Smart Cities and New Technology Trends State of the art and perspectives

Smart cities are becoming the trend in strategic and technological planning in the modern world to qualify a city as a smart city, we should overcome several challenges in other words, it’s an equation of heterogeneous settings and parameters for a concrete outcome which is improving the quality of life for citizens in mobility and access to services in their entourage. The components of the "smart city" equation are multiple and are essentially urban and environmental coupled with technological and social governance, our goal is to draw up an action plan highlighting the state of the art of the technological and social components in terms of: • Technology: big data, Internet of Things. • User Motivation: gamification. This article discusses the architectural part of the smart city from a perspective based on the foundation of good technological practices and technical users loyalty in their interaction with the city. This work is a first step for a future study on the mobility of citizens and mechanisms that motivate their movements

Device-to-device (D2D) reliable transmission in the internet of things

D2D stands for device-to-device communication, which is likely to perform a major impact in future mobile communications because it offers ultra-low latency for end user’s direct conversation. Throughout minimizing latency, increasing strength and improved transmission efficiency, and expanding telecommunication services, D2D services are seen as a successful innovation for emerging mobile communications. The D2D networking makes a unique contribution to the wireless world by simplifying data transfer among devices connected. D2D networking makes use of adjacent two nodes to maximize the use of existing infrastructure, low latency, boost throughput and expand service functionality. Within wireless networks, D2D communication is described as immediate interaction among two mobile devices without passing through the access point or network infrastructure. The fully integrated wireless communication would be built by integrating D2D and the Internet of Things. D2D enables the larger number of devices to be paired at a higher bandwidth frequency and with minimum latency. Building a new reliable framework for D2D communication of smart devices can be an important framework for improving the reliability of communication. Internet of Things is the process of communicating and sharing information between nearby devices. But there are many challenges to secure and reliable communication. Amongst the major concerns for wireless transmission has been identified as communication trust, and overcoming this issue could lead to sustained expansion in the usage and popularity of the Internet of Things. The proposed study develops a system for providing internet access to a network of smart devices connected to the internet of things. The significant contributions link the latest findings that incorporate the interaction framework's stability and provides secure internet networking for connected devices

Review of agricultural production systems in eastern Africa in relation to food and nutrition security and climate change

The goal of this paper is to provide a unified resource for Eritrea, Djibouti, Somaliland, Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda and Tanzania. For each country the review covers the topics of livestock production systems and agroecological zones, food and nutrition security, climate change, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and climate-smart agriculture (CSA) with a focus on the role of, or impact on, livestock systems. Each of these topics is broad and many excellent studies and reviews have been produced covering these topics either at the country level or for the entire East Africa region. It is the goal of this paper to provide an accessible introduction to these topics and to direct readers to the resources that exist for gathering detailed information on livestock production, food nutrition and security, climate change, GHG emissions and climate-smart livestock production in each country

SymbioCity: Smart Cities for Smarter Networks

The "Smart City" (SC) concept revolves around the idea of embodying cutting-edge ICT solutions in the very fabric of future cities, in order to offer new and better services to citizens while lowering the city management costs, both in monetary, social, and environmental terms. In this framework, communication technologies are perceived as subservient to the SC services, providing the means to collect and process the data needed to make the services function. In this paper, we propose a new vision in which technology and SC services are designed to take advantage of each other in a symbiotic manner. According to this new paradigm, which we call "SymbioCity", SC services can indeed be exploited to improve the performance of the same communication systems that provide them with data. Suggestive examples of this symbiotic ecosystem are discussed in the paper. The dissertation is then substantiated in a proof-of-concept case study, where we show how the traffic monitoring service provided by the London Smart City initiative can be used to predict the density of users in a certain zone and optimize the cellular service in that area.Comment: 14 pages, submitted for publication to ETT Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologie

World caf\ue9 method to engage smart energy-district project partners in assessing urban co-benefits

Urban energy-district projects introduce outstanding technological innovation in buildings and energy systems increasing sustainability in city neighborhoods. Such projects generate additional co-benefits for the city beyond changes in physical elements and development of social and institutional relationships (e.g. local employment, environmental quality, public health, property values, innovation attitude, etc.). Since exceeding main declared goals or not always clearly foreseen in the early project phase, these co-benefits are often not properly understood and considered. However, only their explicit recognition will make possible their inclusion in the assessment of the whole project\u2019s performance. From these considerations, this study faces the issue of engaging project partners in assessing co-benefits in order to consider a broad spectrum of relevant, positive effects in the evaluation process. Group knowledge and group thinking of this complex topic are investigated through the world caf\ue9 method, providing an atmosphere of trust and open discussions among participants. This empirical work lays the foundations to go beyond the mere economic measure as the sole criterion for assessing project effects, also including changes in end-user behavior and intangible asset

Gender equity in disaster early warning systems

Capacities of societies, communities and individuals or a social-ecological system to deal with adverse consequences and the impacts of hazard events define the resilience. New and innovative Emergency Communications, Warning Systems (ECWS) technologies and solutions improve resilience of the nations. Research shows that different types of systems (e.g. decision support, resource management, early warning, communications, and inter-agency) are highly valued in emergency and disaster events reducing live losses. As many individuals have online access today and young women have increased their online communication and young men tend to explore technology resources, the potential of using user friendly third revolution digital technology such as semantic features and devices (e.g. SMART phones) have the potential to improve the access to early warning/risk in-formation supporting community decision making saving lives. These personal and social relations that reflect gender dimensions can certainly be examined improving resilience making communities more prepared for disasters with proactive decision making for early warning. Fostering awareness about gender equity which is the recognition of women and men as active participants in development can tailor made within the context of resilience and more specifically within early warning systems saving lives of the people at immediate risk including the dependence of mother’s care (children and older people). In this context, this paper attempts to synthesis literature on the topic of gender equity within disaster early warning systems