A Game-Theoretic Approach to Safe Crowd Evacuation in Emergencies

Obstacle removal in crowd evacuation is critical to safety and the evacuation system efficiency. Recently, manyresearchers proposed game theoreticmodels to avoid and remove obstacles for crowd evacuation. Game theoreticalmodels aim to study and analyze the strategic behaviors of individuals within a crowd and their interactionsduring the evacuation. Game theoretical models have some limitations in the context of crowd evacuation. Thesemodels consider a group of individuals as homogeneous objects with the same goals, involve complex mathematicalformulation, and cannot model real-world scenarios such as panic, environmental information, crowds that movedynamically, etc. The proposed work presents a game theoretic model integrating an agent-based model to removethe obstacles from exits. The proposed model considered the parameters named: (1) obstacle size, length, andwidth, (2) removal time, (3) evacuation time, (4) crowd density, (5) obstacle identification, and (6) route selection.The proposed work conducts various experiments considering different conditions, such as obstacle types, obstacleremoval, and several obstacles. Evaluation results show the proposed model’s effectiveness compared with existingliterature in reducing the overall evacuation time, cell selection, and obstacle removal. The study is potentially usefulfor public safety situations such as emergency evacuations during disasters and calamities.

Association between the elderly frequent attender to the emergency department and 30-day mortality： A retrospective study over 10 years

BACKGROUND: To determine if elderly frequent attenders are associated with increased 30-day mortality, assess resource utilization by the elderly frequent attenders and identify associated characteristics that contribute to mortality. METHODS: Retrospective observational study of electronic clinical records of all emergency department(ED) visits over a 10-year period to an urban tertiary general hospital in Singapore. Patients aged 65 years and older, with 3 or more visits within a calendar year were identified. Outcomes measured include 30-day mortality, admission rate, admission diagnosis and duration spent at ED. Chi-square-tests were used to assess categorical factors and Student t-test was used to assess continuous variables on their association with being a frequent attender. Univariate and multivariate logistic regressions were conducted on all significant independent factors on to the outcome variable(30-day mortality), to determine factor independent odds ratios of being a frequent attender.RESULTS: 1.381 million attendance records were analyzed. Elderly patients accounted for 25.5% of all attendances, of which 31.3% are frequent attenders. Their 30-day mortality rate increased from 4.0% in the first visit, to 8.8% in the third visit, peaking at 10.2% in the sixth visit. Factors associated with mortality include patients with neoplasms, ambulance utilization, male gender and having attended the ED the previous year.CONCLUSION: Elderly attenders have a higher 30-day mortality risk compared to the overall ED population, with mortality risk more marked for frequent attenders. This study illustrates the importance and need for interventions to address frequent ED visits by the elderly, especially in an aging society.

Cattle behaviour classification from collar, halter, and ear tag sensors

In this paper,we summarise the outcome of a set of experiments aimed at classifying cattle behaviour based on sensor data.Each animal carried sensors generating time series accelerometer data placed on a collar on the neck at the back of the head,on a halter positioned at the side of the head behind the mouth,or on the ear using a tag.The purpose of the study was to determine how sensor data from different placement can classify a range of typical cattle behaviours.Data were collected and animal behaviours(grazing,standing or ruminating)were observed over a common time frame.Statistical features were computed from the sensor data and machine learning algorithms were trained to classify each behaviour.Classification accuracies were computed on separate independent test sets.The analysis based on behaviour classification experiments revealed that different sensor placement can achieve good classification accuracy if the feature space(representing motion patterns)between the training and test animal is similar.The paper will discuss these analyses in detail and can act as a guide for future studies.

Enhanced data narratives

Data narratives are an emerging form of communication that employs enhanced media for effective knowledge transfer of complex information.Researchers in the fields of data visualization and artificial intelligence have begun to pioneer new structures of communication to improve the efficiency of construction and the retention of information provided by the knowledge transfer experience.In this paper,we report the results of an empirical study conducted to compare the performance of various narrative communication techniques including frame based narrative visualization,documentary narrative visualization,computer generated text narratives and human generated text narratives.We assess the knowledge transfer performance for each of these data driven narrative structures.Across all conditions,an identical set of knowledge retention questions assessed participants’recall of details from their assigned narrative communication.Statistical analysis on group performance answering the knowledge retention questions revealed that some narrative communication techniques perform better with general audiences.