Norm-based and commitment-driven agentification of the Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses different IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed

Norm-based and Commitment-driven Agentification of the Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses di_erent IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed

A Plug&Play approach for modeling and simulating applications in the era of internet of social things

This article presents an approach to model and simulate Plug&Play social things. Confined into silos, existing (not social) things are restricted to basic operations like sensing and actuating, which deprive them from participating in the satisfaction of complex business applications. Contrarily, social things are expected to engage in collaborative scenarios and to tap into specific relations that connect them to peers when achieving these scenarios. These relations are referred to as complimentary, antagonism, and competition, and allow to develop networks of things. To capitalize on such networks, the approach to model and simulate Plug&Play social things puts forward four stages that are referred to as connecting to demystify social relations between things, influencing to examine the impact of social relations on things, playing to make things perform while considering influence, and incentivizing to reward things based on their performance. A smart system for elderly the care centers has been developed to showcase the technical doability of Plug&Play social things. The system is an integrated development environment allowing IoT engineers to define the collaboration of social things, thanks to a set of drag&drop operations

Voice or chatter? Making ICTs work for transformative engagement

What are the conditions in democratic governance that make information and communication technology (ICT)-mediated citizen engagement transformative? While substantial scholarship exists on the role of the Internet and digital technologies in triggering moments of political disruption and cascading upheavals, academic interest in the sort of deep change that transforms institutional cultures of democratic governance, occurring in ‘slow time’, has been relatively muted. This study attempts to fill this gap. It is inspired by the idea of participation in everyday democracy and seeks to explore how ICT-mediated citizen engagement can promote democratic governance and amplify citizen voice. The study involved empirical explorations of citizen engagement initiatives in eight sites – two in Asia (India and Philippines), one in Africa (South Africa), three in South America (Brazil, Colombia, Uruguay) and two in Europe (Netherlands and Spain).DFIDUSAIDSidaOmidyar Networ

Prospectiva de Integración de Blockchain e Internet de las Cosas para una implementación en Clúster

Introduction: The present article is the result of the investigation and approach to the applications and developments of blockchain and Internet of Things (IoT), developed during the second semester of the year 2019 and first of 2020. Problem: Construction of environments and mediums in a cluster structure that allow companies and institutions to cooperate and compete to achieve efficiency and strengthen grouping.  Objective: Integrate blockchain and IoT to develop and present a two-level architecture, from which a support environment is established and a series of functionalities are offered for a cluster implementation. Methodology: Review articles to achieve an approach to blockchain and IoT architecture, configuration and description of structural and functional levels. Results: An architecture with a structural level constituted by a decentralized computer application based on blockchains, a sensory and response network that incorporates IoT technologies and an intermediate component of cloud computing; this, at a functional level that manages to offer users support and help in their activities from modules created with a particular specialty. Conclusion: The structural level furthered the integration of base technologies, blockchain and IoT; on the other hand, the second level of architecture reveals the potential and versatility of these technologies. Originality: Proposal for the implementation of blockchain, IoT and cloud computing in a cluster structure. Limitations: The difficulty of accessing a cluster to perform a test of the architecture in a real environment.Introducción: El presente artículo es el resultado de la investigación y acercamiento a las aplicaciones y desarrollos del blockchain e Internet de las Cosas (IoT), estudio desarrollada durante el segundo semestre del año 2019 y primero de 2020. Problema: Construcción de entornos y medios en una estructura de clúster que permitan a las empresas e instituciones cooperar y competir para alcanzar la eficiencia y el fortalecimiento de la agrupación. Objetivo: Integrar blockchain e Internet de las Cosas para desarrollar y presentar una arquitectura de dos niveles, desde los cuales se establezca un entorno de apoyo y se ofrezcan una serie de funcionalidades para una implementación en clúster. Metodología: Revisión de artículos para lograr un acercamiento al blockchain e Internet de las Cosas, planteamiento de la arquitectura, configuración y descripción de los niveles estructural y funcional.Resultados: Arquitectura con un nivel estructural constituido por una aplicación informática descentralizada basada en blockchain, una red sensorial y de respuesta que incorpora tecnologías de Internet de las Cosas y un componte intermedio de computación en la nube; y un nivel funcional que logra ofrecer a los usuarios soporte y ayuda en sus actividades desde módulos creados con una especialidad en particular. Conclusión: El nivel estructural permitió ahondar en la integración de las tecnologías base, blockchain e Internet de las Cosas; por su parte el segundo nivel de la arquitectura deja entrever el potencial y versatilidad de dichas tecnologías. Originalidad: Propuesta de implementación del blockchain, Internet de las Cosas y la computación en la nube en una estructura de clúster. Limitaciones: La dificultad de acceso a un clúster para realizar una prueba de la arquitectura en un entorno real

Representative Public Administration as the Modelling Behaviour for the New Bureaucracy

