Review of the environmental and organisational implications of cloud computing: final report.

Cloud computing – where elastic computing resources are delivered over the Internet by external service providers – is generating significant interest within HE and FE. In the cloud computing business model, organisations or individuals contract with a cloud computing service provider on a pay-per-use basis to access data centres, application software or web services from any location. This provides an elasticity of provision which the customer can scale up or down to meet demand. This form of utility computing potentially opens up a new paradigm in the provision of IT to support administrative and educational functions within HE and FE. Further, the economies of scale and increasingly energy efficient data centre technologies which underpin cloud services means that cloud solutions may also have a positive impact on carbon footprints. In response to the growing interest in cloud computing within UK HE and FE, JISC commissioned the University of Strathclyde to undertake a Review of the Environmental and Organisational Implications of Cloud Computing in Higher and Further Education [19]

Managed ecosystems of networked objects

Small embedded devices such as sensors and actuators will become the cornerstone of the Future Internet. To this end, generic, open and secure communication and service platforms are needed in order to be able to exploit the new business opportunities these devices bring. In this paper, we evaluate the current efforts to integrate sensors and actuators into the Internet and identify the limitations at the level of cooperation of these Internet-connected objects and the possible intelligence at the end points. As a solution, we propose the concept of Managed Ecosystem of Networked Objects, which aims to create a smart network architecture for groups of Internet-connected objects by combining network virtualization and clean-slate end-to-end protocol design. The concept maps to many real-life scenarios and should empower application developers to use sensor data in an easy and natural way. At the same time, the concept introduces many new challenging research problems, but their realization could offer a meaningful contribution to the realization of the Internet of Things

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

A look at cloud architecture interoperability through standards

Enabling cloud infrastructures to evolve into a transparent platform while preserving integrity raises interoperability issues. How components are connected needs to be addressed. Interoperability requires standard data models and communication encoding technologies compatible with the existing Internet infrastructure. To reduce vendor lock-in situations, cloud computing must implement universal strategies regarding standards, interoperability and portability. Open standards are of critical importance and need to be embedded into interoperability solutions. Interoperability is determined at the data level as well as the service level. Corresponding modelling standards and integration solutions shall be analysed

Development of grid frameworks for clinical trials and epidemiological studies

E-Health initiatives such as electronic clinical trials and epidemiological studies require access to and usage of a range of both clinical and other data sets. Such data sets are typically only available over many heterogeneous domains where a plethora of often legacy based or in-house/bespoke IT solutions exist. Considerable efforts and investments are being made across the UK to upgrade the IT infrastructures across the National Health Service (NHS) such as the National Program for IT in the NHS (NPFIT) [1]. However, it is the case that currently independent and largely non-interoperable IT solutions exist across hospitals, trusts, disease registries and GP practices – this includes security as well as more general compute and data infrastructures. Grid technology allows issues of distribution and heterogeneity to be overcome, however the clinical trials domain places special demands on security and data which hitherto the Grid community have not satisfactorily addressed. These challenges are often common across many studies and trials hence the development of a re-usable framework for creation and subsequent management of such infrastructures is highly desirable. In this paper we present the challenges in developing such a framework and outline initial scenarios and prototypes developed within the MRC funded Virtual Organisations for Trials and Epidemiological Studies (VOTES) project [2]

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MOSAIC roadmap for mobile collaborative work related to health and wellbeing.

The objective of the MOSAIC project is to accelerate innovation in Mobile Worker Support Environments. For that purpose MOSAIC develops visions and illustrative scenarios for future collaborative workspaces involving mobile and location-aware working. Analysis of the scenarios is input to the process of road mapping with the purpose of developing strategies for R&D leading to deployment of innovative mobile work technologies and applications across different domains. One of the application domains where MOSAIC is active is health and wellbeing. This paper builds on another paper submitted to this same conference, which presents and discusses health care and wellbeing specific scenarios. The aim is to present an early form of a roadmap for validation

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented