Can a smartphone application provide police officers with information that helps them operate more efficiently? Psychologist Jan Willem Streefkerk developed and tested a prototype.
A four-month long field test involving 30 police officers in Groningen (2007) revealed that location alone was not a relevant basis for sifting information from the police database. When for example a police officer was in the vicinity of a local prison, the officer was overwhelmed by dozens of messages saying that people who hadn’t paid their fines were living in this area. Six officers quit the test programme because they felt the information they received wasn’t worth the trouble of consulting the device.
“The information you send to police officers in the street should be context-aware,” says Jan Willem Streefkerk, a psychologist at TNO and a PhD student of Professor Mark Neerincx at the faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science’s man-machine interaction group. ‘Context’ implies the system takes into account information about the receiver’s location, the task he or she is engaged in, and the priority level of the message.
During his PhD research, Streefkerk developed a system that would use dynamic information from the emergency command centre. Depending on the priority, messages can be sent silently or with an intrusive beep tone. The system also checks what tasks the officers are engaged in and adapts the message’s priority level accordingly. A police officer on his way to an armed robbery for example will not be distracted by a missing-persons notification. Instead, the system simply sends a one-word summary. In a simulated experiment, Streefkerk found that contextual messaging improved both the officers’ awareness and their decision-making, although it did not reduce their reaction times.
Similar results were found for a smartphone-based team advice tool. This tool knows and displays the team members’ locations, while also selecting and calling a fellow officer when an officer on patrol requires assistance. Assisted team formations were improved (incidents were better divided among the team), but not quicker. “In a real emergency a radio broadcast is still the best option,” Streefkerk admits.
Since there is little budget available for further developing the system for policing purposes, Streefkerk plans to adapt the system for fire brigades and the military.
J.W. Streefkerk, ‘Doing the right task: Context-Aware Notification for Mobile Police Teams’, 20 May 2011, PhD supervisor Professor Mark A. Neerincx.
Some 55 TU Delft international students will compete against teams from nine other international education institutes from across the Netherlands at the International Student Sports Day, which this year is being hosted by the University of Twente. All told, around sevenhundred competitors from sixty countries will compete in this ‘mini Olympics’ for international students.
Despite competing in the event since 2000, winning the overall championship has thus far eluded TU Delft. Instead, ultimate victory has always been a tossup between our Delft neighbours, the Unesco Institute for Water Education (IHE), and the International Institute for Geo-information Science and Earth Observation (ITC) in Enschede: between them the two institutes have won 27 of the last 32 championships. “But that’s history”, says Mary Dotman, the TU Delft International Office staffer helping to organise the event. “This year will be different.”
In hopes of winning this year’s championship, TU Delft’s student-athletes have been training once a week since February. Kirk Scheper, captain of TU Delft’s volleyball team, appreciates that the international office arranged for practice facilities to be made available and also hired coaches to help improve their trainings. He says the volleyball team’s preparations have been ‘top class’. It’s now hoped that this extra guidance will translate into better performances this year, not just in volleyball but also in all the events Delft has entered: soccer, badminton, basketball, table tennis, chess and darts.
TU Delft will not however field a women’s soccer team, which is in stark contrast to IHE, whose ‘women’s team is ready for the event’, according to Slyvie Stijlen, IHE’s social cultural officer. With competition regulations requiring all team sports to include a certain number of women, it’s been ‘difficult’, Scheper admits, to get the required number of women.
The overall enrolment for this year’s competition has also been hampered by the fact that International Sports Day falls smack in the middle of the April exam period. This is the reason why Ahmed Bakker, a top-notch volleyballer who captained last year’s volleyball team, is not taking part this year. Another factor might also be the university’s decision to ‘go Dutch’ this year. Perhaps it’s the crisis, but requiring the TU Delft team members to fork out 7.50 euros for the trip east to Enschede was never going to be a hit with international students.
But for the students participating, their motivations nevertheless shine through. For most, in the true spirit of the games, the joy is in taking part in a shared experience. For others, like Purvil Khakharia, the table tennis team’s captain, it’s the spirit of competition and the opportunity to test oneself on an international level, while for basketball player Sreedevi Koonath it’s the chance to continue playing a sport she loves and has been playing since her school years.
Ultimately, however, the very fact that people of such different backgrounds and temperaments can come together in the sports arena and temporarily forget all the differences is victory in itself.
For those interested in cheering on TU Delft’s sports teams, International Student Sports Day will be held on April 10, from 10:00 to 18:00, at the University of Twente’s Sports Centre, in Enschede.

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