ABSTRACT
It is usually hard for unfamiliar partners to rapidly 'break the ice' in the early stage of relationship establishment, which hinders the development of relationship and even affects the team productivity. To solve this problem, we proposed a collaborative serious game for icebreaking by combining immersive virtual reality (VR) with brain-computer interface based on the team flow framework. We designed a multiplayer collaboration task with the theme of fighting COVID-19 and proposed an approach to improve empathy between team members by sharing their real-time mental state in VR;in addition, we propose an EEG-based method for dynamic evaluation and enhancement of group flow experience to achieve better team collaboration. Then, we developed a prototype system and performed a user study. Results show that our method has good ease of use and can significantly reduce the psychological distance among team members. Especially for unfamiliar partners, both functions of mental state sharing and group flow regulation enhancement can significantly reduce the psychological distance. © 2023 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Satellite remote sensing has advantages in monitoring environmental changes during the global pandemics such as the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (SARS) and the Corona Virus Disease 2019 (COVID-19). In this paper, the variations of atmospheric environment during SARS and COVID-19 pandemics were calculated and analyzed based on the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Atmosphere Monthly Global Product. Preliminary results show that: (1) aerosol optical depth is most affected by the pandemics, especially the duration and prevention and control measures;(2) the correlations between the variables of aerosol optical depth, cloud fraction, total column ozone and precipitable water vapor were not very strong during the two pandemics.
ABSTRACT
The outbreak of COVID-19 has made a profound impact on mobility, especially for public transport users. Extensive research has been conducted on the change of travel patterns in major cities where public transport systems have been well developed and heavily used. However, in small cities, the public transport network is relatively sparse, especially in suburban areas, which makes the corresponding travel patterns differ from those in major cities. Therefore, proper investigation of the public transport usage in such small cities is still needed, especially under the COVID-19 impact. This paper aims to reveal the change of public transport users' travel patterns based on a comparative study of public transport usage Pre-COVID and during the COVID-19 period. The Illawarra, a coastal region close to Sydney in Australia is used as a case study. Smart card data is used to reveal relevant changes in both intraregion (in the Illawarra) and inter-region (between the Illawarra and Sydney) travels in consideration of heterogeneous user groups. The results show a significant decrease (around 47%) in public transport ridership by both train and bus. However, compared to intra-region ridership, the inter-region trips by train drop much more (around 62%). Moreover, heterogeneous age group passengers show different changes after the COVID-19 outbreak. The research findings are expected to provide valuable suggestions for policy making and public transport service adjustment when a similar crisis occurs again. © 2022 IEEE.
ABSTRACT
Affected by the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic, almost all students in China have to study online at home from February to June, 2020. In this paper, we discussed the forms of online courses and took Jiangsu Normal University as an example to introduce the online courses of remote sensing in China. The results of the satisfaction survey show that more than 90% of the respondents agree with online courses and believe that online courses can at least meet basic learning needs in the age of COVID-19, and more than 60% of respondents claimed that they had met or exceeded their learning expectations. The major advantages of online course include reducing the gathering of people and thus the risk of infection. However, there are still some problems with online courses, and we hope that these problems can be solved well in the future. © 2021 IEEE