DRM technologies

Somalia is among the most climate-vulnerable countries globally, facing extreme environmental shocks such as recurrent droughts, floods, desertification, and erratic rainfall patterns. These climatic disruptions intensify existing humanitarian crises, contributing to food insecurity, water scarcity, displacement, and health system failures. With over 80% of Somalia's landmass classified as arid and semi-arid, climate variability directly threatens livelihoods dependent on rain-fed agriculture and pastoralism. Consequently, communities experience cyclical food shortages, malnutrition, and disease outbreaks, exacerbating vulnerability among children, pregnant women, and marginalized groups.

It is very high time to act now without making any further delay in developing resilience infrastructure to secure a safe, healthy, and prosperous environment on planet earth for our generation next as extreme changes are taking place due to climate change. Since disasters are not natural but the hazard is, so we have to counter only natural hazards and our own people's behaviour on climate change. Innovative Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) techniques are to be adopted for reducing the reoccurring damages caused by the natural hazards like cyclones, droughts, earthquakes, and floods by developing resilience infrastructure for its prevention and proper mitigation. DRR is one of the fast emerging concept and practices followed by today's world under the aegis of UNDRR for reducing the risk of disasters through sincere efforts by analysing and reducing the causal factors being responsible for disasters. Reducing our exposure to natural hazards and reducing the vulnerability of surrounding people and loss of their property, judicious management of land and the environment, and recuperating our preparedness and deploying multi-hazard early warning systems for adverse events are a few examples of DRR methodologies. As disasters often follow natural hazards and their severity depends on how many knock a natural hazard has on the society and on the environment itself. The scale of the blow of disaster in turn depends on the choices we make for our lives and for our environment. These choices relates to how we grow our food, where and how we build our houses, what kind of government we have, whether good governance principles are in place and how our financial system works and even what we teach in our schools? Every decision and action makes us more vulnerable to disasters or makes us more susceptible to them. Thus Climate Financing and Socially Responsible Investments must now be promoted to develop the long-term infrastructures and investment planning based on the robust Environmental Social and Governance Analysis (ESG). In order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals and attain Environmental Sustainability (ES), the risk-informed finances and investments are needed for countering the increasing uncertainty in the present external environment aroused as a result of ignoring the consequences of Climate Change.

Disasters are increasing in frequency and intensity with impacts across all facets of human endeavour globally. Moreover, the impacts of disasters have been exacerbated by the climate change phenomenon. Climate change and weather events do not create disasters in isolation. However, disasters occur when extreme weather events intersect with vulnerable communities, dysfunctional governance and dilapidated infrastructure. Disaster education provides a viable tool for reinforcing the resilience of vulnerable communities and enhancing sustainable development. Hence, attaining knowledge and its implementation are considered as a viable approach to the management of disasters. This study employs the qualitative research method involving literature reviews on the nexus of disaster education and resilience, to assess the relationship between education and disaster management -

is the program's principal investigator and leads the program's Disaster Vulnerability project. This project is developing a disaster vulnerability model for Asia, which identifies the subnational locations in Southern and Southeast Asia that are most vulnerable to climate-related hazards, defined in terms of the potential for large-scale loss of life. ▪ Jennifer Bussell leads the program's National Disaster Preparedness project. This project assesses how government decisions to invest in disaster preparedness are impacted by a range of factors, including exposure to previous disasters, economic strength, electoral incentives, bureaucratic capacity, and the influence of the international community. ▪ Kate Weaver leads the program's International Aid to Mitigate Disasters and Complex Emergencies project. This project assesses whether international aid for both disaster risk reduction and management (DRRM) and disaster and humanitarian response is targeting areas of highest need and enhancing domestic efforts to build capacity in these areas. ▪ Ashley Moran and Josh Powell lead the program's Complex Emergencies Dashboard project. This project is designing an open access, online platform to leverage data and models produced by the program, combined with geospatial analytics designed in coordination with U.S. military and policy agencies, to provide a framework for diagnosing, analyzing, and responding to complex emergencies in Asia. ▪ Paula Newberg leads the program's Governance Implications of Complex Emergencies project. This project explores how climate and environmental factors have affected states' capacity to handle political and economic development, how the structure of governance has evolved to cope with emergencies, and how these governance dimensions contribute to the evolution of a natural hazards into a complex emergency. ▪ Clionadh Raleigh leads the program's Conflict and Complex Emergencies project. This project tracks conflict events and actors in real-time through an extension of the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset to high-risk Asian states. This project investigates how varied insecurities impact conflict patterns and, in turn, how conflict contributes to the development of complex emergencies.

