We arrange disaster mitigation activities into temporal order and discuss the contribution of information and communications technology (ICT) to the reduction of disaster damage in the stages of precaution, emergency response, and post-mortem study. Examples of the current contribution of ICT are introduced and future possible uses of ICT are discussed. We focus on the contribution of ICT to decision-making in emergency responses by augmenting human intelligence. Research directions of ICT for disaster mitigation technology are summarized in the categories “tough ICT”, “intelligence amplification for decision-making in disaster mitigation” and “safe ICT.”

This paper addresses the issue of implementing a sequence for restoring fiber links and communication paths that have failed due to a catastrophe. We present a mathematical formulation to minimize the total number of steps needed to restore communication paths. We also propose two heuristic algorithms: Minimum spanning tree - based degree order restoration and Congestion link order restoration. Numerical evaluations show that integer linear programming based order restoration yields the fewest number of restoration steps, and that the proposed heuristic algorithms, when used properly with regard to the accommodation rate, are highly effective for real-world networks.

In emergency situations, telecommunication networks become congested due to large numbers of call requests. Also, some infrastructure breaks down, so undamaged communication resources must be utilized more efficiently. Therefore, several lines in telephone exchanges are generally reserved for emergency calls whose users communicate crucial information. The number of lines reserved for emergency calls is determined by a threshold, on a trunk reservation control method. To accept both required emergency calls and more general calls, the traffic intensity of arriving emergency calls should be estimated in advance, and a threshold should be configured so that the number of reserved lines becomes lower than the estimation. Moreover, we propose that the holding time for general calls should be positively limited. By guaranteeing the holding time sufficient for communicating essential information, holding time limitation reduces long-period calls so more general calls are accepted. In this paper, we propose a new CAC method to utilize undamaged communication resources more efficiently during emergencies. Our proposed method accepts more general calls by collaboratively relaxing the threshold of trunk reservation and limiting holding time of general calls. This method is targeted at not only the telephone exchange but also various systems on networks, e.g. base stations of the wireless network or SIP servers. With our method, the threshold is configured in consideration of the ratio of traffic intensities estimated in advance. We modeled the telephone exchange as a queueing loss system and calculated call-blocking rates of both emergency and general calls by using computer simulation. The comparison with the conventional holding time limitation method showed that our proposed method accepts the required number of emergency calls by appropriately relaxing the threshold, while suppressing the increase in call-blocking of general calls.

Information floating delivers information to mobile nodes in specific areas without meaningless spreading of information by permitting mobile nodes to directly transfer information to other nodes by wireless links in designated areas called transmittable areas. In this paper, we assume that mobile nodes change direction at intersections after receiving such information as warnings and local advertisements and that an information source remains in some place away from the transmittable area and continuously broadcasts information. We analyze performance of information floating under these assumptions to explore effects of the behavior changes of mobile nodes, decision deadline of the behavior change, and existence of a fixed source on information floating. We theoretically analyze the probability that a node cannot receive information and also derive the size of each transmittable area so that this probability is close to desired values.

Forming Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is recognized as a significant counter-measure against future large-scale disasters by private enterprises after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake more than before. Based on a questionnaire survey, this paper reports business recovery conditions of private enterprises in Miyagi Prefecture affected by the disaster. Analyzing the results of questionnaire, it suggests some important points: (1) estimation of long-term internal/external factors that influence business continuity, (2) development of concrete pre-disaster framework, (3) multi-media-based advertising strategy, and (4) re-allocation of resources.

It is important to collect and spread accurate information quickly during disasters. Therefore, utilizing Twitter at the time of accidents has been gaining attention in recent year. In this paper, we propose a real-time information sharing system during disaster based on the utilization of Twitter. The proposed system consists of two sub-systems, a disaster information tweeting system that automatically attaches user's current geo-location information (address) and the hashtag of the form “#(municipality name) disaster,” and a disaster information mapping system that displays neighboring disaster-related tweets on a map.

The purpose of this paper is to show that a new type of information-theoretic learning method called “potential learning” can be used to detect and extract important tweets among a great number of redundant ones. In the experiment, we used a dataset of 10,000 tweets, among which there existed only a few important ones. The experimental results showed that the new method improved overall classification accuracy by correctly identifying the important tweets.

