Akhlaq Ahmad

Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia, Mechanical Engineering, Faculty Member

International Islamic University Malaysia, Kulliyyah of Information and Communication Technology (kict), PhD Scholar

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Papers by Akhlaq Ahmad

A Platform for Extracting Driver Behavior from Vehicle Sensor Big Data

International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications, 2020

Traffic analysis of vehicles in densely populated areas and places of public gathering can provid... more Traffic analysis of vehicles in densely populated areas and places of public gathering can provide interesting insights into crowd behavior. Hajj is a spatio-temporally bound religious activity that is held annually and attended by more than 2 million people. More than 17,000 buses are used to transport pilgrims on fixed days to fixed locations. This poses great challenges in terms of crowd management. Using Global Positioning System (GPS) and Automatic Vehicle Location (AVL) sensors attached to buses, a large amount of spatiotemporal vehicle data can be collected for traffic analysis. In this paper, we present a study whereby driver behavior was extracted from an analysis of vehicle big data. We have explained in detail how we collected data, cleaned it, moved it to a big data repository, processed it and extracted information that helped us characterize driver behavior according to our definition of aggressiveness. We have used data from 17,000 buses that has been collected during Hajj 2018.

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A constraint-aware optimized path recommender in a crowdsourced environment

2015 IEEE/ACS 12th International Conference of Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA), 2015

Recommending an optimized path for a large crowd poses a unique challenge to existing routing alg... more Recommending an optimized path for a large crowd poses a unique challenge to existing routing algorithms due to the interactions between users and the dynamic changes over road networks. Industries, researchers and end users show an enormous interest in crowdsourced data comprising social networks and user-generated content to remain updated with their concerns. In this paper, we present a data collection framework that helps users to find optimized routes in a dynamic environment. We have developed a data collection framework to collect dynamic road conditions via a set of location-based services to support a very large Hajj crowd by capturing their locations using smartphones. We also collect geotagged social network data that provides more details about road conditions. The system leverages geotagged crowdsourced information to identify constraints such as accidents, congestions, and roadblocks. Moreover, by continuously collecting real-time geotagged data of moving users, the system can also find the flow of traffic and road conditions. We propose a spatial grid index to compute the optimized path, and to identify the affected users within impact zones. The plan is to test the whole application and back-end server during Hajj 2016, where over three million pilgrims from all over the world gather to perform their rituals.

A Framework to Extract Trip Informatics for Individuals and Groups Using Mobile Sensory Data in Mass Gathering Events

2020 IEEE International Conference on Big Data (Big Data), 2020

Massive gatherings require hosting authorities to plan and deploy extensive arrangements to facil... more Massive gatherings require hosting authorities to plan and deploy extensive arrangements to facilitate attendees while considering crowd safety the core objective. The task becomes more challenging when crowd is diverse in terms of language, culture, ethics and age-group. Hajj is an annual event where more than 2 million pilgrims from all over the world, gather in Makkah Al-Mukarramah to perform a series of spatio-temporal rituals. To plan and execute the event, the management needs to understand the behavior of both individuals and groups of pilgrims belonging to different nationalities. In this paper, we proposed a big data framework that collects mobile sensory data from all pilgrims by providing them location-based context-aware services through a mobile application. We utilize the collected data to study pedestrians’ flow rate, mobility patterns for individuals and groups and their behaviour and preferences during movement. The extracted information can be analyzed to propose solutions to crowd related challenges, including mobility schedules, crowd modelling and simulation and emergency evacuation plans.

A Modelling and Scheduling Tool for Crowd Movement in Complex Network

Intelligent Automation & Soft Computing

Managing events pose a unique challenge to the stakeholders and authorities to control the crowd ... more Managing events pose a unique challenge to the stakeholders and authorities to control the crowd in all three phases of the event (pre, during and post), ensuring crowd safety. One of the fundamental keys to provide crowd safety is to consider the mobility infrastructure hosting the crowd, i.e., routes, areas, entrances and exits. During Hajj, where millions of pilgrims worldwide fulfil the annual event's rites, mina encampment incorporates pilgrims performing recurring stoning ritual conducted over multi-level Jamarat bridge. Pilgrims mobility through the available complex road network, to and back from the Jamarat bridge, forces upon authorities in charge to set out mobility plans which may require off and on modification as per attendees' preferences and organizational needs. This paper presents a basis for mathematical modelling of pilgrims' mobility pattern in Mina by considering available corridors' capacity, limited times, group size restrictions, and road segment connectivity. The developed mathematical model can generate an efficient schedule to control the flow through these corridors, assess crowd management risks when corridors' capacity is affected by any emergency, and scientifically estimate each corridor's maximum allowable occupants

