5G-enabled UAVs for energy-efficient opportunistic networking.

The article explores the potential of 5G-enabled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in establishing opportunistic networks to improve network resource management, reduce energy use, and boost operational efficiency. The proposed framework utilizes 5G-enabled drones and edge command and control software to provide energy-efficient network topologies. As a result, UAVs operate edge computing for efficient data collecting and processing. This invention enhances network performance using modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to improve UAV networking capabilities while conserving energy. An empirical investigation shows a significant improvement in network performance measures when using 5G technology compared to older 2.4 GHz systems. The communication failure rate decreased by 50 %, from 12 % to 6 %. The round-trip time was lowered by 58.3 %, from 120 Ms to 50 Ms. The payload efficiency improved by 13.3 %, dropping from 15 % to 13 %. The data transmission rate increased significantly from 1 Gbps to 5 Gbps, representing a 400 % boost. The numerical findings highlight the significant impact that 5G technology may have on UAV operations. Testing on a 5G-enabled UAV confirms the effectiveness of our technique in several domains, including precision agriculture, disaster response, and environmental monitoring. The solution seriously improves UAV network performance by reducing energy consumption and using peripheral network command-and-control software. Our results emphasize the versatile networking capacities of 5G-enabled drones, which provide new opportunities for UAV applications.

The Impact of Training on Human-Autonomy Team Communications and Trust Calibration.

OBJECTIVE: This work examines two human-autonomy team (HAT) training approaches that target communication and trust calibration to improve team effectiveness under degraded conditions. BACKGROUND: Human-autonomy teaming presents challenges to teamwork, some of which may be addressed through training. Factors vital to HAT performance include communication and calibrated trust. METHOD: Thirty teams of three, including one confederate acting as an autonomous agent, received either entrainment-based coordination training, trust calibration training, or control training before executing a series of missions operating a simulated remotely piloted aircraft. Automation and autonomy failures simulating degraded conditions were injected during missions, and measures of team communication, trust, and task efficiency were collected. RESULTS: Teams receiving coordination training had higher communication anticipation ratios, took photos of targets faster, and overcame more autonomy failures. Although autonomy failures were introduced in all conditions, teams receiving the calibration training reported that their overall trust in the agent was more robust over time. However, they did not perform better than the control condition. CONCLUSIONS: Training based on entrainment of communications, wherein introduction of timely information exchange through one team member has lasting effects throughout the team, was positively associated with improvements in HAT communications and performance under degraded conditions. Training that emphasized the shortcomings of the autonomous agent appeared to calibrate expectations and maintain trust. APPLICATIONS: Team training that includes an autonomous agent that models effective information exchange may positively impact team communication and coordination. Training that emphasizes the limitations of an autonomous agent may help calibrate trust.

Facilitating the Work of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Operators Using Artificial Intelligence: An Intelligent Filter for Command-and-Control Maps to Reduce Cognitive Workload.

OBJECTIVE: Evaluating the ability of a Gibsonian-inspired artificial intelligence (AI) algorithm to reduce the cognitive workloads of military Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) operators. BACKGROUND: Military UAV operators use the command-and-control (C2) map for developing mission-relevant situation awareness (SA). Yet C2 maps are overloaded with information, mostly irrelevant to the mission, causing operators to neglect the map altogether. To reduce irrelevant information, an intelligent filtering algorithm was developed. Here we evaluate its effectiveness in reducing operators' cognitive workloads. METHOD: Two-stage operational scenarios were conducted with professional ex-military UAV operators, using two filter protocols and a no-filter control. High-end real-time techniques were used to continuously assess workload from muscle behavior and machine learning models. RESULTS: Lower cognitive workload was found when applying the algorithm's protocols, especially when fatigue started to accumulate (Stage II). However, concerns about the quality of SA arose. CONCLUSION: The algorithm was positively evaluated for its ability to reduce operators' cognitive workloads. More evaluations of operators' SA are required. APPLICATION: The algorithm demonstrates the possibility of integrating AI to improve human performance in complex systems, and can be applied to other domains where spatial-temporal information needs to be contextually filtered in real time.

