinics and accessible to the affected population and care-givers.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"34 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129129155","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Professional presentations: “Demonstration of a wave-powered desalination system in cape verde”","authors":"Bill Staby","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058162","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058162","url":null,"abstract":"Over 1 billion people suffer from the effects of water scarcity with the majority being poor residents of developing countries. Desalting seawater is an excellent potential solution but reverse osmosis (R/O) desalination systems require a connection to a strong electrical grid. However, because developing countries typically lack sufficient electrical grid capacity and cannot afford the capital or time required to build and deploy traditional R/O systems, Resolute Marine has developed an innovative solution to this problem — a wave-driven desalination system (called Wave2O™) that can be deployed quickly, operate completely “off-grid” and supply large quantities of fresh water at competitive cost. A location for a pilot-scale Wave2O™ plant in Cape Verde has been secured and the site assessment studies, e.g. bathymetric surveys, wave energy assessment, and water quality assessment, started in Q2 2017 financed by the African Development Bank through a $1.0M SEFA (Sustainable Energy Fund for Africa) grant. During his presentation at the IHTC, Bill Staby will provide details of the Wave2O™ system and of the Cape Verde pilot project.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"114 4 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"132011500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Technologies in the planning of refugees' camps: A parametric participative framework for spatial camp planning","authors":"E. Daher, S. Kubicki","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058189","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058189","url":null,"abstract":"The paper addresses computational design as a key technological asset in the development of the post-disaster responses related to temporary housing. In particular, the research targets context-aware adaptation to usage requirements at the camp fragment level. Indeed, nowadays, cities are key resources to answer growing humanitarian needs in terms of sheltering and camps. These situations are increasing due to different factors related to the nature, climate change or human activities. Resilience is therefore essential at the levels of districts, cities and territories. A framework based on the parametric computational approach is developed for the design of refugee camp which consider the requirements needed and can allow the participation of refugees in the design process. The first application of this framework is applied in Luxembourg where the city is involved in the humanitarian crisis in Europe. The objective of this work is to help policy makers and humanitarians in the optimization of the spatial design of camps. The use of parametric modeling approach enables the optimization of space layout planning.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129991074","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Earthquake disaster management analysis in Dhaka","authors":"M. Ahmed, H. Morita","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058197","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058197","url":null,"abstract":"A massive earthquake has been forecast for Bangladesh in the near future due to its position at the junction of three continental plates. Should it occur, the earthquake is expected to be devastating, particularly in the capital city of Dhaka, due to the large number of high-rise buildings constructed on relatively unstable ground and the high population density of the metropolitan area. In this paper, we use statistics-based methodology to identify correlations among the occupancy classifications, emergency response, and population density. Multiple regression analysis indicates that the level of satisfaction regarding disaster management is fairly low with respect to emergency response and medical care.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"1 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"130454991","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Welcoming Syrian refugees to Canada technology-enabled social innovation","authors":"W. Cukier, S. Jackson","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058194","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058194","url":null,"abstract":"The Syrian refugee crisis has been termed “the greatest humanitarian crisis of the last century” and countries around the world have stepped up to provide safe haven to millions of Syrians fleeing violence. Canada's unique private sponsorship policy coupled with government sponsorship of refugees saw more than 40,000 welcomed to Canada in a matter of months prompting the need for new processes and solutions. Grassroots organizations emerged, with new partnerships, processes and approaches enabled with new applications of simple technologies and revealed opportunities to leverage and amplify government resources. While fragmented and sometimes primitive these efforts signaled new opportunities to create an innovative “sharing economy” approach. This paper will review the relations between these new initiatives, actors and networks and the opportunities to drive systems change through a social innovation lens.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"196 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115653453","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Intercultural engineering online: Getting humanitarian engineering on the agenda","authors":"J. V. D. Vegte","doi":"10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1109/IHTC.2017.8058205","url":null,"abstract":"Engineers and technologists are essential to solving many of the planet's most pressing problems; among them: clean water, sanitation, access to energy, carbon reduction, built infrastructure, disaster relief, transportation, and sustainable agriculture. These issues are headlines in the domain referred to as “humanitarian engineering”. Yet, despite the urgency, the majority of engineers do not spend their careers solving the problems where need is greatest. In what ways can young engineers be drawn towards working on the critical challenges being faced by so many people worldwide? By what means can a feeling of professional responsibility or duty be inculcated? How can the goals of humanitarian engineering be linked to young engineers' views of their own careers? This paper reviews one effort to address these questions by way of an online course linking questions of cultural dimensions, multicultural teams, and intercultural communication to humanitarian engineering, sustainable development goals (SDGs), and engineers' social responsibility. Pre- and post-assessments reveal several statistically significant trends that suggest the online course, entitled “Intercultural Engineering,” has some efficacy in shifting students' perspectives. As such, it appears to be a useful tool in supporting SDG 17, which seeks to revitalize global partnerships for sustainable development through shared values, visions, and goals.","PeriodicalId":284183,"journal":{"name":"2017 IEEE Canada International Humanitarian Technology Conference (IHTC)","volume":"36 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2017-07-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"129529497","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}