In the last two decades traffic Incident Management (IM) has become an important tool to reduce a... more In the last two decades traffic Incident Management (IM) has become an important tool to reduce and prevent congestion on the road network, especially in urban areas. IM involves the coordinated interactions of many public and private actors. To support their tasks in an effective way, information systems are becoming increasingly important. In particular, information and system quality and Situational Awareness (SA) have been identified as major hurdles for effective emergency response. This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of net-centric information systems to improve the cooperation between public and private IM organizations. A set of controlled experiments were conducted with 16 participants. Data on the responses of the participants were collected through questionnaires and observer notes. The analysis focused on: a comparison of the tools tested, in terms of the appreciation of information and system quality, a comparison of the communic...
Efficient emergency response needs a multidisciplinary approach which in turn calls for a high le... more Efficient emergency response needs a multidisciplinary approach which in turn calls for a high level of collaboration and coordination among the involved safety agencies. Furthermore, in order to cope with the complexity, uncertainty and dynamic nature of an emergency, flexible information and communication systems are required. Based on experiences from the military domain, strategic concepts which can improve information sharing and collaboration can be derived and adapted towards enhancing emergency response information systems and operational effectiveness. This study purports to review the state of the art in this field providing recommendations for emergency response policy makers, professionals and researchers. Contribution/Originality: The paper contributes in the existing literature by reviewing the state-of-the-art in the field of emergency response and provides recommendations for policy makers, professionals and researchers towards enhancing emergency response information systems and operational effectiveness. 1. INTRODUCTION Natural disasters strike since the ancient times and despite the advancements in science and technology, they still have enormous socioeconomic and environmental impacts each year [1, 2]. In the context of the dynamic and complex task environment of a disaster, multiple organizations and stakeholders are required to convert from autonomous actors to interdisciplinary and interdependent emergency response teams [3]. The probably most significant question that arises for these responding teams is what is going on [4]? For the latter, timely access to all relevant geo-information is critical [5]. During an emergency, several operational field units at different levels with various functional command structures coming from different organizations which may have different backgrounds, professional languages and operational expertise, they should share information acquired from various sources, communicate, cooperate and coordinate their actions within a short period of time towards normalizing an emergency situation [6]. The quality and timeliness of information can shape the effectiveness of the emergency response operations [7]. Furthermore,
Human beings will never be completely protected from natural, industrial or man-made disasters an... more Human beings will never be completely protected from natural, industrial or man-made disasters and accidents, since one can hardly predict when and where the next emergency situation will occur. What the humans can change is the way they respond to disasters. The whole disaster management sector requires urgent developments toward better, more
Features from the past in present cities have been identified as valuable and as potential assets... more Features from the past in present cities have been identified as valuable and as potential assets for future urban development. Transferring knowledge about the history and heritage of the urban landscape is considered to be a challenging matter. This paper discusses how the process of knowledge transfer between past and future oriented disciplines can be optimized by combining mobile geospatial app technologies with the methodological framework of the biography of the urban landscape. A digital cultural biography app for Testaccio, a district in Rome, is presented which aims to optimize the process of knowledge transfer, thus optimizing the use of urban cultural heritage. This best practice is considered to be highly innovative for the integration of heritage in current and future cities.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2018
In this article, we have assessed the educational affordances of Minecraft to teach school childr... more In this article, we have assessed the educational affordances of Minecraft to teach school children about sustainable spatial planning. Specifically, we carefully examined the expectations and experiences of the learners and the teachers of this digital game as an educational tool for spatial planning purposes. The results of this explorative study confirm the educational potential of Minecraft. However, connection problems and digital vandalism ('griefing') by other players may seriously hinder the learning process. Moreover, it is advised to start with traditional design materials (e.g., paper and pencil) before working in Minecraft, as learners may find it restricting to be able to build with rectangular blocks only.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest from the digital humanities in knowledge graph... more In recent years, there has been a growing interest from the digital humanities in knowledge graphs as data modelling paradigm. Already, this has led to the creation of many such knowledge graphs, many of which are now available as part of the Linked Open Data cloud. This presents new opportunities for data mining. In this work, we develop, implement, and evaluate (both data-driven and user-driven) an end-toend pipeline for user-centric pattern mining on knowledge graphs in the humanities. This pipeline combines constrained generalized association rule mining with natural language output and facet rule browsing to allow for transparency and interpretability-two key domain requirements. Experiments in the archaeological domain show that domain experts were positively surprised by the range of patterns that were discovered and were overall optimistic about the future potential of this approach.
