Collaborative technologies for mobile workers and virtual project teams

Information Technology is advancing at a frightening pace. Cloud computing and its subset, Software as a Service (SaaS), are rapidly challenging traditional thinking for enterprise-level application and infrastructure provision. The project-centric nature of the construction industry provides an environment where the utilisation of SaaS is commercially appropriate, given its ability to provide rapid set-up and predictable costs at the outset. Using project extranets, the construction industry has been - unusually for it as an industry sector - early-adopters of this cloud computing model. However, findings from the research highlight that there is a gap in the information and documents that pass from the construction phase into the operational phase of a building. This research considers examples of the SaaS IT model and how it has been used within a construction and facilities management industry context. A prototype system was developed to address the requirements of facilities management work order logging and tracking process. These requirements were gathered during detailed case studies of organisations within both the construction and facilities management sectors with a view to continue the use of building-specific information through its full life-cycle. The thesis includes a summary of the lessons learnt through system implementation within the construction-contracting organisation Taylor Woodrow, and it concludes with an IT strategy proposal that was developed based on a cloud computing model

The Importance of Internet of Things Security for Smart Cities

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an extensive overview of security-related problems in the context of smart cities. The impressive heterogeneity, ubiquity, miniaturization, autonomous and unpredictable behaviour of objects interconnected in Internet of Things, the real data deluges generated by them and, on the other side, the new hacking methods based on sensors and short-range communication technologies transform smart cities in complex environments in which the already-existing security analyses are not useful anymore. Specific security vulnerabilities, threats and solutions are approached from different areas of the smart cities’ infrastructure. As urban management should pay close attention to security and privacy protection, network protocols, identity management, standardization, trusted architecture, etc., this chapter will serve them as a start point for better decisions in security design and management

Vodafone : the Importance of Dynamic Capabilities in an Innovative Market

The Global Telecommunications Market is probably the most competitive industry worldwide. In the market of the Telecommunications Operators (TelCo’s) everything occurs at a vertiginous speed, making use of the most innovative technologies, implemented in a planetary scale. I trusted that it could be the ideal scenario for my dissertation, whose aim is analysing Competitive Advantage Theories and learning how a market leader does to keep growing and be the most innovator player. The challenges faced by the Global Market will be addressed, in the form of a case study, focusing specifically on Vodafone, one of the largest Telco’s, worldwide, and analysing evidence of how it ensures its competitiveness in the present and projects the future. It is intended that this case study can be used as a teaching tool, providing practical clues from a concrete example, to analyse the strategic structures, their general principles and applicable theories. The case focuses on the analysis of resources and capabilities, taking into account external shocks and internal changes. With the analysis of this case study, I intend to identify evidences that could help to answer to the research question: “What are the unique resources and capabilities that Vodafone possesses that constitute its competitive advantage and in what way did they’ve been developed”.O Mercado Global das Telecomunicações é, porventura, o setor mais competitivo do Mundo. À volta das Operadoras de Telecomunicações (TelCo’s) tudo ocorre a uma velocidade vertiginosa, tirando partido das tecnologias mais inovadoras e implementando-as à escala planetária. Entendi, por essa razão, que este poderia ser o cenário ideal para a minha dissertação, cujo objetivo é analisar as Teorias das Vantagens Competitivas e aprender como um líder de mercado consegue fazer para continuar a crescer e a ser o player mais inovador. Serão abordados, na forma de Caso de Estudo, os desafios enfrentados pelo mercado global, focando-nos, especificamente, na Vodafone, uma das maiores empresas de telecomunicações do Mundo, e identificando evidências que permitam assegurar a sua competitividade, no presente, e perspetivando o futuro. Pretende-se que esta dissertação possa ser utilizada como ferramenta prática de trabalho, na aprendizagem, a partir de um exemplo concreto, da análise às estruturas estratégicas, seus princípios gerais e teorias aplicáveis. O caso foca-se na análise de recursos e capacidades, tomando em conta impactos externos e mudanças internas. Com a análise deste estudo de caso, sugerem-se evidências que possam ajudar a responder à pergunta de pesquisa: “Quais são os recursos e capacidades únicos que a Vodafone possui e que constituem a sua vantagem competitiva e de que forma têm vindo a ser desenvolvidos?”

Next Generation Internet of Things – Distributed Intelligence at the Edge and Human-Machine Interactions

This book provides an overview of the next generation Internet of Things (IoT), ranging from research, innovation, development priorities, to enabling technologies in a global context. It is intended as a standalone in a series covering the activities of the Internet of Things European Research Cluster (IERC), including research, technological innovation, validation, and deployment.The following chapters build on the ideas put forward by the European Research Cluster, the IoT European Platform Initiative (IoT–EPI), the IoT European Large-Scale Pilots Programme and the IoT European Security and Privacy Projects, presenting global views and state-of-the-art results regarding the next generation of IoT research, innovation, development, and deployment.The IoT and Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) are evolving towards the next generation of Tactile IoT/IIoT, bringing together hyperconnectivity (5G and beyond), edge computing, Distributed Ledger Technologies (DLTs), virtual/ andaugmented reality (VR/AR), and artificial intelligence (AI) transformation.Following the wider adoption of consumer IoT, the next generation of IoT/IIoT innovation for business is driven by industries, addressing interoperability issues and providing new end-to-end security solutions to face continuous treats.The advances of AI technology in vision, speech recognition, natural language processing and dialog are enabling the development of end-to-end intelligent systems encapsulating multiple technologies, delivering services in real-time using limited resources. These developments are focusing on designing and delivering embedded and hierarchical AI solutions in IoT/IIoT, edge computing, using distributed architectures, DLTs platforms and distributed end-to-end security, which provide real-time decisions using less data and computational resources, while accessing each type of resource in a way that enhances the accuracy and performance of models in the various IoT/IIoT applications.The convergence and combination of IoT, AI and other related technologies to derive insights, decisions and revenue from sensor data provide new business models and sources of monetization. Meanwhile, scalable, IoT-enabled applications have become part of larger business objectives, enabling digital transformation with a focus on new services and applications.Serving the next generation of Tactile IoT/IIoT real-time use cases over 5G and Network Slicing technology is essential for consumer and industrial applications and support reducing operational costs, increasing efficiency and leveraging additional capabilities for real-time autonomous systems.New IoT distributed architectures, combined with system-level architectures for edge/fog computing, are evolving IoT platforms, including AI and DLTs, with embedded intelligence into the hyperconnectivity infrastructure.The next generation of IoT/IIoT technologies are highly transformational, enabling innovation at scale, and autonomous decision-making in various application domains such as healthcare, smart homes, smart buildings, smart cities, energy, agriculture, transportation and autonomous vehicles, the military, logistics and supply chain, retail and wholesale, manufacturing, mining and oil and gas