Leader airtime management and team effectiveness in emergency management command and control (EMCC) teams.

We investigated the relation between leader airtime management and team effectiveness in Emergency Management Command and Control (EMCC) teams. Leader airtime management concerns leaders' interventions to structure who shares information when using opening and closing statements to respectively stimulate or reduce information sharing. We coded leaders' airtime management statements across different meeting phases (structuring, information sharing, decision making) using video-recordings of 12 EMCC exercises involving two consecutive meetings each. Experts rated two components of team effectiveness: Team Situation Awareness (TSA) and Team Decision Making (TDM). We found that closing statements were more frequently used in the decision-making phase than in any other meeting phase. Also, leaders of teams with lower TSA used more opening statements in the decision-making phase of the first team meeting than leaders of teams with higher TSA. These results confirm the importance of the timing of leader airtime management for EMCC team effectiveness. Practitioner summary: We investigated leader airtime management and team effectiveness in EMCC teams. We video-coded 12 exercises; experts rated team effectiveness. In the decision-making phase, leaders use more closing statements, and leaders of less effective teams use more opening statements. Leaders are advised to adjust their airtime management to meeting phases.

Workload transition rate matters: Evidence from growth curve modeling.

This research examined three specific gaps in the workload transition literature: (1) the impact of workload transition rate, (2) the applicability of current theoretical explanations, and (3) the variability of performance overall and over time. Sixty Naval flight students multitasked in an unmanned aerial vehicle control testbed and workload transitioned at three rates: slow, medium, or fast. Response time and accuracy were analyzed via growth curve modeling. Slow transitions had the largest decline in performance over time. Medium transitions had some of the slowest, but most accurate and consistent performance. Fast transitions had some of the fastest, but least accurate performance. However, all performance trends significantly varied, suggesting multiple theoretical explanations may apply and performance may also depend on the individual. Design guidance on how to maximize performance goals with transition rate is provided, but future research needs to study the theoretical explanations and impact of individual differences further.

The WACDT, a modern vigilance task for network defense.

Vigilance decrement refers to a psychophysiological decline in the capacity to sustain attention to monotonous tasks after prolonged periods. A plethora of experimental tasks exist for researchers to study vigilance decrement in classic domains such as driving and air traffic control and baggage security; however, the only cyber vigilance tasks reported in the research literature exist in the possession of the United States Air Force (USAF). Moreover, existent cyber vigilance tasks have not kept up with advances in real-world cyber security and consequently no longer accurately reflect the cognitive load associated with modern network defense. The Western Australian Cyber Defense Task (WACDT) was designed, engineered, and validated. Elements of network defense command-and-control consoles that influence the trajectory of vigilance can be adjusted within the WACDT. These elements included cognitive load, event rate, signal salience and workload transitions. Two forms of the WACDT were tested. In static trials, each element was adjusted to its maximum level of processing difficulty. In dynamic trials, these elements were set to increase from their minimum to their maximum values. Vigilance performance in static trials was shown to improve over time. In contrast, dynamic WACDT trials were characterized by vigilance performance declines. The WACDT provides the civilian human factors research community with an up-to-date and validated vigilance task for network defense accessible to civilian researchers.

Botnet Defense System: Observability, Controllability, and Basic Command and Control Strategy.

This paper deals with the observability, controllability, and command and control strategy in the Botnet Defense System (BDS) that disinfects malicious botnets with white-hat botnets. The BDS defends an IoT system built over the Internet. The Internet is characterized by openness, but not all nodes are observable and controllable. We incorporated the concept of observability and controllability into the BDS design and theoretically clarified that the BDS can enhance its observability and controllability by utilizing its white-hat botnets. In addition, we proposed a Withdrawal strategy as a basic strategy to command and control white-hat botnets. Then, we modeled the BDS, adopted the Withdrawal strategy with agent-oriented Petri net PN2 and confirmed the effect through the simulation of the model. The result shows that even if considering observability and controllability, the BDS wiped out the malicious bots and reduced the white-hat bots to less than 1% as long as the white-hat worms were sufficiently infectious.