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Analyzing Pedestrian Crossflow Through Complex Transfer Corridors

Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, 2021

Large gatherings which are commonly allied with spatial and temporal constraints possess several ... more Large gatherings which are commonly allied with spatial and temporal constraints possess several managerial challenges. As far as walking is considered as a sustainable mode of pedestrian movement with crowd safety as the core objective, hosting authorities put relentless efforts to analyze crowd dynamics and provide with pre-and during event mobility plans. In this paper, we present our ongoing research about analyzing pedestrian movement of a very large annual gathering, the Hajj, where topographical nature of the hosting city Makkah proffer complex network of straight, circular, Y, L, T shape transfer corridors. Moreover, Hajj crowd diversity in terms of race, age and language makes it more laborious for the hosting authorities to tackle pedestrians crossflow to avoid any possible stampede. As a part of our study, we have analyzed the mobility of a group of pilgrims approaching the Jamarat bridge through a less complicated route that contained a L-shape transfer corridor. Pilgrims' movement was recorded through GPS sensory data with a timestamp by deploying a mobile phone application, during the Hajj 2019 event. The initial outcomes led us to go on modelling and then simulating multiple scenarios of pedestrians' movement through the network of complex corridors. We aim that our findings will support in designing optimized mobility plans by considering routes' capacity and available time to accommodate all groups.

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Digital Revolution for Hajj Crowd Management: A Technology Survey

IEEE Access, 2020

Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, is one of the most massive gathering events in the world. ... more Hajj, the annual pilgrimage to Makkah, is one of the most massive gathering events in the world. It is a mandatory religious activity, once in a lifetime for every sane well-off Muslim. Every year around 3 million Muslims across the globe visit Makkah to perform this spatiotemporally constrained set of religious activities, like circumambulation around the Kaaba and the encampment at Mina, Arafat and Muzdalifah. The key ritual at Rami-al-Jamarat (the stoning-of-the-pillars) is a place seen particularly crowded. The diversified nature of the crowd in terms of race, age, language and culture brings several administrative challenges for local organizers whose responsibility is to ensure the smooth organization of the event. The advent of digital technologies has helped researchers to explore and propose modern methods for better crowd management and devise control strategies to organize such a mass gathering. In this paper, we present a taxonomy that summarizes our survey on the utilization of technology areas for providing needful services and improving crowd management during the Hajj season. These technologies are Wireless, Computer Vision, Spatial Computing, Data Analytics, Mobile Applications, Immersive Technologies, and Crowd Modelling and Simulation. We have also included the current research work and its implementation plan for Hajj 2020. One dimension of the taxonomy is to understand different possible technologies for Crowd management. Another dimension is to understand the impact of technologies to handle such a massive crowd. The discussion section covers a comparison of technologies with multiple aspects that may help researchers to contribute more towards dealing with future mass gathering events. INDEX TERMS Hajj, crowd management, mass gatherings, large events, technology review.

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Gamifying hand physical therapy with intelligent 3D navigation

SIGSPATIAL Special, 2016

As human-centered interactive technologies, serious games are getting popularity in a variety of ... more As human-centered interactive technologies, serious games are getting popularity in a variety of fields such as training simulations, health, national defense, and education. To build the best learning experience when designing a serious game, a system requires the integration of accurate spatio-temporal information. Also, there is an increasing need for intelligent medical technologies, which enable patients to live independently at home. This paper introduces a novel e-Health framework that leverages GIS-based serious games for people with disabilities. This framework consists of a spatio-temporal map-browsing environment augmented with our newly introduced multi-sensory natural user interface. We propose a comprehensive architecture that includes a sensory data manager, a storage layer, an information processing and computational intelligence layer, and a user interface layer. Detailed mathematical modeling as well as mapping methodology to convert different therapy-based hand-ge...

