Orchid Project

I recently had a number of papersaccepted to the Third IEEE International Workshop on the Social Implications ofPervasive Computing for Sustainable Living (www.sipc2014.blogspot.com),including Orchids own Cicada project. I enjoy attending this workshop as it brings togetherresearchers with a variety of backgrounds together to have stimulating (andoften heated) discussions about the implications of their work. Another […]

Fascinating report by the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) on world disasters. Apparently, 2012 counts as one of the less stressful years for world disasters, given the absence of major disasters such as the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar in 2008 or the 2010 Haiti earthquake. The […]

Nice review article in the Economist this week on the future of jobs citing results from Mike Osborne’s paper from last year -  http://www.businessinsider.com/the-future-of-jobs-the-onrushing-wave-2014-1

I have written a response to SciDevNet’s article on the ORCHID DR work on my blog. 

We have a forthcoming publication at CHI 2014. Download the PDF from the link below, or get it from the Southampton e-prints archive.  Costanza, E., Fischer, J.E., Colley, J.A., Rodden, T., Ramchurn, S.D. and Jennings, N.R. Doing the Laundry with Agents: a Field Trial of a Future Smart Energy System in the Home. To appear in: […]

An interesting report on the use of technology within humanitarian aid missions - www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/134658/WDR 2013 complete.pdf.

Paul Virilio theorises that life is increasingly not lived in the room, but lived on the body instead. The necessities of life become mobilised, miniaturised and made-to-measure. We used to spend time in living rooms, now we are getting used to carrying our living space with us in the shape of flak jackets with phones, […]

The Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI) at Manchester University (see www.hcri.ac.uk) is run by an ex-president of Medicines Sans Frontieres, Dr Rony Brauman, and “is inspired by the need to conduct rigorous, in-depth research and analysis on the impact and outcomes of contemporary and historical crises. This programme is driven by a desire to inform […]

What is a narrative? According to the US Armed Forces 2009 publication Counterinsurgency Operations, it’s “a story recounted in the form of a linked set of events that explains an event in a group’s history and expresses the values, character, or identity of the group.” The May 2006 government-authored report on the 7/7 London bombings […]

Insurgents in a territory express their grievances through a narrative which includes an alternative to the status quo. Before they begin to fight with guns and bombs, they fight for the hearts and minds of the population. According to the US Armed Forces 2009 publication Counterinsurgency Operations, any successful counterinsurgency operation must create a counter-narrative […]