Climate change exacerbates the challenges faced by waste workers, particularly in developing countries where the majority work in the informal sector. Rising temperatures, extreme weather events, and shifting disease patterns pose significant health and economic risks for these workers, who often operate without legal protections or access to healthcare. This review article synthesizes research, case studies, and activities linking climate change and waste workers, focusing on the health, economic, and social vulnerabilities exacerbated by climate change. The review also examines the situation in Nepal, where climate-induced hazards such as floods and landslides have further stressed waste management systems. It highlights case studies from countries like India, the Philippines, Kenya, and Nepal, exploring the challenges faced by waste workers and the adaptation strategies that have emerged. Policy recommendations for mitigating the impacts of climate change on waste workers are discussed, emphasizing the need for formalization of the sector, health and safety measures, and climate-resilient waste management systems.

Over 3 million individuals in the US have a disability in their hands and/or forearms and thus have difficulties in effecting pinch and swipe gestures needed for tablet interaction. In this paper, a forearm mountable mobile interface, TabAccess (controller for Tablet Accessibility) is introduced. The objective is to provide an input interface for individuals with limited manipulation skills an alternative way to interact with touchscreen tablet applications. We believe that by combining TabAccess with mobile computers, effective education and entertainment opportunities could be delivered to persons lacking fine motor skills. For translation of gross motor gestures into touchscreen-based gestures, a methodology was developed to convert raw sensor data retrieved from the sensors into press and swipe gestures. The proposed device recognizes different gestures generated by a combination of sensors with hidden Markov models. This paper presents the design specifications of TabAccess, and discusses the training and testing results with three diverse applications-a music player, a robot controller, and a communication app.

Many will remember 2020 as the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet for millions of people around the world, the virus served as a backdrop to another battle as we lived through the most intense period yet of climate fuelled extreme weather.

Unprecedented fires, extreme heat, powerful cyclones and devastating floods all occurred in 2019-20, capping off a decade in which the climate crisis hit hard.

Hitting Home: The Compounding Costs of Climate Inaction outlines the latest science on how climate change is driving more destructive heatwaves, downpours, cyclones, droughts, fires and other extreme weather events. It highlights significant events in Australia and around the world from the past two years. Taken alone, any one of the events described in this report – from Australia’s Black Summer bushfires to the record breaking North Atlantic hurricane season, or the remarkable Siberian heatwave – would mark the year as unusual. Taken together, they paint a disturbing portrait of our rapidly escalating climate emergency.

This paper introduces new interaction techniques for SmartSkin, a sensor architecture for freehand manipulation. This sensor recognizes multiple hand positions and shapes and calculates the distance between the hand and the surface by using capacitive sensing and a mesh-shaped antenna. Our interaction techniques enable the users to use not only their hands, but also their fingers concurrently.

This paper introduces new interaction techniques for Smart-Skin, a sensor architecture for freehand manipulation. This sensor recognizes multiple hand positions and shapes and calculates the distance between the hand and the surface by using capacitive sensing and a mesh-shaped antenna. Our interaction techniques enable the users to use not only their hands, but also their fingers concurrently.

Hand gesture interfaces provide an intuitive and natural way for interacting with a wide range of applications. Nowadays, the development of these interfaces is supported by an increasing number of sensing devices which are able to track hand and finger movements. Despite this, the physical and technical features of many of these devices make them unsuitable for the implementation of interfaces oriented to the everyday desktop applications. Conversely, the LEAP motion controller has been specifically designed to interact with these applications. Moreover, this latter device has been equipped with a hand skeletal model that provides tracking data with a high level of accuracy. This paper describes a novel approach to define and recognize hand gestures. The proposed method adopts freehand drawing recognition algorithms to interpret the tracking data of the hand and finger movements. Although our approach is applicable to any hand skeletal model, the overall features of that provided b...

