Adaptive and context-aware service composition for IoT-based smart cities

Smart Cities are advancing towards an instrumented, integrated, and intelligent living space, where Internet of Things (IoT), mobile technologies and next generation networks are expected to play a key role. In smart cities, numerous IoT-based services are likely to be available and a key challenge is to allow mobile users perform their daily tasks dynamically, by integrating the services available in their vicinity. Semantic Service Oriented Architectures (SSOA) abstract the environment’s services and their functionalities as Semantic Web Services (SWS). However, existing service composition approaches based on SSOA do not support dynamic reasoning on user tasks and service behaviours to deal with the heterogeneity of IoT domains. In this paper, we present an adaptive service composition framework that supports such dynamic reasoning. The framework is based on wEASEL, an abstract service model representing services and user tasks in terms of their signature, specification (i.e., context-aware pre-conditions, post-conditions and effects) and conversation (i.e., behaviour with related data-flow and context-flow constraints). To evaluate our composition framework, we develop a novel OWLS-TC4-based testbed by combining simple and composite services. The evaluation shows that our wEASEL-based system performs more accurate composition and allows end-users to discover and investigate more composition opportunities than other approaches.     

Smart healthcare in smart cities: wireless patient monitoring system using IoT

The Journal of Supercomputing - Recently, the development of building a smart city has been inclined rapidly with the help of emerging technologies in 5G and internet of things (IoT). In addition...     

Smart health: Big data enabled health paradigm within smart cities

In the era of “big data”, recent developments in the area of information and communication technologies (ICT) are facilitating organizations to innovate and grow. These technological developments and wide adaptation of ubiquitous computing enable numerous opportunities for government and companies to reconsider healthcare prospects. Therefore, big data and smart healthcare systems are independently attracting extensive attention from both academia and industry. The combination of both big data and smart systems can expedite the prospects of the healthcare industry. However, a thorough study of big data and smart systems together in the healthcare context is still absent from the existing literature. The key contributions of this article include an organized evaluation of various big data and smart system technologies and a critical analysis of the state-of-the-art advanced healthcare systems. We describe the three-dimensional structure of a paradigm shift. We also extract three broad technical branches (3T) contributing to the promotion of healthcare systems. More specifically, we propose a big data enabled smart healthcare system framework (BSHSF) that offers theoretical representations of an intra and inter organizational business model in the healthcare context. We also mention some examples reported in the literature, and then we contribute to pinpointing the potential opportunities and challenges of applying BSHSF to healthcare business environments. We also make five recommendations for effectively applying `BSHSF to the healthcare industry. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first in-depth study about state-of-the-art big data and smart healthcare systems in parallel. The managerial implication of this article is that organizations can use the findings of our critical analysis to reinforce their strategic arrangement of smart systems and big data in the healthcare context, and hence better leverage them for sustainable organizational invention.     

Mechanisms for building autonomically scalable services on cooperatively shared computing platforms

We present here a system architecture and its underlying mechanisms for building autonomically scalable and resilient services on cooperatively shared computing platforms. Specifically, our focus is on utilizing computing platforms exhibiting the following characteristics. The resources at a node in such platforms are allocated to competing users on fair‐share basis, without any reserved resource capacities for any user. There is no platform‐wide resource manager for the placement of users on different nodes. The users independently select nodes for their applications. Moreover, a node can become unavailable at any time due to crashes or shutdowns. Building scalable services in such environments poses unique challenges due to node‐level fluctuations in the available resource capacities and node crashes. The service load may surge in a short time due to flash crowds. Autonomic scaling of service capacity is performed by dynamic control of the degree of service replication based on the estimated service capacity and the observed load. We present here models for estimating the service capacity at a node under fluctuating operating conditions. Furthermore, we develop adaptive and agile load distribution mechanisms for distributing load among replicas based on their time‐varying service capacities. We present the results of our evaluations of these mechanisms on PlanetLab, which exemplifies the platform level characteristics considered here.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Control for smart systems: Challenges and trends in smart cities

There have been tremendous developments in theories and technologies in control for smart systems. In this paper we review applications to various systems that are crucial for the future of smart cities, for example enterprise and manufacturing systems, transportation systems, energy systems, and data centres. Beyond discussing the existing technological trends and the methodological approaches developed so far for managing and controlling such systems, we also provide visions on the future challenges for these systems in these various aspects.     

