Web and Internet Science (WAIS) researchers from the University of Southampton have been involved in developing essential provenance software for the award-winning ORCHID project.

ORCHID is a £10m major research project tackling a key challenge in modern computer science – how humans and intelligent software systems can seamlessly and effectively work together to aid the management of a disaster environment such as the Haiti earthquake and the Fukushima nuclear tragedy.

The project explored the use of unmanned autonomous vehicles (UAVs) fitted with audio-visual equipment and crowd-sourced information to improve the response of emergency services and populations to disaster management.

The human-agent collective technology has been used in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake to help save lives. Crowd-sourced data enabled rescuers to map settlements across the affected areas and identify aid, and search and rescue priorities. Crowd reports are collected and verified by UAVs, first responders are deployed and assignments may be changed depending on new information gathered.

However, the amount of data being generated during an emergency situation means the information is continually changing and needs to be constantly updated.

ORCHID co-investigator Dr Sarvapali Ramchurn, from Southampton’s Agents, Interaction and Complexity Research Group, said: “In order to ensure everybody involved gets the most up-to-date information to get the job done, we combine human and machine intelligence to optimise the collection, analysis and filtering of data coming from the disaster zone.â€?

His Southampton colleague Dr Dong Huynh, a WAIS researcher in the fields of trust, reputation and provenance, led a team developing software that would ensure the information available to responders was as accurate and up-to-date as possible.

He said: “When new information comes into the system this may invalidate an existing assignment. We have developed provenance management software that recognises these changes and feeds them back to the task allocation commander, thereby providing a continuous feedback loop of information.â€?

This was made possible by tracking and reporting the provenance of every piece of data or decision generated in the whole disaster management system. To enable them to effectively implement this, the team developed original software and tools to manage provenance using the latest PROV standards by the World Wide Web Consortium – the standardisation body for Web standards.

Professor Luc Moreau, ORCHID co-investigator and co-chair of the provenance standardisation group at the World Wide Web Consortium, said: “The provenance standard PROV was critical in describing changes to our knowledge about the situation on the ground, identifying all the planned activities that were dependent on that revised knowledge, and triggering re-planning where appropriate.â€?

ORCHID recently took top prize in the data and connectivity category at the
Collaborate to Innovate Awards organised by The Engineer – the UK’s longest-running engineering publication. The awards were aimed at identifying some of the UK’s most impressive and innovative examples of engineering collaboration.

Professor John W. McBride has received a Best Paper Award for the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Transactions on Components, Packaging and Manufacturing Technology in the Components: Characterisation and Modelling category.

Professor McBride receives the honour during his role as Chief Executive Officer of the University of Southampton Malaysia Campus, which offers an MEng in Electrical and Electronic Engineering across both Malaysian and English academic environments. Professor McBride, along with Professor Liudi Jiang and post-doctoral research fellow Adam Lewis, receive the honour for their paper entitled ‘Evolution of Voltage Transients during the Switching of a MEMs Relay With Au/MWCNT Contacts’, which was published in the December 2015 edition of the journal.

The paper presents a method for improving the lifetime of gold as the electric contact material for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) metal contact switches. This procedure consists of developing a gold-coated multi-walled carbon nanotube bilayer composite with experiments under two different hot switching conditions – a higher load current of 50 mA and a lower load current of 10 mA. The paper showed that stable contact resistance throughout the contact lifetime can be achieved under lower load current of 10 mA and over 500 million switching cycles.

“Using a combination of design and experimental methodologies, we found that gold-coated multi-walled carbon nanotube bilayer composite as a contact can withstand the damage caused by hot switching,â€? said McBride. “This work will enable us to make future MEMS more reliable and energy efficient.â€?

Prior to joining University of Southampton Malaysia Campus, Professor McBride was the Associate Dean of Research for Engineering and the Environment. As a lecturer in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering, he specialised in electrical and contact physics and surface characterisation.

In 2006, he was awarded the IEEE Holm Scientific Achievement Award, an international award recognising outstanding scientists and engineers in the field of electrical contacts or related technologies. Two years later, he was team leader for the award of the international James A. Lindner Prize for research on the Sound Archive Project.