Emission reduction effects of vertical environmental regulation: Capacity transfer or energy intensity reduction? Evidence from a quasi-natural experiment in China.

There is insufficient research on how to reduce the destructive effects of command-based environmental regulation through institutional design. The implementation of the National Key Monitoring Enterprises provides new evidence to assess the effects of vertical monitoring. This study integrates and matches three types of micro databases in China: industrial, pollution, and patent, and constructs firm-level panel data from 2004 to 2010. The empirical evidence shows that the policy reduces the energy use intensity of monitored enterprises by about 10.4% and sulfur dioxide emission intensity by about 23.9%. The mechanism test shows that this effect is achieved by means of energy structure optimization, process innovation, and end-of-pipe treatment, but the effect on total factor productivity is not significant. Among them, the positive impact is stronger for high-profit and emerging firms. Further, we quantify the policy-induced capacity transfer and technology spillovers from monitored enterprises to non-monitored enterprises. In terms of scale, the policy leads to a simultaneous increase in output and pollution emissions of unmonitored firms in the same industry. However, in terms of efficiency, the policy reduces the energy use intensity and pollution emission intensity of enterprises in the same industry.

The Effects of Environmental Regulations on Medical Expenses: Evidence from China.

In this study, we examine the effects of a special period regulation (SPR), implemented in the Chang-Zhu-Tan (Changsha City, Zhuzhou City, and Xiangtan City; CZT) region, regarding medical expenses paid by the Urban and Rural Resident Basic Medical Insurance (URRBMI) and Urban Employee Basic Medical Insurance (UEBMI) programs, using a difference-in-differences (DID) design. We find that the SPR significantly reduces medical expenses in the CZT region, which appears to be driven by improved air quality. Furthermore, this regulation has a significantly negative and positive impact on medical expenses paid by the UURBMI and UEBMI, respectively. In summary, our results provide empirical evidence for the orderly implementation of command-and-control environmental regulation policies from the perspective of health benefits.

Heterogeneous two-sided effects of different types of environmental regulations on carbon productivity in China.

In the context of globalization, the importance of enhancing carbon productivity is becoming increasingly evident. The study is a continuation of previous studies on the relationship between environmental regulations and carbon productivity. Based on a dataset of 30 provinces in China from 2006 to 2018, the paper decomposes the two-sided effects of command-and-control and market-based environmental regulations on carbon productivity. First, empirical research shows that the average positive effect of command-and-control environmental regulation on carbon productivity is 0.0158, which is much less than the average of negative effect of 0.0697, highlighting mainly the negative effect on carbon productivity. Conversely, the positive effect of market-based environmental regulation on carbon productivity is 0.0691, much greater than the negative effect of 0.0038, which highlights the obvious positive impact characteristics. Overall, the net effect of command-and-control environmental regulation on carbon productivity is -0.0541, and net effect of market-based environmental regulation on carbon productivity is 0.0653. Second, the negative impact of command-and-control environmental regulations on carbon productivity underwent a "back-to-N" change process in 2006-2018, while the driving effect of market-based environmental regulation on carbon productivity increased continuously during the 2006-2018 period. Third, most of the regions with high negative effects of command-and-control environmental regulation on carbon productivity tend to be resource-intensive and carbon-intensive, while the positive effects of market-based environmental regulation on carbon productivity have no obvious geographical agglomeration characteristics. Fourth, the continuous improvement of regional development conditions is clearly conducive to the continuous reduction of the negative effects of command-and-control environmental regulation on carbon productivity, while the higher positive effects of market-based environmental regulation on carbon productivity at this stage need to meet different regional condition intervals.

Economic effects of command-and-control abatement policies under China's 2030 carbon emission goal.

To mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, China has committed to reducing its national carbon emission intensity, which is a measure of carbon dioxide produced per unit of gross domestic product (GDP), by 65% by 2030 compared with the level in 2005. The government is pursuing corresponding abatement initiatives to achieve this goal. Coupling the physical data of sectoral energy inputs and emissions with a mixed exogenous/endogenous input-output model, this study first projected the carbon emissions in 2030 under a business-as-usual baseline and then investigated the potential economic effects of the "command-and-control" approach for reducing carbon emissions by limiting production capacity and strengthening forest carbon sink management. Three carbon abatement scenarios were evaluated from the perspectives of social equity, abatement efficiency, and forest carbon sinks. Our results indicated that, under the 2030 carbon emission goal, the GDP in China would decline by 17.17-41.26 trillion yuan (equivalent to a marginal abatement cost of 2315-5387 yuan per ton of carbon dioxide reduction), depending on different policy initiatives. The policy of carbon reduction for high-emission sectors only is more cost-effective and economically efficient and has resulted in fewer negative economic impacts than the policy of requiring all economic sectors to do so. Asking high-carbon emission industries to undertake carbon abatement can further reduce national carbon emission intensity. Additionally, promoting forest carbon sinks as an abatement initiative also demonstrates substantial economic benefits for society.

Transforming fire governance in British Columbia, Canada: an emerging vision for coexisting with fire.

The dominant command and control fire governance paradigm is proven ineffective at coping with modern wildfire challenges. In response, jurisdictions globally are calling for transformative change that will facilitate coexisting with future fires. Enacting transformative change requires attention to historical governance attributes that may enable or constrain transformation, including diverse actors, objectives, worldviews of fire, decision-making processes and power, legislation, and drivers of change. To identify potential pathways for transformative change, we systematically examined the history of fire governance attributes in British Columbia (BC), Canada (until 2020), a region that has experienced seven catastrophic fire seasons in the twenty-first century. By reviewing 157 provincial historical documents and interviewing 19 fire experts, we delineated five distinct governance eras that demonstrated the central role of government actors with decision-making power shaping fire governance through time, superseding First Nations fire governance starting in the 1870s. The emerging vision for transformation proposed by interviewees focuses on the need for increased decision-making power for community actors, yet legacies of entrenched government power and organizational silos between fire and forestry continue to constrain transformation. Although progress to overcome constraints has been made, we argue that enabling transformative change in fire governance in BC will require intervention by the provincial government to leverage modern drivers of change, including recent catastrophic fire seasons and reconciliation with First Nations.

Impacts of Environmental Regulations on Tourism Carbon Emissions.

This research analyzed the impact of environmental regulations and their power in suppressing tourism carbon emissions. The results showed that: (1) four types of environmental regulations had significant inhibiting effects on tourism carbon emissions, but different types of regulations had varying effects; and (2) environmental regulations had a significant time lag effect on tourism carbon emissions. The decay rates of the environmental regulation effects were dissimilar for supervisory management, market incentives, command and control, and public participation; and (3) environmental regulations had dissimilar influences on tourism carbon emissions at the regional level. Government agencies should choose differentiated environmental regulation tools, attach great importance to the time-lag effect of environmental regulations on tourism carbon emissions, and establish systems and mechanisms of public participation in environmental matters.

The compatibility of multiple leadership styles in responding to a complex crisis: leading a health service COVID-19 response.

PURPOSE: The health service response to COVID-19 provided a unique opportunity to build our understanding of the leadership styles in use in managing a crisis event. Existing literature emphasises command and control leadership; however, there has been less emphasis on relational approaches and the behaviours necessary to ensure the agility of the response and minimise the risk of relational disturbances. The purpose of this paper is to understand leadership styles in use, as part of a health service response to COVID-19. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: This paper draws on data from semi-structured interviews with 27 executives and senior leaders from a tertiary health service in Australia. The data were analysed using thematic analysis. Notes and examples were coded according to deductively derived criteria around leadership styles and competencies from the literature, while remaining open to emergent themes. FINDINGS: Health system leaders described examples of both command and control and relational leadership behaviours. This dually provided the discipline (command and control) and agility (relational) required of the crisis response. While some leaders experienced discomfort in enacting these dual behaviours, this discomfort related to discordance with leadership preferences rather than conflict between the styles. Both leadership approaches were considered necessary to effectively manage the health system response. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: Crisis management literature has typically focused on defining and measuring the effectiveness of behaviours reflective of a command and control leadership response. Very few studies have considered the relational aspects of crisis management, nor the dual approaches of command and control, and relational leadership.

