Eco-friendly Naturalistic Vehicular Sensing and Driving Behaviour Profiling

PhD ThesisInternet of Things (IoT) technologies are spurring of serious games that support training directly in the field. This PhD implements field user performance evaluators usable in reality-enhanced serious games (RESGs) for promoting fuel-efficient driving. This work proposes two modules – that have been implemented by processing information related to fuel-efficient driving – to be employed as real-time virtual sensors in RESGS. The first module estimates and assesses instantly fuel consumption, where I compared the performance of three configured machine learning algorithms, support vector regression, random forest and artificial neural networks. The experiments show that the algorithms have similar performance and random forest slightly outperforms the others. The second module provides instant recommendations using fuzzy logic when inefficient driving patterns are detected. For the game design, I resorted to the on-board diagnostics II standard interface to diagnostic circulating information on vehicular buses for a wide diffusion of a game, avoiding sticking to manufacturer proprietary solutions. The approach has been implemented and tested with data from the enviroCar server site. The data is not calibrated for a specific car model and is recorded in different driving environments, which made the work challenging and robust for real-world conditions. The proposed approach to virtual sensor design is general and thus applicable to various application domains other than fuel-efficient driving. An important word of caution concerns users’ privacy, as the modules rely on sensitive data, and provide information that by no means should be misused

Calidad del aire en el Valle de Aburrá, ¿Qué podríamos esperar de la ciudad inteligente?

The global phenomenon of urban growth, together with the rapid penetration of mobile telephony, internet of things, sensors, automation, real-time data exchange, etc., converge on a topic that generates great expectations: the smart city. Among its multiple implications, this text highlights relevant facts for air quality management in the Aburrá Valley. The starting point is the Air Quality Management Plan for the Aburrá Valley, valid for 2017-2030. A correlation between the management opportunities that the smart city offers to air quality, and the strategic lines of the plan is presented. Important solutions are identified from the bottom-up approach, focused on the massive use of information and the appropriation of digital tools to promote self-management of emissions in all areas - fixed and mobile, public and private sources. El fenómeno global de crecimiento urbano, unido a la rápida penetración de la telefonía móvil, internet de las cosas, sensórica, automatización, intercambio de datos en tiempo real, etc, confluyen en un tema que genera grandes expectativas: la ciudad inteligente. Entre sus múltiples implicaciones, en este texto se destacan hechos relevantes para la gestión de la calidad del aire en el Valle de Aburrá. El punto de partida es Plan de Gestión de la Calidad del Aire para el Valle de Aburrá, con vigencia 2017-2030. Se presenta una correlación entre las oportunidades de gestión que la ciudad inteligente ofrece a la calidad del aire y las líneas estratégicas de dicho plan. Se identifican importantes soluciones desde el enfoque bottom-up, centradas en el uso masivo de la información y la apropiación de herramientas digitales para favorecer la autogestión de las emisiones en todos los ámbitos – fuentes fijas y móviles, públicas y particulares

Digital Transformation

The amount of literature on Digital Transformation is staggering—and it keeps growing. Why, then, come out with yet another such document? Moreover, any text aiming at explaining the Digital Transformation by presenting a snapshot is going to become obsolete in a blink of an eye, most likely to be already obsolete at the time it is first published. The FDC Initiative on Digital Reality felt there is a need to look at the Digital Transformation from the point of view of a profound change that is pervading the entire society—a change made possible by technology and that keeps changing due to technology evolution opening new possibilities but is also a change happening because it has strong economic reasons. The direction of this change is not easy to predict because it is steered by a cultural evolution of society, an evolution that is happening in niches and that may expand rapidly to larger constituencies and as rapidly may fade away. This creation, selection by experimentation, adoption, and sudden disappearance, is what makes the whole scenario so unpredictable and continuously changing.The amount of literature on Digital Transformation is staggering—and it keeps growing. Why, then, come out with yet another such document? Moreover, any text aiming at explaining the Digital Transformation by presenting a snapshot is going to become obsolete in a blink of an eye, most likely to be already obsolete at the time it is first published. The FDC Initiative on Digital Reality felt there is a need to look at the Digital Transformation from the point of view of a profound change that is pervading the entire society—a change made possible by technology and that keeps changing due to technology evolution opening new possibilities but is also a change happening because it has strong economic reasons. The direction of this change is not easy to predict because it is steered by a cultural evolution of society, an evolution that is happening in niches and that may expand rapidly to larger constituencies and as rapidly may fade away. This creation, selection by experimentation, adoption, and sudden disappearance, is what makes the whole scenario so unpredictable and continuously changing

Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society

This book features the manuscripts accepted for the Special Issue “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society—Sensing Systems and Pervasive Intelligence” of the MDPI journal Sensors. Most of the papers come from a selection of the best papers of the 2019 edition of the “Applications in Electronics Pervading Industry, Environment and Society” (APPLEPIES) Conference, which was held in November 2019. All these papers have been significantly enhanced with novel experimental results. The papers give an overview of the trends in research and development activities concerning the pervasive application of electronics in industry, the environment, and society. The focus of these papers is on cyber physical systems (CPS), with research proposals for new sensor acquisition and ADC (analog to digital converter) methods, high-speed communication systems, cybersecurity, big data management, and data processing including emerging machine learning techniques. Physical implementation aspects are discussed as well as the trade-off found between functional performance and hardware/system costs

User mobility prediction and management using machine learning

The next generation mobile networks (NGMNs) are envisioned to overcome current user mobility limitations while improving the network performance. Some of the limitations envisioned for mobility management in the future mobile networks are: addressing the massive traffic growth bottlenecks; providing better quality and experience to end users; supporting ultra high data rates; ensuring ultra low latency, seamless handover (HOs) from one base station (BS) to another, etc. Thus, in order for future networks to manage users mobility through all of the stringent limitations mentioned, artificial intelligence (AI) is deemed to play a key role automating end-to-end process through machine learning (ML). The objectives of this thesis are to explore user mobility predictions and management use-cases using ML. First, background and literature review is presented which covers, current mobile networks overview, and ML-driven applications to enable user’s mobility and management. Followed by the use-cases of mobility prediction in dense mobile networks are analysed and optimised with the use of ML algorithms. The overall framework test accuracy of 91.17% was obtained in comparison to all other mobility prediction algorithms through artificial neural network (ANN). Furthermore, a concept of mobility prediction-based energy consumption is discussed to automate and classify user’s mobility and reduce carbon emissions under smart city transportation achieving 98.82% with k-nearest neighbour (KNN) classifier as an optimal result along with 31.83% energy savings gain. Finally, context-aware handover (HO) skipping scenario is analysed in order to improve over all quality of service (QoS) as a framework of mobility management in next generation networks (NGNs). The framework relies on passenger mobility, trains trajectory, travelling time and frequency, network load and signal ratio data in cardinal directions i.e, North, East, West, and South (NEWS) achieving optimum result of 94.51% through support vector machine (SVM) classifier. These results were fed into HO skipping techniques to analyse, coverage probability, throughput, and HO cost. This work is extended by blockchain-enabled privacy preservation mechanism to provide end-to-end secure platform throughout train passengers mobility

Networking Transportation

Networking Transportation looks at how the digital revolution is changing Greater Philadelphia's transportation system. It recognizes several key digital transportation technologies: Artificial Intelligence, Big Data, connected and automated vehicles, digital mapping, Intelligent Transportation Systems, the Internet of Things, smart cities, real-time information, transportation network companies (TNCs), unmanned aerial systems, and virtual communications. It focuses particularly on key issues surrounding TNCs. It identifies TNCs currently operating in Greater Philadelphia and reviews some of the more innovative services around the world. It presents four alternative future scenarios for their growth: Filling a Niche, A Tale of Two Regions, TNCs Take Off, and Moore Growth. It then creates a future vision for an integrated, multimodal transportation network and identifies infrastructure needs, institutional reforms, and regulatory recommendations intended to help bring about this vision

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Urban Informatics

This open access book is the first to systematically introduce the principles of urban informatics and its application to every aspect of the city that involves its functioning, control, management, and future planning. It introduces new models and tools being developed to understand and implement these technologies that enable cities to function more efficiently – to become ‘smart’ and ‘sustainable’. The smart city has quickly emerged as computers have become ever smaller to the point where they can be embedded into the very fabric of the city, as well as being central to new ways in which the population can communicate and act. When cities are wired in this way, they have the potential to become sentient and responsive, generating massive streams of ‘big’ data in real time as well as providing immense opportunities for extracting new forms of urban data through crowdsourcing. This book offers a comprehensive review of the methods that form the core of urban informatics from various kinds of urban remote sensing to new approaches to machine learning and statistical modelling. It provides a detailed technical introduction to the wide array of tools information scientists need to develop the key urban analytics that are fundamental to learning about the smart city, and it outlines ways in which these tools can be used to inform design and policy so that cities can become more efficient with a greater concern for environment and equity