It is qualitatively considered that emergency information processing by using UTM grids is effective in generating COP (Common Operational Pictures). Here, we conducted a numerical evaluation based on emergency information-processing training to examine the efficiency of the use of UTM grid maps by staff at the Tagajo City Government office. The results of the demonstration experiment were as follows: 1) The time required for information propagation and mapping with UTM coordinates was less than that with address text consisting of area name and block number. 2) There was no measurable difference in subjective estimates of the training performance of participants with or without the use of UTM grids. 3) Fear of real emergency responses decreased among training participants using UTM grids. 4) Many of the negative free answers on a questionnaire evaluation of participants involved requests regarding the reliability and operability of UTM tools.

Bistatic multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar has the capability of measuring the transmit angle from the receiving array, which means the existence of information redundancy and benefits data association. In this paper, a data association decision for bistatic MIMO radar is proposed and the performance advantages of bistatic MIMO radar in data association is analyzed and evaluated. First, the parameters obtained by receiving array are sent to the association center via coordinate conversion. Second, referencing the nearest neighbor association (NN) algorithm, an improved association decision is proposed with the transmit angle and target range as association statistics. This method can evade the adverse effects of the angle system errors to data association. Finally, data association probability in the presence of array directional error is derived and the correctness of derivation result is testified via Monte Carlo simulation experiments. Besides that performance comparison with the conventional phased array radar verifies the excellent performance of bistatic MIMO Radar in data association.

In this paper, a new scheme is presented for ground moving target indication for multichannel high-resolution wide-swath (HRWS) SAR systems with modified reconstruction filters. The conventional steering vector is generalized for moving targets through taking into account the additional Doppler centroid shift caused by the across-track velocity. Two modified steering vectors with symmetric velocity information are utilized to produce two images for the same scene. Due to the unmatched steering vectors, the stationary backgrounds are defocused but they still hold the same intensities in both images but moving targets are blurred to different extents. The ambiguous components of the moving targets can also be suppressed due to the beamforming in the reconstruction procedure. Therefore, ground moving target indication can be carried out via intensity comparison between the two images. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by both simulated and real airborne SAR data.

In this paper, we study the problem of a Boolean function can be represented as the sum of two bent functions. This problem was recently presented by N. Tokareva when studying the number of bent functions [27]. Firstly, several classes of functions, such as quadratic Boolean functions, Maiorana-MacFarland bent functions, many partial spread functions etc, are proved to be able to be represented as the sum of two bent functions. Secondly, methods to construct such functions from low dimension ones are also introduced. N. Tokareva's main hypothesis is proved for n≤6. Moreover, two hypotheses which are equivalent to N. Tokareva's main hypothesis are presented. These hypotheses may lead to new ideas or methods to solve this problem. Finally, necessary and sufficient conditions on the problem when the sum of several bent functions is again a bent function are given.

This paper presents an efficient secure auction protocol for M+1st price auction. In our proposed protocol, a bidding price of a player is represented as a binary expression, while in the previous protocol it is represented as an integer. Thus, when the number of players is m and the bidding price is an integer up to p, compared to the complexity of the previous protocol which is a polynomial of m and p, the complexity of our protocol is a polynomial of m and log p. We apply the Boneh-Goh-Nissim encryption to the mix-and-match protocol to reduce the computation costs.

We present a hard-wired central patter generator (CPG) hardware network that reproduces the periodic oscillations of the typical gaits, namely, walk, trot, and bound. Notably, the three gaits are generated by a single parameter, i.e., the battery voltage E_MLR, which acts like a signal from the midbrain's locomotor region. One CPG is composed of two types of hardware neuron models, reproducing neuronal bursting and beating (action potentials), and three types of hardware synapse models: a gap junction, excitatory and inhibitory synapses. When four hardware CPG models were coupled into a Z₄ symmetry network in a previous study [22], two neuronal oscillation patterns corresponding to four-legged animal gaits (walk and bound) were generated by manipulating a single control parameter. However, no more than two neuronal oscillation patterns have been stably observed on a hard-wired four-CPG hardware network. In the current study, we indicate that three neuronal oscillation patterns (walk, trot, and bound) can be generated by manipulating a single control parameter on a hard-wired eight-CPG (Z₄ × Z₂ symmetry) hardware network.

