New Dynamics of Ageing: Mobility and Ageing

Ageing is generally associated with a decrease in mobility and social interaction and this decrease can be dependent upon various health and social factors. The aim of this project was to utilise an innovative method for mapping the mobility of the oldest-old members of an existing 20 year longitudinal study of ageing.

The project drew upon activity monitoring methods and combined these with data from state-of-art location-aware technologies in order to develop new metrics. These were then used to describe the relationship between mobility and physical and mental well-being.

The project worked with a local company using GPS location awareness devices in order to track the movements of a group of older adults while eliciting their privacy concerns around such forms of personal monitoring.

Author: James Nicholson

James is a Lecturer in the School of Computer and Information Sciences. James is interested in many aspects of cybersecurity and privacy, including usable security, social engineering, lay users’ understanding of cybersecurity, multifactor authentication, everyday surveillance, and inclusive cybersecurity. Previously, James was a senior researcher in PaCT Lab working on the Cybersecurity Across the Lifespan (cSALSA) project. The project explores how cyber-security is understood, and the attitudes and behaviours of people to cyber-security and risk. During his time in PaCT Lab, James also worked on Choice Architecture for Information Security (ChAISe), Digital Economy Research Centre (DERC), and the Horizon 2020 project CYBECO. Prior to PaCT Lab, James worked at Open Lab, Newcastle University on the TEDDI and SiDE projects. James’ work has focused on improving user authentication, both by repurposing existing graphical authentication systems and by evaluating novel ones. He is also interested in user privacy and how groups of users (children, parents, older adults) experience location tracking technologies, as well as how CCTV video can be crowdsourced to de-centralise the surveillance landscape. More recently, he has developed tools and methodologies for uncovering and understanding employees’ mental models of security threats with the aim of improving training programmes and/or organisational policies, as well as practical means for improving users’ protection against these security threats (e.g. phishing). James obtained his BSc (Information Systems) from Newcastle University in 2008, and his MRes Psychology from Northumbria University in 2009. James’ PhD work – completed in 2012 – explored user authentication in the context of older adults under the supervision of Professor Lynne Coventry and Professor Pam Briggs.