Semantic context consolidation and rule learning for optimized transport assignments in hospitals

The increase of ICT infrastructure in hospitals offer opportunities for cost reduction by optimizing workflows, while maintaining quality of care. This work-in-progress poster details the AORTA system, which is a semantic platform to optimize transportation task scheduling and execution in hospitals. It provides a dynamic scheduler with an upto-date view about the current context by performing semantic reasoning on the information provided by the available software tools and smart devices. Additionally, it learns semantic rules based on historical data in order to avoid future delays in transportation time

Digital Management of Hospitals Facts & Fantasies

21st century witnessed an enormous and mushroom growth and application of technology including use of ICTs in the management of the organizations that has revolutionized and transformed the organization into more dynamic, smart and efficient going concerns. The use of technology reduced the cost, increased the performance as well as service delivery. The advent of new technology changed the mode of conventional business into online mode of governance in the hospitals too. This review article aimed to examine the critical role of technology in transforming the traditional working of the hospitals into digital hospitals and its impact in the overall performance and delivery of healthcare service. The study used hermeneutics, discourse and heuristic in analyzing the qualitative data inter alia a computer software Atlas.ti was used for qualitative data analysis. It has been concluded that government policies, top management support, organizational and managerial must be streamlined, physical and legal infrastructure be put in place, and technology must be given human face to successfully transform the conventional governance of hospitals into digitally managed hospitals. Keywords: Digital Management, Government Policies, Organizational and Managerial Issues, Physical and Legal Infrastructure and Humanization of Technology

Challenges and opportunities to develop a smart city: A case study of Gold Coast, Australia

With the rapid growth of information and communication technologies, there is a growing interest in developing smart cities with a focus on the knowledge economy, use of sensors and mobile technologies to plan and manage cities. The proponents argue that these emerging technologies have potential application in efficiently managing the environment and infrastructure, promoting economic development and actively engaging the public, thus contributing to building safe, healthy, sustainable and resilient cities. However, are there other important elements in addition to technologies which can contribute to the creation of smart cities? What are some of the challenges and opportunities for developing a smart city? This paper aims to answer these questions by developing a conceptual framework for smart cities. The framework is then applied to the city of Gold Coast to identify challenges and opportunities for developing the city into a ‘smart city’. Gold Coast is a popular tourist city of about 600,000 populations in South East Queensland, Australia, at the southern end of the 240km long coastal conurbation that is centred by Brisbane. Recently, IBM has nominated Gold Coast as one of the three cities in Australia for its Smarter Cities Challenge Grant. The grant will provide the Gold Coast City Council with the opportunity to collaborate with a group of experts from IBM to develop strategies for enhancing its ICT arrangements for disaster response capabilities. Gold Coast, meanwhile, has potential to diversify its economy from being centred on tourism to a knowledge economy with focus on its educational institutions, investments in cultural precincts and high quality lifestyle amenities. These provide a unique opportunity for building Gold Coast as an important smart city in the region. As part of the research methodology, the paper will review relevant policies of the council. Finally, lessons will be drawn from the case study for other cities which seek to establish themselves as smart cities

Foggy clouds and cloudy fogs: a real need for coordinated management of fog-to-cloud computing systems

The recent advances in cloud services technology are fueling a plethora of information technology innovation, including networking, storage, and computing. Today, various flavors have evolved of IoT, cloud computing, and so-called fog computing, a concept referring to capabilities of edge devices and users' clients to compute, store, and exchange data among each other and with the cloud. Although the rapid pace of this evolution was not easily foreseeable, today each piece of it facilitates and enables the deployment of what we commonly refer to as a smart scenario, including smart cities, smart transportation, and smart homes. As most current cloud, fog, and network services run simultaneously in each scenario, we observe that we are at the dawn of what may be the next big step in the cloud computing and networking evolution, whereby services might be executed at the network edge, both in parallel and in a coordinated fashion, as well as supported by the unstoppable technology evolution. As edge devices become richer in functionality and smarter, embedding capacities such as storage or processing, as well as new functionalities, such as decision making, data collection, forwarding, and sharing, a real need is emerging for coordinated management of fog-to-cloud (F2C) computing systems. This article introduces a layered F2C architecture, its benefits and strengths, as well as the arising open and research challenges, making the case for the real need for their coordinated management. Our architecture, the illustrative use case presented, and a comparative performance analysis, albeit conceptual, all clearly show the way forward toward a new IoT scenario with a set of existing and unforeseen services provided on highly distributed and dynamic compute, storage, and networking resources, bringing together heterogeneous and commodity edge devices, emerging fogs, as well as conventional clouds.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

A history of vision and plans for the transformation of a coastal tourism city into a knowledge city: Australia's Gold Coast

Many coastal mass tourism centres have attempted to reinvent themselves as they have grown from informal coastal towns into large cities. Lifestyle migration boosts urban growth as these cities become home to ‘permanent tourists’ attracted by the characteristics that attract tourism. Australia’s best known resort, the Queensland Gold Coast, provides a case study of a resort region experiencing similar transformations to those noted in Honolulu, Miami and Sitges, Spain. These cities have pursued broader socioeconomic resilience rather than the common strategy of simply expanding or improving their tourism appeal. Using literature review and documentary research, this paper traces how ideas of a ‘knowledge city’ have featured in Gold Coast planning history since the 1980s, through proposals including an ‘innovation corridor’, ‘research triangle’, a designated knowledge precinct and the development of universities and hospitals under plans and strategies for economic development. Although implementation has been sporadic, the case study demonstrates a continuity in narrative that has shaped outcomes towards the desired ‘knowledge city’, thereby creating a more cohesive urban structure integrating knowledge nodes, town centres and urban transport infrastructure investments. This case study will add knowledge to inform planners grappling with the transformation of similar coastal tourism areas into significant cities

Microgrids: Legal and Regulatory Hurdles for a More Resilient Energy Infrastructure

Natural disasters and climate change have made it apparent that energy infrastructure needs to be modernized and microgrids are one type of technology that can help the electricity grid become more resilient, reliable, and efficient. Different states have begun developing microgrid pilot projects including California, New York, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. The City of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the first city to propose implementing “energy districts” of microgrids that will serve as critical infrastructure, in the first phase, and then expand to commercial and community settings. This large project involves many shareholders including public utilities, government agencies, and private entities. Utilizing microgrids on such a large scale raises issues regarding its classification, as energy generation or energy storage, and whether it should be regulated by public utilities, private entities, or municipalities. In a state like Pennsylvania where the energy market has been deregulated, there is strong concern on what the public utilities involvement will be with microgrid projects. This Note focuses on the regulatory issues that are raised with the construction and operation of microgrids at such a large scale in Pittsburgh. It addresses the difficulties that arise when implementing microgrids in a deregulated energy market state such as Pennsylvania, where little to no statutory language exists regarding microgrids. It will give an overview of proposed Pennsylvania legislation that may impact a public utilities’ control over microgrid technology and the benefits and costs when examining the extent of the public utilities’ role regarding ownership and control of microgrids in a deregulated energy market