Cooperative Human-Centric Sensing Connectivity

Human-centric sensing (HCS) is a new concept relevant to Internet of Things (IoT). HCS connectivity, referred to as “smart connectivity,” enables applications that are highly personalized and often time-critical. In a typical HCS scenario, there may be many hundreds of sensor stream connections, centered around the human, who would be the determining factor for the number, the purpose, the direction, and the frequency of the sensor streams. This chapter examines the concepts of HCS communications, outlines the challenges, and defines a roadmap for solutions for realizing HCS networks. This chapter is organized as follows. Section 1 introduces the concept of cooperation in information and communications technologies (ICT), and in the context of IoT. Section 2 discusses cooperation in the context of the personal and extra-personal user space and identifies the remaining open challenges and requirements for realizing the benefits of this approach to enabling more resources and services in a hyper-connected society. Section 3 defines a roadmap toward realizing simple, efficient, and trustable systems based on advanced technologies combining security, cloud, and IoT/big data technologies and outlines the challenges related to this vision. Section 4 concludes the chapter

Data and the city – accessibility and openness. a cybersalon paper on open data

This paper showcases examples of bottom–up open data and smart city applications and identifies lessons for future such efforts. Examples include Changify, a neighbourhood-based platform for residents, businesses, and companies; Open Sensors, which provides APIs to help businesses, startups, and individuals develop applications for the Internet of Things; and Cybersalon’s Hackney Treasures. a location-based mobile app that uses Wikipedia entries geolocated in Hackney borough to map notable local residents. Other experiments with sensors and open data by Cybersalon members include Ilze Black and Nanda Khaorapapong's The Breather, a "breathing" balloon that uses high-end, sophisticated sensors to make air quality visible; and James Moulding's AirPublic, which measures pollution levels. Based on Cybersalon's experience to date, getting data to the people is difficult, circuitous, and slow, requiring an intricate process of leadership, public relations, and perseverance. Although there are myriad tools and initiatives, there is no one solution for the actual transfer of that data

Archive and Market Dynamics: (History of) Library, (Digital) Humanities, and “Cultural Memory Institutions”

This work introduces the idea of memory practices in consumption processes and in market system dynamics through the role of archives and digital practice of archiving. From a historical institutionalism perspective, listed in digital humanities in terms of media archaeology, the historical evolution of the library allows to introduce the notion of archive as: (i) category of objects, standards, classification systems and cataloguing mechanisms (from Science and Technology Studies); (ii) and cultural artefact (à la Foucault). From mnemonic devices (digital archive) mnemonic practices emerge (digital archiving practices) whose collective memories help “to generate” and “take shape from” markets as mnemonic communities (cultural memory institutions). The work suggests a research agenda on market system dynamics based on different ways of conceiving the mnemonic dimension of social phenomena

The production of digital public spaces

Digital media are noticeably changing the qualities of urban public spaces, which can no longer be considered a purely physical construct. Yet, the extent to which contemporary digital media can be used to promote other forms of spatial agency remains a critical issue. Whereas the impact of technology from a macro perspective offers a globalizing and homogenizing image, its role in the production of space at a local scale is less clear (Kirsch 1995). The aim of this study is to argue for digital public spaces as a concrete programme to support the articulation of a third notion of public space that emerges at the interface of physical–digital hybrid spaces (Stikker 2013). The project for digital public spaces is posed as one that pursues enabling citizens’ rights to participation and appropriation (Purcell 2002) of physical–digital hybrid spaces. It is argued that while physical and digital spaces do not stand in opposition, their operational models do not fit seamlessly either. Therefore, the research is particularly concerned with how to design for the conditions that allow a dialogical relation between physical and digital features of space, and enable citizens to actively participate in the production of physical–digital hybrid spaces, and for which a dialectical mode of analysis is required. Following a cumulative narrative, the study explores different characterizations of digital public spaces, which have been articulated through design-led action research projects conducted in collaboration with academia, creative industries, citizens and public authorities. The study accomplishes a novel application of the unitary theory of space proposed by the Marxist French philosopher and sociologist, Henri Lefebvre (1992), which is revisited to develop a novel framework to reveal the social production of physical–digital hybrid spaces. The framework is developed through practice, and extensively applied throughout the thesis illustrating three distinctive dominating perspectives of physical–digital hybrid spaces: substitution, co-evolution and recombination (Graham 1998). The framework has proved to be a flexible and insightful method of analysis that: enables approaching the social production of physical and digital spaces individually and in relation to one another; to understand how different spatial configurations allow for participation and appropriation; and in turn, to re-contextualize the right to the city (Lefebvre 1996) in digital public spaces

Earth Observation Open Science and Innovation

geospatial analytics; social observatory; big earth data; open data; citizen science; open innovation; earth system science; crowdsourced geospatial data; citizen science; science in society; data scienc