Abstract
We are going to wait to beat Heat Waves. We must adapt to it and get resilient to a new normal. This paper reviews the impact of heat waves, an emerging disaster that has not received much attention recently because of the limited duration of heat waves during the summer months. The fatalities due to heat waves are often underreported. Israel, Palestine in West Asia; India, Pakistan and Bangladesh in South Asia; Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines in Southeast Asia have already reported large numbers of deaths in May 2024, as per World Weather Attribution.
The intensity of pre-monsoon Heat in South Asia is rising, and heat waves are becoming more frequent. In 2022, India and Pakistan experienced a drier heat wave, followed by humid heat waves in 2023 that affected India, Lao PDR., and Thailand. The drier Heat Wave led to widespread crop losses, while the humid heat wave disrupted lives and livelihoods. A panel of scientists from multiple countries has attributed these dry and humid heat waves to human activities.
The El Nino event in 2023 led to a significant drop in water levels in the Panama Canal due to reduced precipitation in the Amazon River Basin. This drought extended to Syria, Iraq, and Iran, affecting countries in South Africa and the Horn of Africa. These human-induced changes also resulted in severe floods in Southern Brazil, highlighting the global reach of heat wave-related disasters and the need for a coordinated international response.
Central Chile faced deadly wildfires in the Warm Climate.
High Temperatures cause Heat Waves, droughts, melting glaciers, and Wildfires. At the same time, the planet Earth faces hurricanes, tropical storms, and cold waves influenced by anthropogenic climate change.
The heat generated by missiles fired in war zones adds more carbon dioxide. The Northern Hemisphere is getting warmer. Renewable energy wind generators, solar panels, EV batteries, power transmission lines, and transformers are being affected, while the compressors in air conditioners are exploding due to overuse in extreme temperatures.
Giving Climate Update warns that if humanity fails to progress to net zero by reducing greenhouse gas emissions or by capturing increasingly worse heat records, it will tumble around 2028.
All these add to heat stress and adverse psychological impacts on weaker sections and those engaged in unorganised sector employment activities, especially those exposed to extreme heat waves.
This paper offers various Disaster Risk Reduction strategies to address heat wave preparedness, strengthening the Protection of weaker sections and Disability Inclusive. It also provides good practice examples of Heat Action Plans to reduce heatwave impacts to mitigate and create awareness on the effects of heat waves, creating greater awareness among stakeholder groups. Hot living is now the new normal, and communities are to be made resilient to the new normal.
Keywords: #Heat Waves, # Dry Heat, # Humid Heat , # Critical Infrastructure Protection  # Disaster Risk Management, # Economics of DRR; # Risk Governance # Social Impacts & Recovery, # Climate Change Compulsions, # DRR on Heat Waves  # Resilient Community

In this paper we discuss some of the key issues behind the need to move away from screens and keyboards on mobile devices. Our aim is to allow non-hand based gestures for input with 3D sound and tactile displays for output to create more effective mobile interactions that make mobile devices easier to use when on the move.

Adapting humanitarian action to the effects of climate change ii ALNAP is a global network of NGOs, UN agencies, members of the Red Cross/ Crescent Movement, donors, academics, networks and consultants dedicated to learning how to improve response to humanitarian crises.

We present here the Continuous Marking Menus, which help users learning a set of handwritten commands on a pen-based interface. The aim of this paper is to experimentally attest the interest of this new type of menu by evaluating its ability to help the learning of a set of gestures. We describe an experimental comparison on the task of learning a set of gestures with or without the help of Continuous Marking Menus, and we conclude that with the help of Continuous Marking Menus, people learn more easily the gestures.

This paper describes our experimental real time recognition sys-tem of handwritten mathematical expressions, linked to a computer algebra system Mathematica by Mathlink. This system is titled as INFTY". The fundamental operations of INFTY are 1 input of mathematical expressions using handwriting input system, 2 editing of them by basic editing operation cut, copy, paste and delete and 3 calculations and plotting graphs using Mathematica. INFTY also supports the input and output by T eX format. In the handwriting window, we adopt the automatic character rewriting method. This method largely improves the accuracy of the the structure analysis of the written mathematical expressions.

The strong El Niño event, which was forecast to reach peak intensity in late 2023 and then dissipate by mid-2024, will affect food insecurity across the globe. FEWS NET anticipates a total 1 of 105-110 million people will need food assistance through at least early 2024, comprising a net increase in needs in Southern Africa and the Latin America and Caribbean regions and a net decline in needs in East Africa. El Niño typically brings below-average rainfall to Southern Africa, and western East Africa, on the one hand, and above-average rainfall to eastern East Africa on the other hand. The impacts of poor rainfall and above-average temperatures on agriculture, food prices, and water, sanitation, and hygiene are of greatest concern in drought prone areas, as well as areas recovering from conflict. Meanwhile, the impacts of heavy rain and floods on food production, road and market infrastructure, and water, sanitation, and hygiene are of greatest concern in low-lying areas. Humanitarians should prepare for major relief assistance in multiple regions, especially during the 2024 lean seasons. African Governments must recognize the constitutive tenet: that development springs from the collective imagination, experiences and decision of people; once more testifying to how critical it is for development to proceed from the cultural make-up, skills, needs and aspirations of individuals and communities. The causal extreme plight of many peoples cannot be found in rainfall or production statistics alone. The roots of the crisis are to be found as much in the actions of human beings as in the weather reports. But if the blame does lie with human societal structures, it does mean massive problems. No one will find those solutions as long as we continue to blame God and nature.
Key words: El Niño, La Niña, Disaster, Preparedness, Response, Prevention

