Quarantined-subject monitoring and indoor positioning with anti-Absconding artificial intelligence (Project BANTAY)

Quarantine is the process of restricting and separating the movement of people who have been exposed to a contagious disease to avoid proliferation. Quarantined subjects were monitored manually, and patients tended to abscond or 'run away.' In the Philippines, there was a lack of research and the absence of similar technology commercially available related to this matter. Project Bantay integrated Artificial Intelligence of Things (AIoT), indoor positioning systems, and wearable technology to alleviate the shortage of personnel, long-Term savings on workforce utilization in the government, and predict absconding or 'run-Away' potentially infectious individuals in our current and future quarantine facilities. Also, it included information system development for monitoring quarantined subjects' heart rates and temperatures that would eventually help the government combat and prepare for a similar unexpected pandemic. The prototype would start by turning on the device after being placed on the quarantined subject. The device must be linked to the router, and the sensors must then be calibrated. The web interface should receive and be able to see data readings, including temperature, heart rate, the location of the subject being quarantined, and the removal of the device via an IR reading. The temperature, heart rate sensor, and indoor positioning all measured above a p-value of 0.05, which accepted the null hypothesis, confirming that the actual and commercial product versus Project Bantay's temperature, heart rate, and indoor positioning accuracy was statistically the same. The anti-Absconding tendencies of the hypothetical dataset using machine learning data analytics showed that among four inherently multioutput machine learning regression algorithms, the Decision Tree Regression Algorithm could output a much better result in determining the tendencies of a subject to abscond from the quarantine facility. © 2022 IEEE.

Transnational life and cross-border immobility in pandemic times

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted and reconfigured the cross-border movements of people. Based on an anthropological study of the experiences of transnational migrants during the pandemic (May 2020–May 2021), this article explores stories of how cross-border immobility impacts transnational life and sense of belonging. The stories reveal the emotional toll of prolonged family separation across geographical distances when loved ones are no longer ‘just one flight away' and give voice to experiences of being ‘trapped', ‘stuck' or ‘stranded' in a state of transnational limbo. Running through the stories are intensified experiences of foreignness, non-belonging, precariousness and discrimination. Some also felt abandoned by their country of origin as border closures left them ‘locked out' and ‘blowing in the wind', fostering an experience akin to exile. © 2021 Global Networks Partnership & John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Design of Steel Intensive Quarantine Centre

In pandemic conditions, where the COVID-19 infection is increasing exponentially, quarantine centres have become very necessary to separate and restrict the movement of people. These structures are also helpful in similar situations like disaster management, defence purposes and housing for poor people. Planning and Designing of Steel Intensive Quarantine Centre' takes on the task of designing and analysing an economical, ecological and rapid construction solution of a modular quarantine centre building. It facilitates a faster construction facility due to steel construction instead of RCC, which takes almost 70–80% more time and is not recyclable like steel. The schematic and elevation plans have been tweaked with additional architectural features to ensure ventilation, sunlight and accessible transit of patients. For economical structural design, the iterative method is incorporated to find columns with the minimum size and shape to achieve ample carpet area, i.e., star-shaped. While designing the structures, i.e., portal frame and truss roof frame are subjected to the same loading conditions. For resisting the lateral forces, different types of bracings have been incorporated in plan and elevation. The construction of a portal frame requires specialized labour to handle compound sections and connections, whereas construction of truss sections is possible by skilled labour or directly use prefabricated truss sections with the help of unskilled labour. Compound sections pose a significant challenge due to their unavailability and transportation difficulties. In contrast, the sections for trusses are readily available even in the remote market. Moreover, the construction of both structures provides rapid construction. The portal frame costs about 16% cheaper than the steel frame due to smaller sections and absence of compound sections. For validation of our work, we have used manual and automated calculation to minimize the error. The structure is expandable for future expansion by techniques such as expansion joint and satellite arrangement. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Immersive Virtual Walking System Using an Avatar Robot

