Universities, like cities, have embraced novel technologies and data-based solutions to improve their campuses with ‘smart’ becoming a welcomed concept. Campuses in many ways are small-scale cities. They increasingly seek to address similar challenges and to deliver improved experiences to their users. How can data be used in making this vision a reality? What can we learn from smart campuses that can be scaled up to smart cities? A short research study was conducted over a three-month period at a public university in the United Kingdom, employing stakeholder interviews and user surveys, which aimed to gain insight into these questions. Based on the study, the authors suggest that making data publicly available could bring many benefits to different groups of stakeholders and campus users. These benefits come with risks and challenges, such as data privacy and protection and infrastructure hurdles. However, if these challenges can be overcome, then open data could contribute significantly to improving campuses and user experiences, and potentially set an example for smart cities.

Background: Technology-enabled healthcare or smart health has provided a wealth of products and services to enable older people to monitor and manage their own health conditions at home, thereby maintaining independence, whilst also reducing healthcare costs. However, despite the growing ubiquity of smart health, innovations are often technically driven, and the older user does not often have input into design. The purpose of the current study was to facilitate a debate about the positive and negative perceptions and attitudes towards digital health technologies. Methods: We conducted citizens’ juries to enable a deliberative inquiry into the benefits and risks of smart health technologies and systems. Transcriptions of group discussions were interpreted from a perspective of life-worlds versus systems-worlds. Results: Twenty-three participants of diverse demographics contributed to the debate. Views of older people were felt to be frequently ignored by organisations implementing systems and technologies. Participants demonstrated diverse levels of digital literacy and a range of concerns about misuse of technology. Conclusion: Our interpretation contrasted the life-world of experiences, hopes, and fears with the systems-world of surveillance, efficiencies, and risks. This interpretation offers new perspectives on involving older people in co-design and governance of smart health and smart homes.

The disorderly and disrupted movement of passengers within train stations are key concerns in rail transport, especially where there are increasing numbers of passengers, coupled with often out-dated, adapted station spaces. With careful planning and design, different characteristics of lighting can be employed to address problems relating to the movement and behaviour of passengers in railway environments. This study aims to offer an approach to identify new concepts for lighting-based interventions to influence passenger movement behaviours within train stations. Behaviourally orientated lighting literature was reviewed, providing the knowledge base to inform a series of engagement activities with transport stakeholders and lighting technologists, to understand problematic behaviours and how these might be resolved through targeted lighting design. In combining findings from the literature with insights from rail and transport-related industry stakeholders and lighting specialists, a number of potential opportunities for novel applications of lighting have been identified. Six scenarios are developed that illustrate these opportunities for potential lighting-based interventions to influence train passenger movement and behaviour. These scenarios can be used to inform the direction of further research and consideration of how different lighting characteristics can affect rail passenger behaviours.

Universities, like cities, have embraced novel technologies and data-based solutions to improve their campuses with ‘smart’ becoming a welcomed concept. Campuses in many ways are small-scale cities. They increasingly seek to address similar challenges and to deliver improved experiences to their users. How can data be used in making this vision a reality? What can we learn from smart campuses that can be scale up to smart cities? A short research study was conducted over a three-month period at a public university in the United Kingdom employing stakeholder interviews and user surveys, aiming at gaining insight into these questions. Based on the study, the authors suggest that making data publicly available could bring many benefits to different groups of stakeholders and campus users. These benefits come with risks and challenges such as data privacy and protection and infrastructure hurdles. However, if these challenges can be overcome, open data could contribute significantly to improving campuses and user experiences, and potentially set an example for smart cities.

Navigating around large hospitals can be a stressful and time-consuming experience for all users of the hospital infrastructure. Navigation difficulties encountered by patients and visitors can result in missed appointments or simply create a poor impression of the hospital organisation. When staff encounter navigation difficulties this can lead to cost and efficiency issues and potentially put patient safety at risk. Despite the provision of an array of in-hospital navigational aids, “getting lost” continues to be an everyday problem in these large complex environments. This study aims to to identify factors which affect navigation in hospitals. We do not seek to evaluate the effectiveness of a single navigation aid, instead the objective of this study was to understand the environment in which a new system must operate and the gaps in provision left by existing navigation aids. This study is intended to be used to inform the development of new in-hospital navigational aids, be they technological or otherwise. Eleven participants, all users of a large hospital site, were asked to describe specific first hand experiences of navigating in a hospital. The `Critical Incidence Technique' was applied in a series of semi-structured interviews to elicit information about a participants navigation experience. This work presents the results of these interviews, with concepts identified and organised into five themes: The `Impact' of poor navigation, `Barriers' to effective navigation, `Enhancers' for effective navigation, `Types of Navigation Aids' and user groups with `Specific Navigational Needs'. The number of navigation aids available to participants was identified as an issue in itself, we found examples of thirty seven distinct sources of information available to a hospital user. We begin by introducing previous work on in-hospital navigation before describing the study design employed in this research. The themes and categories identified from the interview data are enumerated and described, with examples given from the interview transcripts. Finally we go on to give a discussion of some potential navigation solutions in light of the identified factors. This study highlights that a candidate navigation aid must be carefully designed and implemented if it is to compliment the thirty seven other sources of navigation information available to the hospital user.

Three behaviour types – suicide, trespass and risky behaviours, which can result in entry to railway tracks – present an ongoing challenge to the rail industry for fatality prevention. Many preventative interventions exist, operating at different stages in the timeline of a person’s decision to access the tracks to the point that they have entered and remain in the track area. However, there is little understanding of the impacts of interventions on the behaviours in question. This paper outlines the generation of the functional requirements for the use of lighting as safety interventions, which can contribute towards the development and evaluation of such interventions. The study includes the analysis of literature on how lighting has been used to date in the prevention of suicide, trespass and other risky behaviour on railway property. Interviews were carried out with 13 key stakeholders who have expertise in the behaviours in question and awareness of the range of safety interventions used in practice in railway settings. The analysis explores how lighting can be used to influence these different behaviour types. Functionalities that are both theoretically and empirically promising are identified. These functionalities include the need for reactive environmental changes, novelty, ability to influence decision-making and ability to support a human response, for example, through highlighting to staff when someone has entered the tracks. These functionalities offer developers a framework for developing (and subsequently evaluating) a range of novel intervention technologies, which could highlight specific lighting properties that could influence behaviour.