Mathematical novices-including students in introductory mathematics and statistics service courses-increasingly need to engage in online mathematical collaboration. Using currently-available interfaces for their mobile and touch-enabled devices, however, this group faces difficulties, for those interfaces are text-based and not directly suitable for mathematical communication and collaboration. To address the deficiency of digital input methods and interfaces for mathematics, we introduce a cross-platform synchronous communication interface for mathematical collaboration. The interface is designed to be intuitive for multiple user groups ranging from novices to experts. We demonstrate that it is possible to create a Web-based communication interface that simultaneously incorporates TeX-, palette-and pen-based input methods, and that is compatible with both touch-enabled tablet and traditional keyboard-mouse user interface principles. The design principles we introduce may be valuable for the design of other mathematical user interfaces on touch-enabled devices, such as with Computer Algebra System interaction.

Limited permission is granted free of charge to print or photocopy all pages of this publication for educational, not-for-profit use by health care workers, students or faculty. All copies must retain all author credits and copyright notices included in the original document. Under no circumstances is it permissible to sell or distribute on a commercial basis, or to claim authorship of, copies of material reproduced from this publication. ©2006 by Lelisa Sena and Kifle Woldemichael

Important Guidelines for Printing and Photocopying Limited permission is granted free of charge to print or photocopy all pages of this publication for educational, not-for-profit use by health care workers, students or faculty. All copies must retain all author credits and copyright notices included in the original document. Under no circumstances is it permissible to sell or distribute on a commercial basis, or to claim authorship of, copies of material reproduced from this publication.

Computer assisted functionalities and services have saturated our world becoming such an integral part of our daily activities that we hardly notice them. In this study we are focusing on enhancements in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) that can be achieved by natural user recognition embedded in the employed interaction models. Natural identification among humans is mostly based on biometric characteristics representing what-we-are (face, body outlook, voice, etc.) and how-we-behave (gait, gestures, posture, etc.) Following this observation, we investigate different approaches and methods for adapting existing biometric identification methods and technologies to the needs of evolving natural human computer interfaces.

Use of Virtual Interactive Techniques for personalized product design is described in this paper. Usually products are designed and built by considering general usage patterns and Prototyping is used to mimic the static or working behaviour of an actual product before manufacturing the product. The user does not have any control on the design of the product. Personalized design postpones design to a later stage. It allows for personalized selection of individual components by the user. This is implemented by displaying the individual components over a physical model constructed using Cardboard or Thermocol in the actual size and shape of the original product. The components of the equipment or product such as screen, buttons etc. are then projected using a projector connected to the computer into the physical model. Users can interact with the prototype like the original working equipment and they can select, shape, position the individual components displayed on the interaction panel using simple hand gestures. Computer Vision techniques as well as sound processing techniques are used to detect and recognize the user gestures captured using a web camera and microphone.

The year 2023 witnessed alarming trends in global temperatures, with recordbreaking heatwaves, prolonged droughts, devastating wildfires, and catastrophic floods occurring with unprecedented frequency and intensity. These climate-related disasters inflicted severe consequences on vulnerable communities worldwide, exacerbating existing inequalities and deepening the plight of marginalized groups, especially youth and children in the Global South. In regions already grappling with poverty, food insecurity, and inadequate infrastructure, the impacts of climate change have been particularly harsh. Displacement, loss of livelihoods, malnutrition, and increased vulnerability to disease outbreaks have become harsh realities for millions of individuals, with young people bearing a disproportionate burden of the crisis.

The Green Climate Fund (GCF)(1) has reaffirmed its dedication to crafting a robust and practical strategy aimed at bolstering access to climate finance. Stephanie Speck from the South African Institute for Development (SAID), representing the GCF, highlighted the significance of prioritizing "the three Cs" discussed during COP28: capital investment, cooperation, and collaboration. Additionally, she stressed the importance of complementarity and coherence in aligning the objectives of developing nations to catalyze a collective push for climate action.