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Towards a mobile and context-aware framework from crowdsourced data

The 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for The Muslim World (ICT4M), 2014

ABSTRACT Capturing users&#39; spatio-temporal context by recognizing their interests, locatio... more ABSTRACT Capturing users&#39; spatio-temporal context by recognizing their interests, locations, history and activities, and thereafter providing context-aware services is a challenging task. In this paper, we propose a spatio-temporal zoning model that takes different context dimensions into account and try to recommend necessary services to users in a personalized way. First, we propose a generic zoning model with unrestricted set of contexts where both spatial and temporal dimensions are relaxed, followed by two semi-restricted zoning models in which either spatial or temporal dimension is relaxed, while the other one is restricted. Finally, we show the model requiring restricted spatio-temporal zoning that applies to the scenario where millions of users need to perform some activities that have to be performed in a certain location and at a certain temporal period. We use the above zoning model for Hajj and Umrah events to define pilgrim&#39;s spatio-temporal contexts by capturing their real-time and historic activities through their smartphones&#39; sensory data. This allows to intelligently recommend a set of necessary services to the users. We present a few of the implementations introduced in our proposed system.

A framework for crowd-sourced data collection and context-aware services in Hajj and Umrah

2014 IEEE/ACS 11th International Conference on Computer Systems and Applications (AICCSA), 2014

ABSTRACT We propose a context aware framework that offers a set of cloud-based services to suppor... more ABSTRACT We propose a context aware framework that offers a set of cloud-based services to support a very large Hajj and Umrah crowd by capturing their contexts using smartphones. The proposed framework captures the individual&#39;s context, provides a set of adapted services, and allows being in touch with a subset of one&#39;s community of interest. We leverage the spatio-temporal sensory data captured by our framework to define users&#39; contexts for optimized services. Our proposed framework is also envisioned to assist the Hajj and Umrah authorities to (1) improve Hajj &amp; Umrah documentation, (2) improve Hajj organization through better understanding of pilgrims&#39; (individual and crowd) spatial and temporal behavior and needs, and (3) protect pilgrims&#39; environment through environmental monitoring. In particular, the developed methods, techniques, and algorithms will support the pilgrimage quality of experience. We have tested our system through end-user subjects and due to apply for the upcoming Hajj events. We present our implementation details and the general impression of end users about our system.

Software Testing Techniques: A Literature Review

2016 6th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology for The Muslim World (ICT4M), 2016

With the growing complexity of today's software applications injunction with the increasing c... more With the growing complexity of today's software applications injunction with the increasing competitive pressure has pushed the quality assurance of developed software towards new heights. Software testing is an inevitable part of the Software Development Lifecycle, and keeping in line with its criticality in the pre and post development process makes it something that should be catered with enhanced and efficient methodologies and techniques. This paper aims to discuss the existing as well as improved testing techniques for the better quality assurance purposes.

Context-aware services based on spatio-temporal zoning and crowdsourcing

Behaviour & Information Technology, 2018

Crowdsourcing offers great opportunities to recognise user context and prescribe relevant service... more Crowdsourcing offers great opportunities to recognise user context and prescribe relevant services for both offline and real-time activities. In this work, we present a zoning model that leverages spatio-temporal dimensions and then employs different contexts to recommend necessary customised services. The context model takes into consideration three context sets: fully restricted, fully unrestricted and semi-restricted with respect to both spatial and temporal Scale Free Network Analysis of a Large Crowd through Their Spatio-Temporal Activities

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Calculus and its applications in scale-free networks

The 5th International Conference on Information and Communication Technology For the Muslim World, Nov 2, 2014

The purpose of this article is to highlight and emphasize the applications of calculus in scale-f... more The purpose of this article is to highlight and emphasize the applications of calculus in scale-free networks, which have been found as property of many complex networks. There are many different types of real and man-made complex networks in various domain of life ranging from technological, social, biological, transportation and ecological networks among many others. All these networks have shown many similar structural properties in their formation and functions. This article focuses on the most prevalence type of networks known as Scale-Free Networks (SFN). These types of networks have two basic properties: growth and preferential node attachment. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the importance and usage of calculus in understanding the formation of these type of networks, as these networks continuously change their topology by inclusion of new nodes and links as they evolve. Further, as the calculus is the mathematical study of change therefore the applications of calculus in evolution process of complex networks with fitness model have been explained analytically based on fit-get-rich phenomenon in the complex networks as compared to simple BA 1 model which is based, only on the consideration of number of nodes linkages in the networks.

