Social-aware Forwarding in Opportunistic Wireless Networks: Content Awareness or Obliviousness?

With the current host-based Internet architecture, networking faces limitations in dynamic scenarios, due mostly to host mobility. The ICN paradigm mitigates such problems by releasing the need to have an end-to-end transport session established during the life time of the data transfer. Moreover, the ICN concept solves the mismatch between the Internet architecture and the way users would like to use it: currently a user needs to know the topological location of the hosts involved in the communication when he/she just wants to get the data, independently of its location. Most of the research efforts aim to come up with a stable ICN architecture in fixed networks, with few examples in ad-hoc and vehicular networks. However, the Internet is becoming more pervasive with powerful personal mobile devices that allow users to form dynamic networks in which content may be exchanged at all times and with low cost. Such pervasive wireless networks suffer with different levels of disruption given user mobility, physical obstacles, lack of cooperation, intermittent connectivity, among others. This paper discusses the combination of content knowledge (e.g., type and interested parties) and social awareness within opportunistic networking as to drive the deployment of ICN solutions in disruptive networking scenarios. With this goal in mind, we go over few examples of social-aware content-based opportunistic networking proposals that consider social awareness to allow content dissemination independently of the level of network disruption. To show how much content knowledge can improve social-based solutions, we illustrate by means of simulation some content-oblivious/oriented proposals in scenarios based on synthetic mobility patterns and real human traces.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

A study of existing Ontologies in the IoT-domain

Several domains have adopted the increasing use of IoT-based devices to collect sensor data for generating abstractions and perceptions of the real world. This sensor data is multi-modal and heterogeneous in nature. This heterogeneity induces interoperability issues while developing cross-domain applications, thereby restricting the possibility of reusing sensor data to develop new applications. As a solution to this, semantic approaches have been proposed in the literature to tackle problems related to interoperability of sensor data. Several ontologies have been proposed to handle different aspects of IoT-based sensor data collection, ranging from discovering the IoT sensors for data collection to applying reasoning on the collected sensor data for drawing inferences. In this paper, we survey these existing semantic ontologies to provide an overview of the recent developments in this field. We highlight the fundamental ontological concepts (e.g., sensor-capabilities and context-awareness) required for an IoT-based application, and survey the existing ontologies which include these concepts. Based on our study, we also identify the shortcomings of currently available ontologies, which serves as a stepping stone to state the need for a common unified ontology for the IoT domain.Comment: Submitted to Elsevier JWS SI on Web semantics for the Internet/Web of Thing

Context Aware Computing for The Internet of Things: A Survey

As we are moving towards the Internet of Things (IoT), the number of sensors deployed around the world is growing at a rapid pace. Market research has shown a significant growth of sensor deployments over the past decade and has predicted a significant increment of the growth rate in the future. These sensors continuously generate enormous amounts of data. However, in order to add value to raw sensor data we need to understand it. Collection, modelling, reasoning, and distribution of context in relation to sensor data plays critical role in this challenge. Context-aware computing has proven to be successful in understanding sensor data. In this paper, we survey context awareness from an IoT perspective. We present the necessary background by introducing the IoT paradigm and context-aware fundamentals at the beginning. Then we provide an in-depth analysis of context life cycle. We evaluate a subset of projects (50) which represent the majority of research and commercial solutions proposed in the field of context-aware computing conducted over the last decade (2001-2011) based on our own taxonomy. Finally, based on our evaluation, we highlight the lessons to be learnt from the past and some possible directions for future research. The survey addresses a broad range of techniques, methods, models, functionalities, systems, applications, and middleware solutions related to context awareness and IoT. Our goal is not only to analyse, compare and consolidate past research work but also to appreciate their findings and discuss their applicability towards the IoT.Comment: IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials Journal, 201

"Talk" about male suicide? Learning from community programmes

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the contribution of public awareness campaigning in developing community capacity toward preventing male suicide and explores emerging considerations for suicide prevention programme development. Design/methodology/approach – The paper draws on campaign evaluation data, specifically qualitative discussion groups with the general public, to report results concerning campaign processes, and “interim” effectiveness in changing public awareness and attitudes, and then discusses how progress is to be lasting and transformational. Findings – The campaign raised the awareness of a substantial proportion of those targeted, and affected attitudes and behaviour of those who were highly aware. The community settings approach was effective in reaching younger men, but there were challenges targeting the public more selectively, and engaging communities in a sustained way. Practical implications – The paper discusses emerging considerations for suicide prevention, focusing on gender and approaches and materials for engaging with the public as “influencers”. There are challenges to target audiences more specifically, provide a clear call to action, and engage the public in a sustained way. Social implications – The paper discusses emerging considerations for suicide prevention, focusing on gender and approaches and materials for engaging with the public as “influencers”. There are challenges to target audiences more specifically, provide a clear call to action, and engage the public in a sustained way. Originality/value – The paper adds fresh evidence of gendered communication processes, including their effects on public awareness, attitudes and engagement. Application of a theory of change model leads to systems level findings for sustaining programme gains

Research Issues in Ad-Hoc Distributed Personal Networking

This paper discusses the research issues that need to be addressed in order to create a personal distributed environment where people interact with various companion, embedded, or invisible computers not only in their close vicinity but potentially anywhere. These systems are called personal networks (PNs). They constitute a category of distributed systems with very specific characteristics. They are configured in an ad hoc fashion, as the opportunity and the demand arise, to support personal applications. PNs consist of communicating clusters of personal digital devices, devices shared with other people and even infrastructure-based systems. At the heart of a PN is a core Personal Area Network (PAN), which is physically associated with the owner of the PN. Unlike the present PANs that have a geographically limited coverage, the Personal Operating Space, PNs have an unrestricted geographical span, and incorporate devices into the personal environment regardless of their geographic location. In order to do this they need the services of infrastructure-based networks and ad-hoc networks to extend their reach. A PN extends and complements the concept of pervasive computing. We show that PNs introduce new design challenges due to the heterogeneity of the involved technologies, the need for self-organization, the dynamics of the system composition, the application-driven nature, the co-operation with infrastructure-based networks, and the security hazards. We discuss the impact of these problems on network design, assess present and proposed solutions, and identify the research issues