Proposed Policies and Actions
• Investment in Climate Education
• Enhanced Climate Resilience for Vulnerable Communities.
• Gender-Responsive Climate Financing
• Youth Engagement and Empowerment

Fine motor skills are affected by a large number of neurological pathologies (Parkinson’s disease, ataxia, stroke, essential tremor, among others), as well as by normal aging. Persons who suffer from these conditions find their abilities to perform a wide range of daily tasks hindered. Furthermore, they might even be unable to articulate language. Among the affected daily tasks with a strongest impact on quality of life, the use of tactile displays predominates. In the current sociocultural scenario, tactile displays are the main technology used for a variety of functions, such as learning, entertainment, communication and social interaction. In public situations there are also a lot of uses for tactile displays, e.g. at educational institutions, banks and governmental organizations. This technological dependence ultimately introduces disabilities in our society, since there are persons who are otherwise autonomous but simply cannot employ tactile displays. We worked with persons who have this difficulty, co-designing an alternative solution to access and manage generic tactile displays. In close dialogue with users and their families, considering their different movement restrictions and the contexts in which the device will be used, we developed an assistive mechanical interface that consists of six independent modular buttons connected through WiFi and an Android application. The buttons can be activated by pushing them or simply by dropping the arm on them. They provide basic displacement functions across the screen and a menu that enables additional functions to allow full access to any device. This interface gives final users control over devices that have become of everyday use, impacting positively in their quality of life.

Tablet PCs are a new generation of notebook computers which provide multimodal input options of pen, voice and keyboard. Recently, these portable and flexible Tablet PCs have attracted attention as a potential tool in academic environments. This paper reviews the current use of Tablet PCs in teaching computer science and software engineering courses, presenting lectures and papers, and creating peer-review comments. The paper also presents applications of Tablet PCs in teaching and research at our university, the University of Canberra, Australia. These applications include marking assignments and reports, and developing signature verification applications.

From 18th century to now, Destructive Effects of Urbanization has put the world at a greater risk of Environmental and Health Crises that have been associated with significant ' Direct and Indirect Losses'. For example, World Meteorological Organization (2023) found that extreme weather, climate and water-related events caused 11 778 reported disasters between 1970 and 2021, with just over 2 million deaths and US $4.3 trillion in economic losses. Furthermore, in 2022 alone,  Jennifer Rudden (2023) found that the estimated economic loss of  natural disasters worldwide was 313 billion US dollars, while the estimated insured loss amounted to 132 billion US dollars (Meaning a total of $445 billion), which translates into a global protection gap of 181 billion US dollars. Moreover, James Michael Walker (2022) found that not only indoor air pollution increases the risk of Sick Building Syndroms (SBS) but also exposure to indoor and outdoor air pollution dramatically reduces the cognitive performance of children and adults.
However, the Economic costs of Natural Disasters were  not equally distributed. However, the Economic costs of Natural Disasters were  not equally distributed. In fact, Low-income and Middle-income Countries on the one hand and Small Island Developing States on the second hand seem to pay the high prices of the Natural Disasters. Accordingly, World Meteorological Organization (2023) found that over sixty percent of economic losses due to weather-, climate- and water-related disasters were reported for developed economies. However, the economic losses were equivalent to less than 0.1 % of the GDP in respective economies in more than four fifths of these disasters. No disasters were reported with economic losses greater than 3.5 % of the respective GDPs. Furthermore, in Least Developed Countries, 7 % of disasters for which economic losses were reported had an impact equivalent to more than 5 % of the respective GDPs, with several disasters causing economic losses up to nearly 30 %. Moreover, in SmallIsland Developing States, 20 % of disasters with reported economic losses led to an impact equivalent to more than 5 % of  the respective GDPs, with some disasters causing economic losses above 100 %.
As a result, as over 90 % of reported deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries, Petteri Taalas, Secretary-General of the WMO finds that the most vulnerable communities unfortunately bear the brunt of weather, climate and water-related hazards.
However, recent Natural Disasters in the U.S. have made it easier for the country to catch up fast and overtake some developing countries regaridng Direct and Indirect Costs. In fact, according to World Meteorological Organization (2023), the USA alone incurred US$ 1.7 trillion, accounting for 39 % of losses worldwide in the 51 years. Most of the reported economic losses were attributed to storm-related disasters, and more specifically, to tropical cyclones. Accordingly, Jennifer Rudden (2023) who did focus on the most expensive natural disasters in the US and worldwide for the past decades finds that the total costs of Hurricane Katrina amounted to 125 billion US dollars at the time the disaster occurred in 2005. While this is around the same total cost of Hurricane Harvey, when adjusted for inflation the former is more expensive, with the cost being the equivalent of 194 billion US dollars in 2023 (compared to 155 billion US dollars for Hurricane Harvey). 
Unfortunately, beside the Hurricanes, Wildfires have started to become another nightmare for the Americans as well. In fact, according to OECD (2023), fuelled by increasing temperatures, changing precipitation patterns and extended drought periods, extreme wildfires are affecting more and more local communities  and regional economies and threatening vulnerable ecosystems across the globe. In the US, US Congressional Research Service (2023) finds that since 2000, an annual average of 70, 072 wildfires have burned an annual average of 7 million acres, which is more than double than annual average burned in the 1990s (tough the 1990s average a higher number of annual fires).
As a result, US Senate  Committee on the Budget (2023) finds that the annualized economic burden from wildfire is estimated to be between $71.1 billion to $ 347.8 billion ($2016 US). Annualized costs are estimated to range from $7.6 billion to $62.8 billion. Annualized losses are estimated to range from $63.5 billion to $ 285.0 billion. The most recent one was the Maui-Lahaina (Haiwaii) one on Aug 13, 2023. Unfortunately, according to an estimate by Moody’s RMS on Tuesday August 22, 2023, the catastrophic wildfires in Maui, Haiwaii have caused between $4 billion and $6 billion in economic losses.
However, OECD (2023) finds that the 2018 camp fire became the deadliest in California’s history and caused an economic costs amounting to US $ 19 billion without taking into account the indirect impacts.
Nevertheless and compared to the developing countries, the number of deaths in the U.S. is relatively small. In fact, according to World Meteorological Organization (2023), recorded deaths for 2020 and 2021 (22 608 deaths in total) indicate a further decrease in mortality relative to the annual average of the previous decade. Economic losses increased-most of them attributed to storm category.

