MONICA in Hamburg: Towards Large-Scale IoT Deployments in a Smart City

Modern cities and metropolitan areas all over the world face new management challenges in the 21st century primarily due to increasing demands on living standards by the urban population. These challenges range from climate change, pollution, transportation, and citizen engagement, to urban planning, and security threats. The primary goal of a Smart City is to counteract these problems and mitigate their effects by means of modern ICT to improve urban administration and infrastructure. Key ideas are to utilise network communication to inter-connect public authorities; but also to deploy and integrate numerous sensors and actuators throughout the city infrastructure - which is also widely known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Thus, IoT technologies will be an integral part and key enabler to achieve many objectives of the Smart City vision. The contributions of this paper are as follows. We first examine a number of IoT platforms, technologies and network standards that can help to foster a Smart City environment. Second, we introduce the EU project MONICA which aims for demonstration of large-scale IoT deployments at public, inner-city events and give an overview on its IoT platform architecture. And third, we provide a case-study report on SmartCity activities by the City of Hamburg and provide insights on recent (on-going) field tests of a vertically integrated, end-to-end IoT sensor application.Comment: 6 page

Conceptualizing a Multi-Sided Platform for Cloud Computing Resource Trading

Cost-effective and responsible use of cloud computing resources (CCR) is on the business agenda of companies of all sizes. Despite this strategic goal, a typical data center produces an estimated 30% overcapacity annually. This overcapacity has severe economic and environmental consequences. Our work addresses this overcapacity by proposing a multi-sided platform for CCR trading. We initiate our research by conducting a literature review to explore the existing body of knowledge which indicates a lack of recent and evaluated platform design knowledge for CCR trading. We address this research gap by deriving and evaluating design requirements and design principles. We instantiate and evaluate the design knowledge in a respective platform framework. Thus, we contribute to research and practice by deriving and evaluating design knowledge and proposing an evaluated platform framework

funcX: A Federated Function Serving Fabric for Science

Exploding data volumes and velocities, new computational methods and platforms, and ubiquitous connectivity demand new approaches to computation in the sciences. These new approaches must enable computation to be mobile, so that, for example, it can occur near data, be triggered by events (e.g., arrival of new data), be offloaded to specialized accelerators, or run remotely where resources are available. They also require new design approaches in which monolithic applications can be decomposed into smaller components, that may in turn be executed separately and on the most suitable resources. To address these needs we present funcX---a distributed function as a service (FaaS) platform that enables flexible, scalable, and high performance remote function execution. funcX's endpoint software can transform existing clouds, clusters, and supercomputers into function serving systems, while funcX's cloud-hosted service provides transparent, secure, and reliable function execution across a federated ecosystem of endpoints. We motivate the need for funcX with several scientific case studies, present our prototype design and implementation, show optimizations that deliver throughput in excess of 1 million functions per second, and demonstrate, via experiments on two supercomputers, that funcX can scale to more than more than 130000 concurrent workers.Comment: Accepted to ACM Symposium on High-Performance Parallel and Distributed Computing (HPDC 2020). arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1908.0490

Personal data broker instead of blockchain for students’ data privacy assurance

Data logs about learning activities are being recorded at a growing pace due to the adoption and evolution of educational technologies (Edtech). Data analytics has entered the field of education under the name of learning analytics. Data analytics can provide insights that can be used to enhance learning activities for educational stakeholders, as well as helping online learning applications providers to enhance their services. However, despite the goodwill in the use of Edtech, some service providers use it as a means to collect private data about the students for their own interests and benefits. This is showcased in recent cases seen in media of bad use of students’ personal information. This growth in cases is due to the recent tightening in data privacy regulations, especially in the EU. The students or their parents should be the owners of the information about them and their learning activities online. Thus they should have the right tools to control how their information is accessed and for what purposes. Currently, there is no technological solution to prevent leaks or the misuse of data about the students or their activity. It seems appropriate to try to solve it from an automation technology perspective. In this paper, we consider the use of Blockchain technologies as a possible basis for a solution to this problem. Our analysis indicates that the Blockchain is not a suitable solution. Finally, we propose a cloud-based solution with a central personal point of management that we have called Personal Data Broker.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Re-Conceptualizing the Foundation Is Course

This paper described the new realities regarding information systems and the current management practices of contemporary information system that impact pedagogy. A possible solution to the current gap in enrollments and disconnect with industry is introduced and explained. In sum, the authors offer a novel method for the introductory Information Systems course. This approach addresses each of the IS 2010 learning outcomes while also giving students practical hands on experience with cloud-based enterprise class software. This course has potential to increase the realism and applied nature within an introductory course. The learning outcomes and the “flipped classroom” approach is explained in detail

When Standard Is Not Enough: a Conceptualization of AI Systems’ Customization and its Antecedents

The centrality of information systems (IS) customization to match companies’ needs with software systems available in the market has been researched extensively. The distinctive characteristics of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems compared to other types of IS suggest that customization needs a new conceptualization in this context. We draw on evidence from expert interviews to conceptualize customization of AI systems as composed of four layers: data, models, algorithms, infrastructures. We identify a continuum of levels of customization, from no to complete customization. Since companies customize AI systems in response to business needs, we develop a theoretical model with six antecedents of AI systems’ customization choices. In so doing, we contribute to both AI management research, by introducing the IS customization perspective in the field, and IS customization literature, by introducing AI systems as a novel class of systems and enlarging the understanding of customization for a specific class of software systems

Consolidating digital servitization research : A systematic review, integrative framework, and future research directions

Manufacturing firms are increasingly transforming toward digital servitization, characterized by convergence and simultaneous gains from digitalization and servitization. Due to the marked academic and practical relevance of digital servitization, we are witnessing a significant upsurge in studies published on this emerging topic. Thus, the present study undertakes a comprehensive bibliometric analysis to synthesize the prior knowledge on digital servitization and, more importantly, to highlight areas for future research. The findings from the analysis are organized so that important authors and organizations are highlighted through analyses of citation chains and co-authorship networks. The bibliographic coupling analysis of HistCite and VOSviewer reveals the emergence of four dominant thematic areas in the digital servitization literature. These four thematic areas are aligning digitalization and servitization transformations, value co-creation perspectives on digital servitization, conceptualizing the platform strategy for digital servitization, and business model innovation in digital servitization. Finally, based on the analysis of how the literature on digital servitization has evolved over the last two decades and the deeper analysis of thematic analysis, we raise important research questions and provide numerous areas for future research.© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).fi=vertaisarvioitu|en=peerReviewed

Technology and Caregiving: Emerging Interventions and Directions for Research.

An array of technology-based interventions has increasingly become available to support family caregivers, primarily focusing on health and well-being, social isolation, financial, and psychological support. More recently the emergence of new technologies such as mobile and cloud, robotics, connected sensors, virtual/augmented/mixed reality, voice, and the evermore ubiquitous tools supported by advanced data analytics, coupled with the integration of multiple technologies through platform solutions, have opened a new era of technology-enabled interventions that can empower and support family caregivers. This paper proposes a conceptual framework for identifying and addressing the challenges that may need to be overcome to effectively apply technology-enabled solutions for family caregivers. The paper identifies a number of challenges that either moderate or mediate the full use of technologies for the benefit of caregivers. The challenges include issues related to equity, inclusion, and access; ethical concerns related to privacy and security; political and regulatory factors affecting interoperability and lack of standards; inclusive/human-centric design and issues; and inherent economic and distribution channel difficulties. The paper concludes with a summary of research questions and issues that form a framework for global research priorities