Ecosystemic Evolution Feeded by Smart Systems

Information Society is advancing along a route of ecosystemic evolution. ICT and Internet advancements, together with the progression of the systemic approach for enhancement and application of Smart Systems, are grounding such an evolution. The needed approach is therefore expected to evolve by increasingly fitting into the basic requirements of a significant general enhancement of human and social well-being, within all spheres of life (public, private, professional). This implies enhancing and exploiting the net-living virtual space, to make it a virtuous beneficial integration of the real-life space. Meanwhile, contextual evolution of smart cities is aiming at strongly empowering that ecosystemic approach by enhancing and diffusing net-living benefits over our own lived territory, while also incisively targeting a new stable socio-economic local development, according to social, ecological, and economic sustainability requirements. This territorial focus matches with a new glocal vision, which enables a more effective diffusion of benefits in terms of well-being, thus moderating the current global vision primarily fed by a global-scale market development view. Basic technological advancements have thus to be pursued at the system-level. They include system architecting for virtualization of functions, data integration and sharing, flexible basic service composition, and end-service personalization viability, for the operation and interoperation of smart systems, supporting effective net-living advancements in all application fields. Increasing and basically mandatory importance must also be increasingly reserved for human–technical and social–technical factors, as well as to the associated need of empowering the cross-disciplinary approach for related research and innovation. The prospected eco-systemic impact also implies a social pro-active participation, as well as coping with possible negative effects of net-living in terms of social exclusion and isolation, which require incisive actions for a conformal socio-cultural development. In this concern, speed, continuity, and expected long-term duration of innovation processes, pushed by basic technological advancements, make ecosystemic requirements stricter. This evolution requires also a new approach, targeting development of the needed basic and vocational education for net-living, which is to be considered as an engine for the development of the related ‘new living know-how’, as well as of the conformal ‘new making know-how’

Law in the present future : approaching the legal imaginary of smart cities with science (and) fiction

This doctoral research concerns smart cities, describing digital solutions and social issues related to their innovative technologies, adopted models, and major projects around the world. The many perspectives mentioned in it were identified by online tools used for the textual analysis of two databases that were built from relevant publications on the main subject by authors coming from media and academia. Expected legal elements emerged from the applied process, such as privacy, security, transparency, participation, accountability, and governance. A general review was produced on the information available about the public policies of Big Data in the two municipal cases of Rio de Janeiro and Montréal, and their regulation in the Brazilian and Canadian contexts. The combined approaches from science and literature were explored to reflect on the normative concerns represented by the global challenges and local risks brought by urban surveillance, climate change, and other neoliberal conditions. Cyberpunk Science Fiction reveals itself useful for engaging with the shared problems that need to be faced in the present time, all involving democracy. The results achieved reveal that this work was, in fact, about the complex network of practices and senses between (post)modern law and the imaginary of the future.Cette recherche doctorale centrée sur les villes intelligentes met en évidence les solutions numériques et les questionnements sociétaux qui ont trait aux technologies innovantes, ainsi qu’aux principaux modèles et projets développés autour d’elles à travers le monde. Des perspectives multiples en lien avec ces développements ont été identifiées à l’aide d’outils en ligne qui ont permis l’analyse textuelle de deux bases de données comprenant des publications scientifiques et des écrits médiatiques. De ce processus analytique ont émergé des éléments juridiques relatifs aux questions de vie privée, de sécurité, de transparence, de participation, d’imputabilité et de gouvernance. De plus, à partir de ces informations a été réalisée une revue des politiques publiques relatives aux mégadonnées dans les villes de Rio de Janeiro et de Montréal, ainsi que des réglementations nationales du Canada et du Brésil en lien avec ce sujet. Finalement, à travers l’exploration d’écrits scientifiques et fictionnels de la littérature, les principaux enjeux normatifs soulevés localement et mondialement par la surveillance urbaine, les changements climatiques et les politiques néolibérales ont pu être mis à jour. Le courant cyberpunk de la science-fiction s’est avéré particulièrement utile pour révéler les principaux problèmes politiques, en lien avec la préservation de la démocratie, auxquelles sont confrontées nos sociétés présentement. Les résultats de la recherche démontrent finalement la présence d’un réseau de pratiques et de significations entre le droit (post)moderne et les représentations imaginaires du futur