In the last two decades traffic Incident Management (IM) has become an important tool to reduce a... more In the last two decades traffic Incident Management (IM) has become an important tool to reduce and prevent congestion on the road network, especially in urban areas. IM involves the coordinated interactions of many public and private actors. To support their tasks in an effective way, information systems are becoming increasingly important. In particular, information and system quality and Situational Awareness (SA) have been identified as major hurdles for effective emergency response. This paper reports the results of an empirical analysis of the effectiveness of net-centric information systems to improve the cooperation between public and private IM organizations. A set of controlled experiments were conducted with 16 participants. Data on the responses of the participants were collected through questionnaires and observer notes. The analysis focused on: a comparison of the tools tested, in terms of the appreciation of information and system quality, a comparison of the communic...
Efficient emergency response needs a multidisciplinary approach which in turn calls for a high le... more Efficient emergency response needs a multidisciplinary approach which in turn calls for a high level of collaboration and coordination among the involved safety agencies. Furthermore, in order to cope with the complexity, uncertainty and dynamic nature of an emergency, flexible information and communication systems are required. Based on experiences from the military domain, strategic concepts which can improve information sharing and collaboration can be derived and adapted towards enhancing emergency response information systems and operational effectiveness. This study purports to review the state of the art in this field providing recommendations for emergency response policy makers, professionals and researchers. Contribution/Originality: The paper contributes in the existing literature by reviewing the state-of-the-art in the field of emergency response and provides recommendations for policy makers, professionals and researchers towards enhancing emergency response information systems and operational effectiveness. 1. INTRODUCTION Natural disasters strike since the ancient times and despite the advancements in science and technology, they still have enormous socioeconomic and environmental impacts each year [1, 2]. In the context of the dynamic and complex task environment of a disaster, multiple organizations and stakeholders are required to convert from autonomous actors to interdisciplinary and interdependent emergency response teams [3]. The probably most significant question that arises for these responding teams is what is going on [4]? For the latter, timely access to all relevant geo-information is critical [5]. During an emergency, several operational field units at different levels with various functional command structures coming from different organizations which may have different backgrounds, professional languages and operational expertise, they should share information acquired from various sources, communicate, cooperate and coordinate their actions within a short period of time towards normalizing an emergency situation [6]. The quality and timeliness of information can shape the effectiveness of the emergency response operations [7]. Furthermore,
Human beings will never be completely protected from natural, industrial or man-made disasters an... more Human beings will never be completely protected from natural, industrial or man-made disasters and accidents, since one can hardly predict when and where the next emergency situation will occur. What the humans can change is the way they respond to disasters. The whole disaster management sector requires urgent developments toward better, more
Features from the past in present cities have been identified as valuable and as potential assets... more Features from the past in present cities have been identified as valuable and as potential assets for future urban development. Transferring knowledge about the history and heritage of the urban landscape is considered to be a challenging matter. This paper discusses how the process of knowledge transfer between past and future oriented disciplines can be optimized by combining mobile geospatial app technologies with the methodological framework of the biography of the urban landscape. A digital cultural biography app for Testaccio, a district in Rome, is presented which aims to optimize the process of knowledge transfer, thus optimizing the use of urban cultural heritage. This best practice is considered to be highly innovative for the integration of heritage in current and future cities.
Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Computer Supported Education, 2018
In this article, we have assessed the educational affordances of Minecraft to teach school childr... more In this article, we have assessed the educational affordances of Minecraft to teach school children about sustainable spatial planning. Specifically, we carefully examined the expectations and experiences of the learners and the teachers of this digital game as an educational tool for spatial planning purposes. The results of this explorative study confirm the educational potential of Minecraft. However, connection problems and digital vandalism ('griefing') by other players may seriously hinder the learning process. Moreover, it is advised to start with traditional design materials (e.g., paper and pencil) before working in Minecraft, as learners may find it restricting to be able to build with rectangular blocks only.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest from the digital humanities in knowledge graph... more In recent years, there has been a growing interest from the digital humanities in knowledge graphs as data modelling paradigm. Already, this has led to the creation of many such knowledge graphs, many of which are now available as part of the Linked Open Data cloud. This presents new opportunities for data mining. In this work, we develop, implement, and evaluate (both data-driven and user-driven) an end-toend pipeline for user-centric pattern mining on knowledge graphs in the humanities. This pipeline combines constrained generalized association rule mining with natural language output and facet rule browsing to allow for transparency and interpretability-two key domain requirements. Experiments in the archaeological domain show that domain experts were positively surprised by the range of patterns that were discovered and were overall optimistic about the future potential of this approach.
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Papers by Henk Scholten