A European research roadmap for optimizing societal impact of big data on environment and energy efficiency

We present a roadmap to guide European research efforts towards a socially responsible big data economy that maximizes the positive impact of big data in environment and energy efficiency. The goal of the roadmap is to allow stakeholders and the big data community to identify and meet big data challenges, and to proceed with a shared understanding of the societal impact, positive and negative externalities, and concrete problems worth investigating. It builds upon a case study focused on the impact of big data practices in the context of Earth Observation that reveals both positive and negative effects in the areas of economy, society and ethics, legal frameworks and political issues. The roadmap identifies European technical and non-technical priorities in research and innovation to be addressed in the upcoming five years in order to deliver societal impact, develop skills and contribute to standardization.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

From Sensor to Observation Web with Environmental Enablers in the Future Internet

This paper outlines the grand challenges in global sustainability research and the objectives of the FP7 Future Internet PPP program within the Digital Agenda for Europe. Large user communities are generating significant amounts of valuable environmental observations at local and regional scales using the devices and services of the Future Internet. These communities’ environmental observations represent a wealth of information which is currently hardly used or used only in isolation and therefore in need of integration with other information sources. Indeed, this very integration will lead to a paradigm shift from a mere Sensor Web to an Observation Web with semantically enriched content emanating from sensors, environmental simulations and citizens. The paper also describes the research challenges to realize the Observation Web and the associated environmental enablers for the Future Internet. Such an environmental enabler could for instance be an electronic sensing device, a web-service application, or even a social networking group affording or facilitating the capability of the Future Internet applications to consume, produce, and use environmental observations in cross-domain applications. The term ?envirofied? Future Internet is coined to describe this overall target that forms a cornerstone of work in the Environmental Usage Area within the Future Internet PPP program. Relevant trends described in the paper are the usage of ubiquitous sensors (anywhere), the provision and generation of information by citizens, and the convergence of real and virtual realities to convey understanding of environmental observations. The paper addresses the technical challenges in the Environmental Usage Area and the need for designing multi-style service oriented architecture. Key topics are the mapping of requirements to capabilities, providing scalability and robustness with implementing context aware information retrieval. Another essential research topic is handling data fusion and model based computation, and the related propagation of information uncertainty. Approaches to security, standardization and harmonization, all essential for sustainable solutions, are summarized from the perspective of the Environmental Usage Area. The paper concludes with an overview of emerging, high impact applications in the environmental areas concerning land ecosystems (biodiversity), air quality (atmospheric conditions) and water ecosystems (marine asset management)

Bringing troubled water: quality of experience in a mobile media context

The ICT environment went through notable changes, which have had an irreversible and strong influence on both ICT innovation processes and the role of end-users. In this context, technology developers are increasingly expected to take users’ experiences with technology into account during the process of developing applications or frameworks. As technology is more and more embedded in users’ daily lives, they seek out those personalized values to satisfy their own, situational needs. As a result, a thorough insight in users’ expectations and experiences at various levels (both explicit and more latent) and in different contexts (eg. mobile) has become a crucial determinant for the successful development, introduction and adoption of new ICTs. To this end, our paper focuses on the increased importance of Quality of Experience (QoE). It provides a conceptual model for QoE and furthermore discusses the prevalent gap that still exists between QoE and Quality of Service (QoS). Our main objective is to present a new methodology for correlating user experience to QoS parameters. This methodology was tested in the context of an exploratory interdisciplinary study on QoE-measurement. This new approach goes beyond QoS-parameters and aims to also grasp the social and contextual dimensions of users’ experiences

Achieving genuinely dynamic road user charging : issues with a GNSS-based approach

Peer reviewedPostprin

Knowledge Management and Sustainable Agriculture:the Italian Case

The contemporary knowledge-based economy requires global usage of information in all aspects of modern society. Pertinent information is an important asset for successful business, therefore an application of knowledge management in organisational practice has become a crucial factor for the viability and sustainable development of enterprises. This is particularly relevant for the agricultural context, which needs modern practices for enhancement and development. However, information and knowledge, due to their intangible character, seem difficult to manage and organize. Therefore the paper targeted at developing sustainable organizational model of knowledge management for small and medium enterprises. Italian agriculture is considered as a context for this study, and knowledge management was offered as a tool for facilitating agricultural performance and increasing competitiveness of agricultural sector. A wide concept of knowledge management and specified agricultural context require a theory-based approach to research and a survey. Thus, the research methodology includes the next four parts. The first one contains literature review and examines definitions, strategies, approaches and models of sustainable knowledge management. The second part includes content analysis of 105 scientific publications. The third part of methodology is based on the results of the two previous parts and includes creating the model of knowledge management. Verification of this model is the last part of the research. Verification was executed through on-line questionnaire distributed to Italian agricultural enterprises throughout the country on their intentions and awareness towards knowledge management and developed model of knowledge management. The results of the survey have demonstrated farmer’s incentives to implement the developed knowledge management model with flexible approach in its organisation

Public entities driven robotic innovation in urban areas

Cities present new challenges and needs to satisfy and improve lifestyle for their citizens under the concept “Smart City”. In order to achieve this goal in a global manner, new technologies are required as the robotic one. But Public entities unknown the possibilities offered by this technology to get solutions to their needs. In this paper the development of the Innovative Public Procurement instruments is explained, specifically the process PDTI (Public end Users Driven Technological Innovation) as a driving force of robotic research and development and offering a list of robotic urban challenges proposed by European cities that have participated in such a process. In the next phases of the procedure, this fact will provide novel robotic solutions addressed to public demand that are an example to be followed by other Smart Cities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Big data analytics:Computational intelligence techniques and application areas

Big Data has significant impact in developing functional smart cities and supporting modern societies. In this paper, we investigate the importance of Big Data in modern life and economy, and discuss challenges arising from Big Data utilization. Different computational intelligence techniques have been considered as tools for Big Data analytics. We also explore the powerful combination of Big Data and Computational Intelligence (CI) and identify a number of areas, where novel applications in real world smart city problems can be developed by utilizing these powerful tools and techniques. We present a case study for intelligent transportation in the context of a smart city, and a novel data modelling methodology based on a biologically inspired universal generative modelling approach called Hierarchical Spatial-Temporal State Machine (HSTSM). We further discuss various implications of policy, protection, valuation and commercialization related to Big Data, its applications and deployment

User-driven design of decision support systems for polycentric environmental resources management

Open and decentralized technologies such as the Internet provide increasing opportunities to create knowledge and deliver computer-based decision support for multiple types of users across scales. However, environmental decision support systems/tools (henceforth EDSS) are often strongly science-driven and assuming single types of decision makers, and hence poorly suited for more decentralized and polycentric decision making contexts. In such contexts, EDSS need to be tailored to meet diverse user requirements to ensure that it provides useful (relevant), usable (intuitive), and exchangeable (institutionally unobstructed) information for decision support for different types of actors. To address these issues, we present a participatory framework for designing EDSS that emphasizes a more complete understanding of the decision making structures and iterative design of the user interface. We illustrate the application of the framework through a case study within the context of water-stressed upstream/downstream communities in Lima, Peru