ICT: Informatics

Naturalistic Driving Studies (NDS) is a research methodology that has the potential to improve existing approaches for collecting data about driver behaviour and performance in normal driving conditions. Analysis of naturalistic driving data in normal driving conditions provides a possibility of big data sets that can be used to understand the characteristics that lead to vehicle crashes and/or near crashes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of NDS to improve driver behaviour and adherence to road rules. Making use of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical framework, the study managed to illicit responses from both drivers and management, in companies where the technology is used, to show that NDS provides the company and drivers with information that can improve driving ability. Overall, the results provide a clear indication that by making use of the data generated through use of NDS, it is possible to identify risky driver behaviour, whic...

Internationally, evidence-based research informs the actions and interventions that are successfully implemented in developed countries, aiming for a zero fatality rate. South African progress to reduce the number of fatal road crashes remains slow and traditional approaches to address road safety seems to be ineffective. There is a need for targeted road safety research that informs the design and implementation of road safety interventions. To promote a better understanding of the value that evidence-based road safety research plays in supporting the implementation of initiatives within the Road Traffic Safety Management System (RTSMS), CSIR Built Environment has for the past five years invested a portion of the parliamentary grant into the development of the naturalistic driving studies (NDS) methodology. NDS is a research approach that facilitates a better understanding of the contributory factors and interactions between the environment, human and vehicle. This research paper c...

This study aimed to ascertain the types of approaches that are applied in the assessments of information security and cybersecurity user awareness and training programs. The study focused on achieving two objectives. The first objective focused on to find out what measurements are used in the assessment of the effectiveness of information security and cybersecurity user awareness and training programs. The second objective focused on studies that made use of maturity models to measure the progress of these programs. A Scoping Literature Review process was followed to achieve these objectives. The study found that there is a gap in current literature with regards to the assessment of these programs, as only five papers and two maturity models focused on the assessment of these programs. The study further recommends that more studies be conducted in the assessment of these programs, as most researchers are encouraging the use of the programs in the fight against cyber-attacks.

Transport is an important sector for the economic development of South Africa. The maritime environment plays a very important role as it sustains other sectors in the economy. A sustainable transport system requires that all systems operate efficiently and continuously with minimum failure. Cyber-attacks are disruptive and may destruct the functions and operations of any sector including that of transport and more specifically maritime transport. This paper provides feedback regarding an investigation which was conducted with maritime transport organisations in South Africa to understand if any cybersecurity measures, policies, strategies etc. are in place and are successfully implemented to prevent cyberattacks. A systematic literature review and a qualitative content analysis research technique was used to assess the status of maritime organisation’s ability to identify and prevent such attacks. The results of the study indicate that the South African government has put relevant ...

Naturalistic Driving Studies (NDS) is a research methodology that has the potential to improve existing approaches for collecting data about driver behaviour and performance in normal driving conditions. Analysis of naturalistic driving data in normal driving conditions provides a possibility of big data sets that can be used to understand the characteristics that lead to vehicle crashes and/or near crashes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of NDS to improve driver behaviour and adherence to road rules. Making use of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) as a theoretical framework, the study managed to illicit responses from both drivers and management, in companies where the technology is used, to show that NDS provides the company and drivers with information that can improve driving ability. Overall, the results provide a clear indication that by making use of the data generated through use of NDS, it is possible to identify risky driver behaviour, whic...

The 35th annual Southern African Transport Conference (SATC), CSIR ICC 4-7 July 2016. Due to copyright restrictions, the attached PDF file only contains the abstract of the full text item. For access to the full text item, please consult the publisher's website.

Naturalistic driving and field operational tests are used worldwide to collect data from drivers in order to better understand the human, vehicle and environment interactions. The fairly new methodology has already provided great insight into numerous driver behaviours that could previously not be observed directly. The data is collected with a data acquisition system which is installed in the vehicle. This system consists of cameras facing the driver (and passengers) as well as cameras facing outward. An on-board computer is installed in the vehicle and collects information about the vehicle. This information includes satellite positions, data and time as well as speed and acceleration and deceleration data. The system collects large volumes of data and the challenge is to manage this data efficiently as currently the datasets take-up much storage space, are in different formats necessitating that different software programs be used to download, transcribe and analyse the data. Thi...

Transport is an important sector for the economic development of South Africa. The maritime environment plays a very important role as it sustains other sectors in the economy. A sustainable transport system requires that all systems operate efficiently and continuously with minimum failure. Cyber-attacks are disruptive and may destruct the functions and operations of any sector including that of transport and more specifically maritime transport. This paper provides feedback regarding an investigation which was conducted with maritime transport organisations in South Africa to understand if any cybersecurity measures, policies, strategies etc. are in place and are successfully implemented to prevent cyber-attacks. A systematic literature review and a qualitative content analysis research technique was used to assess the status of maritime organisation's ability to identify and prevent such attacks. The results of the study indicate that the South African government has put relevant structures in place to ready the country for cyber-attacks, what is lacking is how these structures are used by organisations. This study also provides a brief overview of the existence of cybersecurity activities in the maritime transport industry of South Africa.