Key Words: Destructive Effects of Urbanization; Environmental and Health Crises; Direct and Indirect Losses; Cognitive Performance; Indoor and Outdoor Air Pollution; Natural Disasters; Glacial Lake Outburst; Dry Mass Movement; Landslide; Volcanic Activity; Extreme Temperature;  Wildfire;  Drought;  Earthquake; Hurricane; Extreme Weather and Floods.

Tablet PCs are a new generation of notebook computers which provide multimodal input options of pen, voice and keyboard. Recently, these portable and flexible Tablet PCs have attracted attention as a potential tool in academic environments. This paper reviews the current use of Tablet PCs in teaching computer science and software engineering courses, presenting lectures and papers, and creating peer-review comments. The paper also presents applications of Tablet PCs in teaching and research at our university, the University of Canberra, Australia. These applications include marking assignments and reports, and developing signature verification applications.

There has been a conscious shift towards developing increasingly inclusive applications. However, despite this fact, most research has focused on supporting those with visual or hearing impairments and less attention has been paid to cognitive impairments. The purpose of this study is to analyse touch gestures used for touchscreens and identify which gestures are suitable for individuals living with Down syndrome (DS) or other forms of physical or cognitive impairments. With this information, app developers can satisfy Design for All (DfA) requirements by selecting adequate gestures from existing lists of gesture sets. Twenty touch gestures were defined for this study and a sample group containing eighteen individuals with Down syndrome was used. A tool was developed to measure the performance of touch gestures and participants were asked to perform simple tasks that involved the repeated use of these twenty gestures. Three variables are analysed to establish whether they influence ...

Touchscreen interaction suffers from occlusion problems as fingers can cover small targets, which makes interacting with such targets challenging. To improve touchscreen interaction accuracy and consequently the selection of small or hidden objects we introduce a back-of-device force feedback system for smartphones. We introduce a new solution that combines force feedback on the back to enhance touch input on the front screen. The interface includes three actuated pins at the back of a smartphone. All three pins are driven by micro servos and can be actuated up to a frequency of 50Hz and a maximum amplitude of 5mm. In a first psychophysical user study, we explored the limits of the system. Thereafter, we demonstrate through a performance study that the proposed interface can enhance touchscreen interaction precision, compared to state-of-the-art methods. In particular the selection of small targets performed remarkably well with force feedback. The study additionally shows that users subjectively felt significantly more accurate with force feedback. Based on the results, we discuss back-to-front feedback design issues and demonstrate potential applications through several prototypical concepts to illustrate where the back-of-device force feedback could be beneficial.