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has enforced governments across the world to impose social restrictions on the movement of people and confined them to their homes to avoid the spread of the disease. This not only forbids them from leaving their homes but also greatly reduces their physical activities. This situation has brought attention to virtual technologies such as virtual tours or telepresence robots. While these technologies allow people to remotely participate in activities, it does not address the problem of reduction in physical activities due to the pandemic. In this paper, we propose a telepresence robotic system driven by the user's gait to provide an immersive virtual walking experience in remote locations. To this end, we developed a control interface consisting of an automated treadmill that adjusts its speed to the user's pace automatically. This interface is used to control an avatar robot that sends a 360-degree live image back to the user for visual feedback. We conducted an evaluation experiment to compare the experience using the proposed system in two different conditions to that of regular walking. The results indicated that the proposed system gives an immersive and realistic virtual walking experience while demanding physical effort from the user. © 2022 IEEE.

Exploration of Privacy, Ethical and Regulatory Concerns Related to COVID-19 Vaccine Passport Implementation

As countries emerge from lockdowns, vaccine passports are being implemented around the world to allow unrestricted movement of people. However, the implementation of vaccine passports has proven to be a double-edged sword that can compromise an individual's privacy in manifold ways. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the privacy, ethical, and regulatory issues associated with the implementation of vaccine passports. It also engages in a theoretical analysis incorporating the concept of ethical data governance and the health belief model (HBM) with a view to making sense of the technological adoption of vaccine passports. Finally, key ethical and legal issues that may arise following the implementation of vaccine passports and the necessary policy implications are discussed. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.

Safety Seal Clean & Safe and Recovery of Tourism Marketing in the (Post) Pandemic Context

Tourism is an activity heavily dependent on the movement of people and travel (with different motivations). As a result, tourism has been heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic since the beginning of 2020. The number of trips has dropped considerably across the world and particularly in Portugal. Considering the widespread concern in the resumption of economic and social activity as soon as the evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic allows, Turismo de Portugal created a “Clean & Safe” seal of approval to distinguish tourist activities which are compliant with hygiene and cleaning requirements for the prevention and control of COVID-19 and other possible infections. This manuscript intends to understand the importance of the Safety Seal Clean & Safe in the recovery of tourism and in the consumer decision-making process, through a preliminary study with 87 participants (quantitative approach). Preliminary results demonstrate that Safety Seal Clean & Safe tends to influence feelings of safety and confidence regarding tourist travel. Future studies should deepen this debate, through interviews and focus groups with tourist consumers. From an interdisciplinary perspective, this manuscript presents inputs for marketing (i.e., consumer behavior), for tourism (i.e., management of tourism services), and for management in the pandemic context. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

Data acquisition based COVID-19 Spread Prediction Analysis

The most pressing global concern right now is Covid-19. Covid-19 affects the health, daily activities and movement of people, disrupts the global economy, damages the tourist sector, and constitutes a significant threat to global health. Finding a vaccine in a short amount of time is a success that leads to a quicker return to normalcy. Following the intricate developments of Covid-19, it is also vital to foresee the scenario early in order to aid in the construction of improved health facilities, take legislative measures, and avoid economic losses, particularly human losses. The Arima model is used in this article to forecast Covid-19 in India. Arima is well suited to forecasting data using two time-ordered data points. In this paper, data acquired by Indian states from January 1, 2020 to November 8, 2021 are used. © 2022 IEEE.