Recommender systems for smart cities

Among other conceptualizations, smart cities have been defined as functional urban areas articulated by the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and modern infrastructures to face city problems in efficient and sustainable ways. Within ICT, recommender systems are strong tools that filter relevant information, upgrading the relations between stakeholders in the polity and civil society, and assisting in decision making tasks through technological platforms. There are scientific articles covering recommendation approaches in smart city applications, and there are recommendation solutions implemented in real world smart city initiatives. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is not a comprehensive review of the state of the art on recommender systems for smart cities. For this reason, in this paper we present a taxonomy of smart city features, dimensions, actions and goals, and, according to these variables, we survey the existing literature on recommender systems. As a result of our survey, we do not only identify and analyze main research trends, but also show current opportunities and challenges where personalized recommendations could be exploited as solutions for citizens, firms and public administrations.     

Development of circular economy in smart cities based on FPGA and wireless sensors

Smart City is an urban environment that combines advanced wireless sensors, information, and communication technology to help effectively manage the city's assets. Wireless Sensor is a rapidly evolving technology into a variety of applications. Wireless sensors are used to detect, calculate, measure, and monitor environmental elements in the communication network, and infrastructure, logging, and characterization profile generating node and improve the medical, transportation, agriculture, industrial process control applications many great potentials, and the economic growth in smart cities. The sensor is an important part of smart cities, as they are based on data collected for these services. Wireless Sensors can transmit data of various remote locations, maybe a relatively inexpensive and compact sensor with low power consumption and maintenance costs, allowing them to build deployment. The Implementation of wireless sensors for smart cities' economic growth of wireless sensors is used for smart building, health monitoring, surveillance, and avoid traffic congestion. Improved transportation, communication technology, avoiding traffic congestion, national infrastructure, including social infrastructure and network components, protocols, and sensor deployment, to achieve the industry constraints, has been designed to ensure reliability and low power consumption.     

Smart home services as the next mainstream of the ICT industry: determinants of the adoption of smart home services

Universal Access in the Information Society - This study investigated the core motivations for adopting smart home services and explored the approaches and processes through which the motivations...     

Luminous tiles: A new building device for smart architectures and applications

Advanced building materials are nowadays an active research domain. The integration of traditional materials and technologies in the field of electronics, photonics and computer science are leading to a new class of smart components that provide advanced functionalities and enable original applications.The LUMENTILE H2020 EU funded Project aims at the integration of existing and state-of-the-art technologies in the domain of large area electronic circuits, LED based lighting, embedded systems and communication. These technologies are blended with advancements in the manufacturing of ceramic tiles to obtain a new building component that can be managed as a common tile, while providing the possibility to self-illuminate and to sense the neighbor environment by means of dedicated sensors. The applications of these new material and technologies include indoor and outdoor architectural design, smart environments (also targeting improved safety and security issues), smart and high-efficiency lighting and art installations. State-of-the-art advancements are expected in the field of large area circuits and successful integration of heterogeneous materials, mainly focusing on ceramics and electronics.     

EduXs: multilayer educational services platforms

How to use the online social learning communities to improve quality and quantity of interactions in physical social learning communities is an important issue. This work describes the design and implementation of multilayer educational services platforms that enable learners to establish their own online social learning communities and integrate their online social learning communities into a large public social learning portal site—EduCities. Multilayer educational services platforms were designed to integrate various individual online social learning communities, and to map these communities into physical social learning communities. This work proposes and implements an architecture called EduXs, and integrates it with K-12 social learning communities. One year after the EduXs system was released on the Internet, 1,849 schools, 15,772 classes, and 130,908 individuals in Taiwan had registered to use the system to construct their own online social learning communities. Among these registered users, 18.8% of registered schools, and 24.7% of registered classes continue to use the system. Evaluation results indicate that the system is accepted by teachers and students.     

A structural service innovation approach for designing smart product service systems: Case study of smart beauty service

Smart Product-service systems (PSS) are the emerging type of PSS that offer market value and dynamic intelligence combining products and services as solutions to consumers based on digital technology. To design a smart PSS with an effective way, a structural design approach is required. Nevertheless, only a few existing researchers discussed this topic. Aiming to bridge this gap, an integrated way is proposed for smart PSS design. This study refines a generic approach for structural service innovation approach which integrates the advantage of PSS engineering and service engineering for designing smart product service systems. The structural design approach is based on the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (TRIZ) incorporating with service blueprint named PRR method. Three design phases are demonstrated as verification of the PRR method by an elaborated case study of the smart beauty service. Based on PRR, three key design phases are integrated, i.e., (1) problem definition, (2) resolution generation, and (3) resolution design. Empirical results and implications are collected and discussed to obtain valuable insights for value creation.     