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i-Diary

by Ahmad Qamar and Akhlaq Ahmad

Proceedings of the 23rd ACM international conference on Multimedia - MM '15, 2015

Aggregating interesting spatio-temporal events of daily life in a diary used to be favorite pasti... more Aggregating interesting spatio-temporal events of daily life in a diary used to be favorite pastime for many individuals. However, crescive use of social media through portable digital devices is replacing traditional diary writing. Thanks to ubiquity of smartphones, people can now add multiple media types in order to record joyful moments and events with a time line. In this paper, we propose a spatio-temporal multimedia authoring tool by leveraging the ubiquity of geo-tagged multimedia that represents activities of interest to the user and allowing users to aggregate the multimedia for generating a digital diary. The authoring tool allows users to aggregate one’s own spatial media with that of publicly available geo-tagged multimedia artifacts. The complex digital diary can then be saved into a big data repository for personal use as well as for sharing with a community of interest (COI). During the authoring process, the system allows a novel visualization technique of browsing clustered multiple points of interests (CMPOI) at a single GPS location, thereby exploring POIs in a multi-story building, shopping mall, etc. To facilitate efficient and user friendly discovery of CMPOIs, the authoring environment also supports spatio-temporal multimedia queries such as range and KNN (K nearest neighbor) queries from the big data environment. We plan to incorporate this multimedia authoring tool with our existing large scale multimedia supported crowdsourcing environment that is envisioned to support millions of pilgrims during the Hajj 2015 event.

Generating Alerts using Context-aware Security and Brahms Model for Customer Service Improvement

by Akhlaq Ahmad and Akhlaq Ahmad

Every organisation set some objectives to achieve success which is closely related with the quali... more Every organisation set some objectives to achieve success which is closely related with the quality assurance. Human behavior brought many challenges in variety of situations in an organisation which is sometimes untraceable phenomena. The real challenge is to control the collective human behavior at customer service department in an organisation which may pose a serious threat to the top management in terms of its defined objectives. Human behavioral activities can be monitored using Brahms Model Technique along with the Warning Alert Generation System which would maximize the efficiency and improve the system performance at customer service level. In this paper, we propose context aware security measure which would complement the system performance in terms of human error detection and rectification. Generating timely alerts using context aware security measure along with Brahms Model would improve the system performance.

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Calculus And Its Application In Scale Free Networks

by Abdul Waheed Mahesar, Akhlaq Ahmad, and Dr. Hafiz Abid Mahmood Malik

The purpose of this article is to highlight and emphasize the applications of calculus is scale f... more The purpose of this article is to highlight and emphasize the applications of calculus is scale free-networks, which have been found as property of many complex networks. There are many different types of real an man made complex networks in various domain of life ranging from technological, social biological, transportation and ecological networks among many others. All these networks have shown many similar structural properties in their formation and functions. This article focuses on the most prevalence type of networks known as Scale-Free Networks (SFN). These types of networks have two basic properties: growth and preferential node attachment. In this paper, we analyze and discuss the importance and usage of calculus in understanding the formation of these types of networks, as inclusion of new nodes and links as they evolve. Further, as the calculus is the mathematical study of change therefore the applications of calculus in evolution process of complex networks with fitness model have been explained analytically based on fit-get-rich phenomenon in the complex networks as compared to simple BA model which is based, only on the consideration of number of nodes linkages in the network.

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Multi-Layered Alert Filtration and Feedback Cycle using Brahms Model

by Akhlaq Ahmad and Akhlaq Ahmad

Customer service improvement is directly related with organizational standards and productivity. ... more Customer service improvement is directly related with organizational standards and productivity. Employees activities have certain objectives to be followed but sometimes outcomes are different than expected. Human error while performing regular job activities cause sufficient losses and difficult to address. Management faces real challenges while dealing with employee related issues and sometimes becomes unproductive. We propose Brahms Model with multi layered alert filtration and feedback cycle which would address the human error in the system and generate the filtered alerts in the form of sms or by emails. This is especially useful for Human-Computer Interfacing (HCI) Scenarios. Controlling human error and addressing real issues may protect any institution from severe damage and losses. Efficiency of a customer service department can be improved and maximized by multi-layered alert filtration system using Brahms Model.