Forecasting of Individuals' Movement in Society After Corona Pandemic Using RNNs with LSTM and GRUs

The health crisis that attributed to the quick spread of the COVID-19 has impacted the globe negatively in terms of economy, education, and transport and led to the global lockdown. The risk of the COVID-19 infection has been increased due to a lack of a successful cure for the disease. Thus, social distancing is considered the most appropriate precaution measure to control the viral spread throughout the world. In this study, a model was proposed for deep learning capable of predicting the movement of people in the pandemic in the short term (one day) to take precautions and control the COVID-19 infection. The proposed model consists of four phases: data collection, pre-processing phase, prediction stage, and evaluation and Comparison phase. The dataset is obtained from 428 mobility reports, collected based on data from users that have been selected for their Google Account location history for a country such as Iraq for 428 days. A deep learning algorithm such as Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM), Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU), and hybrid model (GRU&LSTM) is applied to pre-processed data to predict the movement of people. They are compared using statistical measures: Mean absolute error (MAE) and root mean square error (RMSE) for performance measurement of these machine learning algorithms. The results of the GRU are the sum of MAE 0.4277 and sum of RMSE 0.6470 for predict person path and movement with training time equal to 33.189 sec, while the results of the hybrid model are the sum of MAE 0.4355 and sum of RMSE 0.6563 for prediction and the training time equal to 53.144 sec, and the results of the LSTM are the sum of MAE 0.4395 and sum of RMSE 0.6612 for prediction and the training time equal to 100.752 sec. These statistical measurement values indicate proposed model GRU outperformed all other models, it showed a solid performance to predict person path and movement in coronavirus pandemic and took little time to train compared to other algorithms, while the hybrid algorithm showed good performance and a short period in training compared with the LSTM model. © 2021 IEEE.

Kingdom of Saudi Arabia: Era of Smart Cities

With the movement of people from the countryside to urban cities, the need to develop services increases as well. The development of services is necessary to accommodate the population growth in terms of transportation, education, and health. Smart cities meet these issues using a comprehensive echo system incorporating smart technologies and enhancing citizens' quality of life. In this paper, we focus on six dimensions of smart cities: living, environment, governance, economy, people, and transportation. In light of these dimensions, we review six smart cities around the world: Dubai, Tokyo, Singapore, Hong Kong, Seoul, and Reykjavik. Moreover, we review Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, as a city aspiring to be fully smart in each dimension. Lastly, we elaborate on the health aspect with regard to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in all cities under consideration. © 2022 IEEE.

Reflections on International Cooperative Education among Universities in the Post-COVID-19 Era

COVID-19 has impacted international cooperative education among universities, and posed multiple challenges such as global public health security, visa restrictions for the movement of people, and bottlenecks in education quality system. In face of the impact of the epidemic and challenges, international cooperative education is still in the demand to explore effective development path and practice mode, including to explore new ways of Sino-foreign cooperative education, establish new model of foreign-related talents cultivation, and open-up a new way of thought on Sino-foreign cooperative education. In the background of economic globalization and the "Belt & Road" initiative, efforts should be made to promote international exchanges and cooperation among universities to go through gradual and steady recovery and development. © 2021 Kriedt Enterprises Ltd. All right reserved.

Cross-Border E-Commerce Diffusion and Usage during the period of the COVID-19 Pandemic: A literature Review

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic could be felt in many areas of the economy such as e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce supply chain systems. The effect of the pandemic on e-commerce (cross-border) a result of the restricted movement of people and the shutdown of businesses impeded the smooth flow of the e-commerce supply chain systems that affected consumers' access to needed commodities and services. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was an increase in online retail sales which shows the share of total retail sales from 16% to 19% in 2020. The review also shows that global e-commerce sales volumes expanded to $26.7 trillion in 2019 (up 4% from 2018). Additionally, the report showed that the value of the world B2B e-commerce in 2019 was $21.8 trillion which accounts for 82% of all e-commerce globally. Also, the B2C e-commerce sales volumes reached $4.9 trillion in 2019 which was up by 11% as compared to 2018. The data reviewed shows that the United States dominated the overall e-commerce market globally, ahead of both Japan and China. Governments should continue to implement innovative strategies to help curb the impact of the COVID-19 on the e-commerce and cross-border e-commerce supply chain system. They should build resilient e-commerce supply chain systems that can withstand any future shocks be it pandemic or not. © 2021 ACM.