Information systems for smart services

Digital interactions among businesses and consumers through powerful information systems and omnipresent connected devices establish today’s networked society. In this light, Service Science continues to take root as a research discipline that focuses on the integration of (digital) resources by service providers and service customers for value co-creation in service systems. Rapid advances in information technology allow for designing novel information systems that enable entirely new configurations of service systems. In turn, Service Science also leaves its mark on the design, adoption, and use of information systems and technology. With this special issue, we compile a set of timely papers that investigate selected facets of the complex interplay between information technology, information systems, and Service Science to design innovative IT artifacts for smart service. This editorial opens this special issue by elaborating on our understanding of smart service.     

Data stream visualization framework for smart cities

Monitoring smart cities is a key challenge due the variety of data streams generated from different process (traffic, human dynamics, pollution, energy supply, water supply, etc.). All these streams show us what is happening and as to where and when in the city. The purpose of this paper was to apply different types of glyphs for showing real-time stream evolution of data gathered in the city. The use of glyphs is intended to make the most out of the human capacity for detecting visual patterns.     

Intelligent transportation systems for smart cities:a progress review

To better meet the challenge of providing effective,low-cost,energy efficient transport services,the concept of intelligent transport systems(ITS) has been proposed and lauded as an innovative and promising solution for next generation transport networks.In this paper,the progress of ITS research around the world is briefly reviewed and current challenges are outlined,thereby offering further insight into ITS development for all researchers in this area.     

Smart experience-oriented customer requirement analysis for smart product service system: A novel hesitant fuzzy linguistic cloud DEMATEL method

Smart product service system (PSS) has become an essential strategy to transform towards digital servitization for manufacturing companies. By leveraging smart capabilities, smart PSS aims to create superior user experience in a smart context. To develop a successful smart PSS, customer requirement management from smart experience perspective is necessary. However, it is a challenging task to identify and evaluate diverse, implicit and interrelated smart experience-oriented customer requirement (SEO-CR) in smart PSS context. Hence, this paper proposes an effective methodology to elicit and analyze SEO-CRs. At first, a generic, two-dimensional SEO-CR system is presented as a basis to derive the tailored SEO-CRs for various smart PSS applications. Second, a novel HFLC-DEMATEL (hesitant fuzzy linguistic cloud-based Decision-making and trial evaluation laboratory) method is proposed to accurately evaluate the priority and complicated interaction of SEO-CRs, considering the hesitancy, fuzziness and randomness under uncertain decision environment. Some new operations (e.g., cloud total-relation matrix and weight determination method) and a cloud influence relation map are developed to fully take advantage of cloud model in DEMATEL implementation. Finally, a real case of smart vehicle service system (SVSS) is presented. The 18 SEO-CRs of the SVSS are derived based on the generalized SEO-CRs. By using HFLC-DEMATEL, some important SEO-CRs in context of SVSS are identified, such as autonomous and convenience. The finding of results can help designers make proper decisions in design and development of SVSS with a superior smart experience. The effectiveness and reliability of the proposed method are validated by conducting some comparative analyses.     

Visual data security and management for smart cities

This paper proposes a method to manage and utilize image and video data effectively in a smart city. Applying digital watermarking techniques, a framework for visual data security and management for smart cities is presented. In the framework, a reversible fragile or semi-fragile watermark embedded into the visual data is used to ensure trusted acquisition. Moreover, reversible metadata watermarks carrying information such as identification and other properties data is used to assist visual data management. A solution for tracing users on a large scale is presented using reversible watermarking.     

Visual data security and management for smart cities

This paper proposes a method to manage and utilize image and video data effectively in a smart city. Applying digital watermarking techniques, a framework for visual data security and management for smart cities is presented. In the framework, a reversible fragile or semi-fragile watermark embedded into the visual data is used to ensure trusted acquisition. Moreover, reversible metadata watermarks carrying information such as identification and other properties data is used to assist visual data management. A solution for tracing users on a large scale is presented using reversible watermarking.     

Smart sustainable cities – Exploring ICT solutions for reduced energy use in cities

This article explores the opportunities of using ICT as an enabling technology to reduce energy use in cities. An analytical framework is developed in which a typology of ICT opportunities is combined with a typology of household functions, i.e. all the activities that require energy. The energy used for household functions is calculated using a consumption-based lifecycle perspective. The analytical framework is intended to be of use to researchers, city and regional authorities and ICT companies interested in acquiring a better understanding of how ICT investments could contribute to reduce energy use in cities.