The non-touch system is a modern approach of computer-interface technology capable of revolutionizing human-computer interaction. The interface allows the user to input data and interact with a human, machine or robot in an uncontrolled environment, treatment or industrial life. However, it is challenging to input data into the machine and interact with man and machine with a variety of complexities such as cluttered environment, gesture tracking, and speed. There are many evolving systems, for example, aerial handwriting, sign language recognition, and finger alphabet recognition require substantial effort for all character learning and overhead processing, thence the accuracy of the classification is reduced. Therefore, this paper proposes a non-touch character writing system that allows users to interact and manage the on-screen virtual keyboards in a secure and healthy way by recognizing few hand gestures. We divide this work into two parts: a) hand gesture recognition; and b) gestural flick input using a virtual keyboard. A user-friendly keyboard interface is displayed on the monitor, which uses a flick input method. A deep learning method with CNN is used to extract the features of a gesture. To determine these features, color segmentation is used to detect the hand; color pixels can be obtained by extracting a particular HSV (hue, saturation, value) and applying threshold masking to the input image. Finally, a support vector machine is used to give a more accurate classification of the hand gestures. The user uses a gestural flick input system to perform non-touch character input and enters the character by viewing the virtual keyboard. The character input is executed based on the recognition of the user's hand gestures. Character input is evaluated based on the average classification accuracy of hand gestures and character recognition, and the accuracy and speed of input. Then, the system is compared with the state-of-the-art algorithms. The experimental results show that the proposed system can recognize seven typical gesture functions and input characters with 97.93% accuracy, which demonstrate the superiority compared to the state-of-the-art algorithms. Keywords Human-computer interaction(HCI). Gestural flick input. Virtual keyboard. Character input. Convolutional neural network (CNN) Multimedia Tools and Applications

this research presents gesture recognition based virtual keyboard functional framework. Fingertip trajectory based key stroke detection, articulation feature vector based key association are basic building blocks for the framework. This framework is trainable and learns the trajectories of fingertips of different users to make key stroke and associated articulation feature vector for pressing particular key by certain finger.

Dissemination level of the document Public Restricted to other programme participants (including the Commission Services) Restricted to a group specified by the consortium (including the European Commission Services) Confidential, only for members of the consortium (including the European Commission Services)

The creation of a PSI register in Greece, primarily for asylum and immigration purposes, represents a significant stride towards a register of proficient and qualified interpreters for the entire Greek public sector. This initiative marks a pivotal turning point in the crisis management process, as it addresses the communication and language requirements of foreigners lacking a knowledge of Greek. Given the ongoing arrival of refugees and immigrants since 2015 (and the resulting issues) and noting that the Greek Ministry of Migration and Asylum uses contracted providers for all relevant interpretation services, setting up an interpreter register would be an appropriate and sustainable response to the increased interpretation requirements of the said Ministry, as well as of other public sector services. This paper presents an overview of the project launched to lay the necessary foundation for the establishment of a training, accreditation, and management framework for PSIs in the Greek public sector, spanning from untrained bilinguals to fully trained and academically recognized interpreters. The  paper aims to position PSI in the broader problem-solving effort of the refugee and immigration crisis in Greece since 2015.

Flexible sensing styluses deliver additional degrees of input for pen-based interaction, yet no research on bendable styluses has looked at the influence of stiffness on performance or its integration with creative digital applications. We conducted two experiments that evaluated the influence of flexural stiffness on users' performance. To address this, we designed HyperBrush a flexible sensing stylus with interchangeable flexible components.

Touchscreen sensors are widely used in many devices such as smart phones, tablets, and laptops with diverse applications. We present the design, analysis, and implementation of an ultrasonic touchscreen system that utilizes the interaction of transient Lamb waves with objects in contact with the screen. It attempts to improve on the existing ultrasound technologies, with the potential of addressing some of the weaknesses of the dominant technologies, such as the capacitive or resistive ones. Compared with the existing ultrasonic and acoustic modalities, among other advantages, it provides the capability of detecting several simultaneous touch points and also a more robust performance. The localization algorithm, given the hardware design, can detect several touch points with a very limited number of measurements (one or two). This in turn can significantly reduce the manufacturing cost.

Daniel lectures at Deakin University in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and teaches units within the Masters of Humanitarian Assistance. He is engaged in research on policy and practices associated with state-building interventions, transnational policing, and humanitarian interventions, with a focus on Asia-Pacific (Indonesia and Solomon Islands). Daniel has over 20 years' experience working and researching in humanitarian aid and international development.

