Self-Organisation for Survival

In a dynamic or disruptive situation, such as disasters, a fully mobile and decentralized infrastructure-less network seems to be a viable option for communication. Citizens are confronted with challenges such as complicated deployment of these networks, resource-constrained mobile phones and mobility. This requires communication networks to...

Self-Organizing Multi-Agent Systems

In this thesis I research the ability of groups of agents to organize their collective behavior, without any human intervention. Using a framework for gathering information of the behavior, analyzing the performance, and updating the behavior, the agents can adapt to changing environments or user requirements. In my thesis I use different...

Planning with self-organised initiatives: From fragmentation to resilience

The rapid urban growth of Brazilian cities in the second half of the twentieth century produced an extremely unequal urban fabric with spatial discontinuities and left-over spaces. Spatial fragmentation in Brazilian metropolises is not only related to spatial discontinuities, but also to socioeconomic inequalities. Walls in Brazil are physical...

Computing in Large-Scale Dynamic Systems

Software applications developed for large-scale systems have always been difficult to de- velop due to problems caused by the large number of computing devices involved. Above a certain network size (roughly one hundred), necessary services such as code updating, topol- ogy discovery and data dissemination are challenging to operate and thus...

Multi-modal aggression detection in trains

In many public places multiple sensing devices, such as cameras, are installed to help prevent unwanted situations such as aggression and violence. At the moment, the best solution to reach a safe environment requires human operators to monitor the camera images and take appropriate actions when necessary. In the wake of the terrorist attacks of...