To utilize automation or not to utilize automation, that is the question: An evaluation of how drills and procedures impact optronics mast usage from a sociotechnical systems perspective.

The delegation of tasks to a non-human agent in a sociotechnical system can extend human capabilities and performance. Effective performance is, however, reliant on a successful relationship between human operators and automation. Optronics is a partially automated system which has replaced periscope on board some modern submarine platforms, operating modes permit the completion of tasks either manually or utilizing automation. A reluctance to utilize automated functionality within the optronics system has been due to operator familiarity with legacy manual procedures based upon the use of a physical periscope. This highlights the gap that is prevalent between innovation, design, training and governance of automation utilization. The current work examined current (Control group) utilization of optronics technology using an expert population in a high fidelity simulator. Findings were utilized to guide the development of novel optronics specific standard operating procedures (Intervention group). Results indicate that automaton disuse was greatly reduced, which had had a positive overall impact on overall system performance with regard to productivity and accuracy. The current work highlights the importance of incorporating governance of use and training as part of an automation design and implementation program is critical to help 'maximize what you have'.

It's a circular argument: Examining how a novel configuration impacts information flow in submarine control rooms.

The continuing advancement of technology means that sociotechnical systems are primed for revolutionary changes to ways of working that can increase capability. It is critical to consider the unintended impact technology can have on human operators particularly regarding information flow and interactions within teams. Previous research revealed that the co-location of operator's dependent on each other for task relevant information can optimise information flow previously constrained by engineering considerations. The current work compared a novel circular configuration to that of a contemporary submarine control room. In the circular configuration, consoles faced inwards, permitting eye contact between operators, and three large screen displays were introduced to provide all operators with the same information. Ten teams participated in low and high demand dived tracking scenarios in a simulated submarine control room. All communications between operators were recorded in order to generate social, information, and task networks. These were statistically compared to networks generated from a baseline study of contemporary operation. Overall, the volume of verbal communications significantly reduced, information exchange was more structured, and the volume of tasks completed by operators significantly increased when operating in an inward facing circle configuration. The current work provides support for a data driven evidence-based approach to design that is information centric but endorsed by the end user to optimise performance and increase productivity. Implications of the work and future research ideas are discussed.

Combining cognitive work analysis and empirical evaluations to understand map use by operators of small carry-on unmanned aerial systems.

Operating a small carry-on unmanned aerial system (UAS) alone is challenging. Research on facilitating single-operator work has focused mainly on payload operation and health monitoring. Little focus has been given to mission-related aspects and how the command and control (C2) map display contributes to mission accomplishment. This study uses cognitive work analysis (CWA) to describe the operational work of the mission operator of a Skylark miniature UAS system. Three CWA phases were conducted - work domain analysis, control task analysis and strategy analysis - providing a rich framework of operational mission phases, task components, processes and the physical interface-objects in use. These representations highlight the operators' extensive use of the C2 map during all mission phases, for all object-related processes. To further enhance the outcomes of the CWA, and prior to outlining specific design requirements, an empirical investigation was conducted in which the eye movements of five experienced operators were obtained during a simulated mission. The empirical results confirm and further specify the work patterns that operators adopt. Quantitative analysis shows operators' extensive focus on the map, especially during mission-critical phases. These analyses led to the conclusion that a significant change in the way operators interact with the C2 map, or alternative designs to enhance map-based information utilization, should be applied. Insights drawn from this analysis can be applied to other aerial surveillance work domains, and adding empirical evaluations is helpful to further refine and reinforce the CWA outcomes.