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Demo Abstract: HajjCPS - A Cyber Physical Environment for Providing Location-Aware Services to a Very Large Crowd

2016 ACM/IEEE 7th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems (ICCPS), 2016

In this demo we will present a suite of smartphone applications that support location-aware, pers... more In this demo we will present a suite of smartphone applications that support location-aware, personalized multimedia services to a very large crowd with the help of a cyber computing infrastructure. As a proof of concept, we target Hajj where more than 5 million pilgrims perform spatio-temporal activities. The cyber-physical system creates an ad-hoc social network among pilgrims, their family members, Hajj authorities, vehicles that provide services to the pilgrims, medical doctors and hospitals, and the city admins. The crowdsourced multimedia data from the suite of smartphone applications are captured by the cyber environment, processed to extract context information, sent to a cloud environment for real-time query processing, and finally shared with a very large crowd. The framework has been deployed since 2014.

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Scale Free Network Analysis of a Large Crowd through Their Spatio-Temporal Activities

2015 4th International Conference on Advanced Computer Science Applications and Technologies (ACSAT), 2015

Many real world complex networks from different domains share a common property that their node c... more Many real world complex networks from different domains share a common property that their node connectivity shows a scale-free power law behavior. In such networks, highly connected nodes (Hubs) are widely believed to have special importance in network management. In this paper, we discuss an environment whereby members of a very large crowd gathered to perform spatio-temporal activities, interact with different services and with one another to form a network of interest. The context of users is captured through smartphones and is processed by a cloud based framework to identify the aforementioned Hubs. We show that initial results exhibit Scale Free Network (SFN) behavior that can be further utilized for instant diffusion of important messages within the network through successive allocation of Hubs. We will focus on two basic network analysis metrics, in particular, degree of nodes and their weighted links. We will show that weighted links are closer to have a SFN behavior. We also plan to validate the effectiveness of our proposed SFN crowd behavior during next year Hajj, where millions of pilgrims will get together to perform religious rituals.

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i-Diary: A Crowdsource-based Spatio-Temporal Multimedia Enhanced Points of Interest Authoring Tool

by Akhlaq Ahmad, Ahmad Qamar, and Faizan Rehman

Proceedings of the 23rd ACM international conference on Multimedia - MM '15, 2015

Aggregating interesting spatio-temporal events of daily life in a diary used to be favorite past... more Aggregating interesting spatio-temporal events of daily life in a diary used to be favorite pastime for many individuals. However, crescive use of social media through portable digital devices is replacing traditional diary writing. Thanks to ubiquity of
smartphones, people can now add multiple media types in order to record joyful moments and events with a time line. In this paper, we propose a spatio-temporal multimedia authoring tool by leveraging the ubiquity of geo-tagged multimedia that represents activities of interest to the user and allowing users to aggregate the multimedia for generating a digital diary. The authoring tool allows users to aggregate one’s own spatial media with that of publicly available geo-tagged multimedia artifacts. The complex digital diary can then be saved into a big data repository for personal use as well as for sharing with a community of interest
(COI). During the authoring process, the system allows a novel visualization technique of browsing clustered multiple points of interests (CMPOI) at a single GPS location, thereby exploring POIs in a multi-story building, shopping mall, etc. To facilitate efficient and user friendly discovery of CMPOIs, the authoring environment also supports spatio-temporal multimedia queries such as range and KNN (K nearest neighbor) queries from the big data environment. We plan to incorporate this multimedia authoring tool with our existing large scale multimedia supported
crowdsourcing environment that is envisioned to support millions of pilgrims during the Hajj 2015 event.

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A Multi-sensory Gesture-Based Login Environment

by Ahmad Qamar, Akhlaq Ahmad, Faizan Rehman, and Abdullah Murad

Proceedings of the 23rd ACM international conference on Multimedia - MM '15, 2015

Logging on to a system using a conventional keyboard may not be feasible in certain environments,... more Logging on to a system using a conventional keyboard may not be feasible in certain environments, such as, in a surgical operation theatre or in an industrial manufacturing facility. We have developed a multi-sensory gesture based login system that allows a user to access secure information using body gestures. The system can be configured to use different types of gestures according to the type of sensors available to the user. We have proposed a simple scheme to represent all alphanumeric characters required for password entry as gestures within the multi-sensory environment. Our scheme is scalable enough to support sensors that detect a large number of gestures to those that can only accept a few. This allows the system to be used in a variety of situations such as usage by disabled persons with
limited ability to perform gestures. We are in the midst of deploying our developed system in a clinical environment.

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