An introduction to the special issue on cross-community mining

People now live in heterogeneous social communities within cyber-physical spaces—both online communities (e.g., Flickr, Google+, LinkedIn) and social networks where digital content is exchanged, and opportunistic or offline communities that exploit opportunistic relationships between pairs of networked devices to exchange content (built on mobile ad hoc networking techniques) [1]. These communities have different technical features which lead to distinct kinds of interaction—such as patterns of comments and likes in online communities and co-location in offline communities, or issues of friendship, trust and influence in online communities and social popularity, and movement patterns in offline communities. We further envision the rapid development of cross-space communities in recent years, which try to bridge the gap between human interactions in the physical world and virtual world (by merging social elements in online social networks with physical contexts in offline communities). Significant examples include: location-based social networks (LBSNs, e.g., FourSquare, Jiepang) [2], which interlink online human interaction with offline check-ins; event-based social networks (EBSNs, e.g., MeetUp), which try to build the link between physical and online events [3]

Transition UGent: a bottom-up initiative towards a more sustainable university

The vibrant think-tank ‘Transition UGent’ engaged over 250 academics, students and people from the university management in suggesting objectives and actions for the Sustainability Policy of Ghent University (Belgium). Founded in 2012, this bottom-up initiative succeeded to place sustainability high on the policy agenda of our university. Through discussions within 9 working groups and using the transition management method, Transition UGent developed system analyses, sustainability visions and transition paths on 9 fields of Ghent University: mobility, energy, food, waste, nature and green, water, art, education and research. At the moment, many visions and ideas find their way into concrete actions and policies. In our presentation we focused on the broad participative process, on the most remarkable structural results (e.g. a formal and ambitious Sustainability Vision and a student-led Sustainability Office) and on recent actions and experiments (e.g. a sustainability assessment on food supply in student restaurants, artistic COP21 activities, ambitious mobility plans, food leftovers projects, an education network on sustainability controversies, a transdisciplinary platform on Sustainable Cities). We concluded with some recommendations and reflections on this transition approach, on the important role of ‘policy entrepreneurs’ and student involvement, on lock-ins and bottlenecks, and on convincing skeptical leaders

Contextual impacts on industrial processes brought by the digital transformation of manufacturing: a systematic review

The digital transformation of manufacturing (a phenomenon also known as "Industry 4.0" or "Smart Manufacturing") is finding a growing interest both at practitioner and academic levels, but is still in its infancy and needs deeper investigation. Even though current and potential advantages of digital manufacturing are remarkable, in terms of improved efficiency, sustainability, customization, and flexibility, only a limited number of companies has already developed ad hoc strategies necessary to achieve a superior performance. Through a systematic review, this study aims at assessing the current state of the art of the academic literature regarding the paradigm shift occurring in the manufacturing settings, in order to provide definitions as well as point out recurring patterns and gaps to be addressed by future research. For the literature search, the most representative keywords, strict criteria, and classification schemes based on authoritative reference studies were used. The final sample of 156 primary publications was analyzed through a systematic coding process to identify theoretical and methodological approaches, together with other significant elements. This analysis allowed a mapping of the literature based on clusters of critical themes to synthesize the developments of different research streams and provide the most representative picture of its current state. Research areas, insights, and gaps resulting from this analysis contributed to create a schematic research agenda, which clearly indicates the space for future evolutions of the state of knowledge in this field

Smart lighting in multipurpose outdoor environments: energy efficient solution using network of cooperating objects

The first applications for smart environments targeted wellscoped spaces and appliances. These applications were strong drivers to advance Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) and the Internet of Things (IoT). With the evolution of the technological base, more complex environments became the new targets. The concept of cooperating objects (CO) enables further advancement of IoT and helps to grasp the multiple aspects of these environments. This paper describes smart lighting application for the multipurpose outdoor environment at the university campus area implemented following the new paradigm. The application is aiming efficient use of energy and future integration with associated industrial systems

Internet of robotic things : converging sensing/actuating, hypoconnectivity, artificial intelligence and IoT Platforms

The Internet of Things (IoT) concept is evolving rapidly and influencing newdevelopments in various application domains, such as the Internet of MobileThings (IoMT), Autonomous Internet of Things (A-IoT), Autonomous Systemof Things (ASoT), Internet of Autonomous Things (IoAT), Internetof Things Clouds (IoT-C) and the Internet of Robotic Things (IoRT) etc.that are progressing/advancing by using IoT technology. The IoT influencerepresents new development and deployment challenges in different areassuch as seamless platform integration, context based cognitive network integration,new mobile sensor/actuator network paradigms, things identification(addressing, naming in IoT) and dynamic things discoverability and manyothers. The IoRT represents new convergence challenges and their need to be addressed, in one side the programmability and the communication ofmultiple heterogeneous mobile/autonomous/robotic things for cooperating,their coordination, configuration, exchange of information, security, safetyand protection. Developments in IoT heterogeneous parallel processing/communication and dynamic systems based on parallelism and concurrencyrequire new ideas for integrating the intelligent “devices”, collaborativerobots (COBOTS), into IoT applications. Dynamic maintainability, selfhealing,self-repair of resources, changing resource state, (re-) configurationand context based IoT systems for service implementation and integrationwith IoT network service composition are of paramount importance whennew “cognitive devices” are becoming active participants in IoT applications.This chapter aims to be an overview of the IoRT concept, technologies,architectures and applications and to provide a comprehensive coverage offuture challenges, developments and applications

Collective efficiency strategies: a policy instrument solution to boost competitiveness in low-density territories

This paper motivates the focus of EU cohesion policy at large and the territorial cooperation tools on the economic development of territories featuring impoverishing growth associated to low population density. An innovative policy approach to help solving this problem in many Member States is put forward here. It is based on the economic concept of “collective efficiencyâ€. It should be understood as a proposal to improve EU cohesion policy in the next programming period. As such, the paper suggests actual ideas to be included in the forthcoming Common Strategic Framework and Development and Investment Partnership Contracts.