There is a widespread belief that the states and markets are not the omnipotent institutions. Although public participation is gaining importance, this paper argues that in the present situation liberal and democratic elements can be fastest achieved by promotion of values in the public administration. The idea is built on a notion of active representative bureaucracy, while passive representation of the society should be still under the rule of law and/or merit system of hiring public servants. The proposed strategy in a time of austerity is somehow illogical, but it could be efficient: more public funds should be given in education, (re)training and practical experiments of the good practices from other states should become more relevant. Although in our time – when reductions of public funds and dismissals of employees are present – it will be difficult to achieve this goal, we should not forget that humanity has never depended on finances; the public trust, awareness, faith and other values are all the more needed in the time of crisis. We should start from ourselves as individuals to proceed towards the benefits of community

Coalition based approach for shop floor agility – a multiagent approach

Dissertation submitted for a PhD degree in Electrical Engineering, speciality of Robotics and Integrated Manufacturing from the Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e TecnologiaThis thesis addresses the problem of shop floor agility. In order to cope with the disturbances and uncertainties that characterise the current business scenarios faced by manufacturing companies, the capability of their shop floors needs to be improved quickly, such that these shop floors may be adapted, changed or become easily modifiable (shop floor reengineering). One of the critical elements in any shop floor reengineering process is the way the control/supervision architecture is changed or modified to accommodate for the new processes and equipment. This thesis, therefore, proposes an architecture to support the fast adaptation or changes in the control/supervision architecture. This architecture postulates that manufacturing systems are no more than compositions of modularised manufacturing components whose interactions when aggregated are governed by contractual mechanisms that favour configuration over reprogramming. A multiagent based reference architecture called Coalition Based Approach for Shop floor Agility – CoBASA, was created to support fast adaptation and changes of shop floor control architectures with minimal effort. The coalitions are composed of agentified manufacturing components (modules), whose relationships within the coalitions are governed by contracts that are configured whenever a coalition is established. Creating and changing a coalition do not involve programming effort because it only requires changes to the contract that regulates it

Prospective for the integration of BlockChain and Internet of things for a Cluster implementation

El presente artículo es el resultado de la investigación y acercamiento a las aplicaciones y desarrollos del BlockChain e Internet de las Cosas (IoT), estudio desarrollado durante el segundo semestre del año 2019 y primero de 2020. El objetivo es integrar BlockChain e Internet de las Cosas para desarrollar y presentar una arquitectura de dos niveles, desde los cuales se establezca un entorno de apoyo y se ofrezcan una serie de funcionalidades para una implementación en clúster.The present article is the result of the investigation and approach to the applications and developments of the BlockChain and Internet of the Things (IoT), study developed during the second semester of the year 2019 and first of 2020. The objective is Integrate BlockChain and Internet of Things to develop and present a two level architecture, from which a support environment is established and a series of functionalities are offered for a cluster implementation

A learning state?: a case study of the post-1994 South African welfare regime

This thesis examines the processes of policymaking in South Africa, as expressed through the shifts in income maintenance policy. The thesis focuses on the processes leading to the establishment of the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA), as its case study. SASSA is the institutional framework for the delivery of social grants. Our intention is to test the efficacy of what we have called ‘state learning’ in the South African context. Therefore, the overall aim of the study is to assess the capacity of the ‘state to learn’ in the process of policymaking as expressed through the shifts in social grant administration and the institutional framework of social welfare in South Africa. The subsidiary goals of the research includes mapping changes in the system of social grants administration since 1994 in order to assess the sources of the shifts in its institutional framework; to assess processes and responses within the state that result in policy shifts and the extent to which these can be considered dimensions of state learning; to assess the power of ideas in the policymaking process and to assess the influence of non-state agencies/actors in policy contestation and learning processes. This is essential, because social policy, especially welfare policy research in post-apartheid South Africa, has focused on the economic value of policies and not the political processes in policymaking. For the framework of analysis the study draws on theories of learning, especially at the organizational or institutional level. We start from the perspective that policymaking and implementation cannot be reduced to a neatly ordered schema (Lamb: 1987:6). Further, that policy change and policymaking are “iterative, haphazard, and highly political processes, in which the apparently logical sequences of decision-making, may turn out to be the reverse” (Lamb, 1987:6). This is mainly because state building is a complex affair and a contested terrain; policy learning and making are neither benign nor do they involve the state working in isolation (Sabatier, 1998). To understand processes of policymaking in South Africa, we rely on content analysis of primary and secondary materials or documents and in-depth interviews with key informants involved in the policy process. The documentary sources include records of parliamentary debates, green and white papers on social welfare, ANC party documents, presidential task force reports, newspapers, magazines and court judgments. The study reveals that the establishment of SASSA lends itself to the idea of ‘state learning’. Learning is indicated in South Africa by the capacity and ability of the state to stimulate ideas, debate ideas to establish ideational matrixes as well as paradigms that have informed the development of policy, take ideas and implement them to try and solve mismatches between the intention of the state and the outcomes and the ability of the state to produce policy