Anomaly Detection for Individual Sequences with Applications in Identifying Malicious Tools.

Anomaly detection refers to the problem of identifying abnormal behaviour within a set of measurements. In many cases, one has some statistical model for normal data, and wishes to identify whether new data fit the model or not. However, in others, while there are normal data to learn from, there is no statistical model for this data, and there is no structured parameter set to estimate. Thus, one is forced to assume an individual sequences setup, where there is no given model or any guarantee that such a model exists. In this work, we propose a universal anomaly detection algorithm for one-dimensional time series that is able to learn the normal behaviour of systems and alert for abnormalities, without assuming anything on the normal data, or anything on the anomalies. The suggested method utilizes new information measures that were derived from the Lempel-Ziv (LZ) compression algorithm in order to optimally and efficiently learn the normal behaviour (during learning), and then estimate the likelihood of new data (during operation) and classify it accordingly. We apply the algorithm to key problems in computer security, as well as a benchmark anomaly detection data set, all using simple, single-feature time-indexed data. The first is detecting Botnets Command and Control (C&C) channels without deep inspection. We then apply it to the problems of malicious tools detection via system calls monitoring and data leakage identification.We conclude with the New York City (NYC) taxi data. Finally, while using information theoretic tools, we show that an attacker's attempt to maliciously fool the detection system by trying to generate normal data is bound to fail, either due to a high probability of error or because of the need for huge amounts of resources.

Distributed situation awareness: a health-system approach to assessing and designing patient flow management.

Patient flow management is a system-wide process but many healthcare providers do not integrate multiple departments into the process to minimise the time between treatments or medical services for maximum patient throughput. This paper presents a case study of applying Distributed Situation Awareness (DSA) to characterise system-wide patient flow management and identify opportunities for improvements in a healthcare system. This case study employed a three-part method of data elicitation, extraction, and representation to investigate DSA. Social, task, and knowledge networks were developed and then combined to characterise patient flow management and identify deficiencies of the command and control centre of a healthcare facility. Social network analysis provided centrality metrics to further characterise patient flow management. The DSA model helped identify design principles and deficiencies in managing patient flow. These findings indicate that DSA is promising for analysing patient flow management from a system-wide perspective. Practitioner summary: This article examines Distribution Situation Awareness (DSA) as an analysis framework to study system-wide patient flow management. The DSA yields social, task, and knowledge networks that can be combined to characterise patient flow and identify deficiencies in the system. DSA appears promising for analysing communication and coordination of complex systems. Abbreviations: CDM: critical decision method; CTaC: carilion transfer and communications center; EAST: event analysis systematic teamwork; ED: emergency department; DES: discrete event simulation; DSA: distributed situation awareness; SA: situation awareness; SNA: social network analysis.

Does command-and-control regulation promote green innovation performance? Evidence from China's industrial enterprises.

Many developing countries including China have launched command-and-control regulation (CCR) to achieve sustainable development. However, we know little about whether CCR promotes green innovation performance. This study empirically analyses the impact of CCR, which is represented by China's eleventh Five-Year Plan (FYP) environmental regulation, on enterprise green innovation performance and use green innovation efficiency as the measure of innovation. Super-SBM DEA model, difference-in-differences (DID) and difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) methods are employed to investigate 496 industrial enterprises in China's A-share market for the 2002-2017 period. Moreover, we distinguish each treat group from the control group by using continuous variables and consider enterprise features in the analysis. The results find that, in general, the eleventh FYP environmental regulation negatively influences enterprise green innovation efficiency in a short-term through reducing cash flows. More specifically, the eleventh FYP CCR generates a detrimental effect on small enterprises, state-owned enterprises, and enterprises in China's western and eastern regions. Overall, this empirical analysis suggests that the government should consider the effect of CCR on economy and focus on the heterogeneity of enterprises during designing environmental policies.