On one hand South African institutions of higher learning are English language environment dominated by underprepared learners and overpopulated classrooms. On the other hand the country has seen an increase of learners entering higher learning fraternity with a fair demonstration of social media proficiency. It was for these reasons this study aimed to conceptualize a framework for ubiquitous learning support in a social media environment. The paper adopted Information System (IS) theories: Context Awareness (CA) and Social Presence (SP) to analyze the textual interactions between learners and their teachers on a social network platform. The analysis was based on how CA and SP manifest and influence learning in the social networking environment. Following a qualitative paradigm, content analysis was used to analyze the data collected in a contextual enquiry. Online focus group and textual interactions (analysis of documentary evidence) were used as qualitative data collection methods for this study. The study found that SP surfaces through the use of predefined modalities of the social networking sites and those that are defined and accepted by the social network sites community. Although contextual task awareness dependents on the user, CA indicators such as temporal and identity takes place automatically through contextual reconfiguration. In this study learners revealed that they were able to converse using any language at any given time and space, including their home language, English or even informal spoken language when interrogating the learning content online

E-learning success is dependent on effective and efficient delivery of teaching and learning contents electronically. New technological innovations have greatly facilitated e-learning and have made it conducive to those who can afford. Developed countries have significantly benefited from these innovations whereas developing economies are still battling with the many challenges that have hindered e-learning success. The advent of Web 2.0 and Free Open Source Software (FOSS) would have been seen as the breakthrough for the developing economies to embrace e-learning. However, many factors still impede the utilization of these technologies for e-learning. The major objective of this paper is to discuss the factors that hinder institutions from utilizing Web 2.0 and FOSS for e-learning. Content analysis was used to evaluate the factors that had been identified in literature and to tally them according to their frequency. 36 factors were deduced and analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM) method. Results indicated that technological factors predominantly impact on the utilization of Web 2.0 and FOSS for e-learning. The framework of this study serves as a guideline in the use of Web 2.0 and FOSS technologies for e-learning.

The ubiquitous of computers have made the need to use information technology in teaching and learning vital. The demand for paradigm shift from teacher-cantered to learner-cantered have increased the institutions desire to use e-learning tools. However, this has come with a dilemma of choosing which elearning tool should be acquired and for whom and if so, at what and whose cost. This has lead to many institutions acquire several learning management systems that leaves the students and their instructors with a burden of selecting which system to use. The major objective of this paper is to examine the factors that influence students' decisions when selecting a course management system (CMS) to use. This paper uses the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) method to develop a framework that could be used when selecting CMSs. The study is informed by a case study of Tshwane University of Technology (TUT). Results of this study are expected to contribute to e-learning literature and to serve as practical evidence used by institutional administrators to acquire e-learning tools.

Health IT has become a driving force for health institutions to offer high-quality diagnoses and to provide solutions designed to assist medical personnel; to share information and decisions as has seen the improvement of patients’ healthcare. The integration of IT in healthcare and the implementation of electronic health (e-health) systems have however been seen successful in those health institutions of developed countries but still challenged in developing nations. Many factors have been suggested to attribute to these challenges but most of overall is the readiness of these health institutions. This implies that health institutions in developing countries need to carryout e-health readiness assessment prior to its implementation. The major objective of this study was to report on the e-health readiness assessment model contextualized to developing countries. The study employed the analytical hierarchical process (AHP) to validate the data that was collected from health institutions of rural Northwest South Africa. Results indicated that core readiness is the most essential element for e-health readiness. The designed model will be used theoretically in the investigation of new ways of implementing e-health in developing countries. Practically, the model will be used to assist healthcare decision makers and governments to make informed decisions of how to grant citizens affordable access to healthcare especially the disadvantaged ones in rural areas

Mobile and Internet-based technologies evolve rapidly and new hardware or software tends to stimulate related innovation. There are some indications that accessible and affordable technologies that allow the sharing of multimedia may attract interest from new groups of users, namely for marketing and by people who use mobile phones to take photographs but currently cannot share them easily and affordably. The question raised in this paper is whether the nature of these technologies has made the well-established theories and models of technology adoption obsolete. The constructs used come from the Diffusion of Innovation Model (DIM) and the extensions to it and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) and 'the constructs of cost and perceived enjoyment are added. The data obtained from South African university students was analysed according to whether they classify themselves as innovator, early adopter, early majority or late majority adopters of Multimedia Message Services. Different factors were found to be significant for different diffusion groups but cost and perceived enjoyment (neither of which come from DIM or UTAUT) were significant for the majority. A second comparison was done for current users versus non-users and social influence was found to be significant for current users only; non-users identified perceived enjoyment (positively) and results demonstrability (negatively). The results were then compared with a similar study carried out in Taiwan by Hsu et al. (2007) and differences between the two studies highlight the importance of time, place and the respondents selected. The conclusion is that new technology adoption and diffusion models are needed for rapidly co-evolving mobile technologies.

This paper addresses the challenge of assessing an ICT for development (ICT4D) project’s contribution to the socioeconomic development of the broader community where it is implemented. It argues for using a systems approach to deal with this challenge, since systems thinking is concerned with the performance of the total system. Systems thinking is seldom used in ICT4D, and is lacking in existing ICT4D impact assessment frameworks. In this paper, the authors apply a social systems framework in an ICT4D case study. The framework is used to describe and assess the contribution of the ICT4D project to the socioeconomic development of the larger community. Since Community Informatics (CI) embraces a broad sociotechnical systems view, the work is relevant to a CI audience.

The ICT4D context is a complex, multi-faceted one that needs to take into account political, cultural, economic and infrastructural factors, which often prove to be more challenging to deal with than the technological aspects. This messy context may benefit from a systems
approach: Systems thinking provides a holistic view and  transdisciplinary methods to describe and analyse complex situations. But to what extent has ICT4D benefited from systems thinking in the past? This paper presents a literature survey of the use of systems
thinking in ICT4D. Prominent ICT4D publication outlets have been searched for any reference to systems thinking. The papers identified in the search are discussed in terms of the problems they address and the systems methods used. The results of the survey indicate not only a lack of the use of systems concepts in ICT4D, but also a fragmentedness in the application of systems concepts. The paper tries to make sense of these findings and provides a few perspectives to help interpret them. It concludes with a challenge to systems thinkers to put more effort into disseminating their work to the ICT4D research audience.