The use of touchscreens as an input method on Smartphones has become the norm in the mobile phone industry. This has changed the way keys are traditionally arranged on Smartphones devices. One of these changes is on the location of “back button”. Few studies, However, have been conducted to investigate the effect of key locations on users performance and experience. Aims: In this paper, we investigate the effect of back button location on users’ experience of using Smartphones. We made a  comparison between Android Samsung Galaxy S3 and iPhone 5s. Place and Duration of Study: Participants: Sokoto State University, Sokoto, Nigeria.  between May 2017 and July 2017. Methodology: A total of 40 participants all Students of Sokoto State University participated in the study. 26 were males and 14 females. 30 owned Android Smartphones while the remaining  10 owned Apple iPhone. We used observation to observe how users navigate through Facebook and Gmail app on both iPhone and Android while p...

The world is experiencing a technology shift. In 2011, more touchscreenbased mobile devices like smartphones and tablets will be sold than desktops, laptops, and netbooks combined. In fact, in many cases incredibly powerful and easy-to-use smart phones are going to be the first and, in less developed countries, possibly the only computing devices which virtually all people will own, and carry with them at all times. Furthermore, mobile devices do not only have touchscreens, but they are also equipped with a multitude of sensors, such as location information and acceleration, and they are always connected to the cloud. TouchDevelop is a novel application creation environment for anyone to script their smartphones anywhere-you do not need a separate PC. TouchDevelop allows you to develop mobile device applications that can access your data, your media, your sensors and allows using cloud services including storage, computing, and social networks. TouchDevelop targets students, and hobbyists, not necessarily the professional developer. Typical TouchDevelop applications are written for fun, or for personalizing the phone. TouchDevelop's typed, structured programming language is built around the idea of only using a touchscreen as the input device to author code. It has built-in primitives which make it easy to access the rich sensor data available on a mobile device. In our vision, the state of the program is automatically distributed between mobile clients and the cloud, with automatic synchronization of data and execution between clients and cloud, liberating the programmer from worrying (or even having to know about) the details. We report on our experience with our first prototype implementation for the Windows Phone 7 platform, which already realizes a large portion of our vision. It is available on the Windows Phone Marketplace.

Modes allow a few inputs to invoke many operations, yet if a user misclassifies or forgets the state of a system, modes can result in errors. Spring-loaded modes (quasimodes) maintain a mode while the user holds a control such as a button or key. The Springboard is an interaction technique for tablet computers that extends quasimodes to encompass multiple tool modes in a single spring-loaded control. The Springboard allows the user to continue holding down a nonpreferred-hand command button after selecting a tool from a menu as a way to repeatedly apply the same tool. We find the Springboard improves performance for both a local marking menu and for a non-local marking menu ("lagoon") at the lower left corner of the screen. Despite the round-trip costs incurred to move the pen to a tool lagoon, a keystroke-level analysis of the true cost of each technique reveals the local marking menu is not significantly faster.

The impact of tropical cyclones on humans depends on the number of people exposed and their vulnerability, as well as the frequency and intensity of storms. How will the cumulative effects of climate change, demography and vulnerability affect risk? Conventionally, reports assessing tropical cyclone risk trends are based on reported losses, but these figures are biased by improvements to information access. Here we present a new methodology based on thousands of physically observed events and related contextual parameters. We show that mortality risk depends on tropical cyclone intensity, exposure, levels of poverty and governance. Despite the projected reduction in the frequency of tropical cyclones, projected increases in both demographic pressure and tropical cyclone intensity over the next 20 years can be expected to greatly increase the number of people exposed per year and exacerbate disaster risk, despite potential progression in development and governance.

This paper introduces the object-oriented character recognition engine AQUIRE which was originally designed as a general pattern-classifier under the academic aspects of objectorientation and parallelism together with low space and time complexity. When industry expressed interest in using AQUIRE to provide pen-based computers with a powerful characterrecognition engine, AQUIRE was revised to meet the commercial requirements. Together with a brief discussion of some special pen-related problems, this paper contains the theoretical background for the recognition mechanism and a description of the methods used to perform a high quality and high speed recognition-process with a minimum of executable code. The proposed method has been implemented on an INFOS NotePad 386-SX pen-computer and on the associative processor AM 3 developed within the PROMETHEUS project at the Department for Technical Computer Sciences at J.W.Goethe-University. The acceleration of the recognition mechanism by using the associative type of parallelism will be shown.