An online version of convolutive non-negative sparse coding (CNSC) with the generalized Kullback-Leibler (K-L) divergence is proposed to adaptively learn spectral-temporal bases from speech streams. The proposed scheme processes training data piece-by-piece and incrementally updates learned bases with accumulated statistics to overcome the inefficiency of its offline counterpart in processing large scale or streaming data. Compared to conventional non-negative sparse coding, we utilize the convolutive model within bases, so that each basis is capable of describing a relatively long temporal span of signals, which helps to improve the representation power of the model. Moreover, by incorporating a voice activity detector (VAD), we propose an unsupervised enhancement algorithm that updates the noise dictionary adaptively from non-speech intervals. Meanwhile, for the speech intervals, one can adaptively learn the speech bases by keeping the noise ones fixed. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the competing algorithms substantially, especially when the background noise is highly non-stationary.

This letter presents a simple and explicit formulation of non-unique Wiener filters associated with the linear predictor for processing of sinusoids. It was shown in the literature that, if the input signal consists of only sinusoids and does not include a white noise, the input autocorrelation matrix in the Wiener-Hopf equation becomes rank-deficient and thus the Wiener filter is not uniquely determined. In this letter we deal with this rank-deficient problem and present a mathematical description of non-unique Wiener filters in a simple and explicit form. This description is directly obtained from the tap number, the frequency of sinusoid, and the delay parameter. We derive this result by means of the elementary row operations on the augmented matrix given by the Wiener-Hopf equation. We also show that the conventional Wiener filter for noisy input signal is included as a special case of our description.

Trellis coded modulation (TCM) concept is applied to the mode constellation points of orbital angular momentum (OAM) modulation. OAM modulation considers the multiple OAM modes as additional constellation points and maps a first part of a block of information bits to the transmitting OAM modes. Therefore, spatial multiplexing gains are retained and spectral efficiency is boosted. The second part of the block of information bits is mapped to a complex symbol using conventional digital modulation schemes. At any particular time instant, only one OAM mode is active. The receiver estimates the transmitted symbol and the active OAM mode, then uses the two estimates to retrieve the original block of data bits. Simulation reveals that with the TCM employed both for the OAM constellation points and the signal constellation points, a considerable bit error rate (BER) gain can be obtained under all turbulence conditions, compared with that of the no coding scheme.

Estimation of the time delay of arrival (TDOA) problem is important to acoustic source localization. The TDOA estimation problem is defined as finding the relative delay between several microphone signals for the direct sound. To estimate TDOA, the generalized cross-correlation (GCC) method is the most frequently used, but it has a disadvantage in terms of reverberant environments. In order to overcome this problem, the adaptive eigenvalue decomposition (AED) method has been developed, which estimates the room transfer function and finds the direct-path delay. However, the algorithm does not take into account the fact that the room transfer function is a sparse channel, and so sometimes the estimated transfer function is too dense, resulting in failure to exact direct-path and delay. In this paper, an enhanced AED algorithm that makes use of a proportionate step-size control and a direct-path constraint is proposed instead of a constant step size and the L₂-norm constraint. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has enhanced performance as compared to both the conventional AED method and the phase-transform (PHAT) algorithm.

In this letter we present some easily checkable necessary conditions for a polynomial with positive coefficients to have all its zeros in a prescribed sector in the left half of the complex plane. As an auxiliary result, we also obtain a new necessary condition for the Hurwitz stability.

A self-adaptive scaled min-sum algorithm for LDPC decoding based on the difference between the first two minima of the check node messages (Δmin) is proposed. Δmin is utilized for adjusting the scaling factor of the check node messages, and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm improves the error correcting performance compared to existing algorithms.

Based on a ternary perfect sequence and a binary orthogonal matrix, the Z-periodic complementary sequence (ZPCS) sets over the 8-QAM+ constellation are constructed. The resultant sequences can be used in multi-carriers code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) systems to remove interference and increase the transmission rate. The proposed construction provides flexible choice for parameters so as to meet different requirements in the application. A construction of shift sequence sets is proposed and the number of 8-QAM ZPCS sets is extended by changing the parameters of shift sequences. As a result, more users can be accommodated in the system.

Based on the generalized cyclotomy of order two with respect to n=p₁^e₁+1p₂^e₂+1…p_t^e_t+1, where p₁, p₂, …,p_t are pairwise distinct odd primes and e₁, e₂,…, e_t are non-negative integers satisfying gcd (p_i^e_i (p_i-1), p_j^e_j (p_j-1)) = 2 for all i ≠ j, this paper constructs a new family of generalized cyclotomic sequences of order two with length n and investigates their linear complexity. In the view of cascade theory, this paper obtains the linear complexity of a representative sequence.