Technological Ecosystems in Health Sector

[EN]Presentation about the technological ecosystems applied to the health sector related to dementia and other mental disorders. This presentation was made in the INTERDEM meeting in Budapest, April 21, 2016

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)

Human Interaction in Learning Ecosystems based on Open Source Solutions

Technological ecosystems are software solutions based on the integration of heterogeneous software components through information flows in order to provide a set of services that each component separately does not offer, as well as to improve the user experience. In particular, the learning ecosystems are technological ecosystems focused on learning and knowledge management in different contexts such as educational institutions or companies. The ecosystem metaphor comes from biology field and it has transferred to technology field to highlight the evolving component of software. Taking into account the definitions of natural ecosystems, a technological ecosystem is a set of people and software components that play the role of organisms; a series of elements that allow the ecosystem works (hardware, networks, etc.); and a set of information flows that establish the relationships between the software components, and between these and the people involved in the ecosystem. Human factor has a main role in the definition and development of this kind of solutions. In previous works, a metamodel has been defined and validated to support Model-Driven Development of learning ecosystems based on Open Source software, but the interaction in the learning ecosystem should be defined in order to complete the proposal to improve the development process of technological ecosystems. This paper presents the definition and modelling of the human interaction in learning ecosystem

Ohjelmistoalustan ja toimijoiden roolit ohjelmistoekosysteemeissä: Tapaustutkimus maataloudessa

In today's world, companies can have difficulties in developing products that satisfy all the needs of the customers. Software ecosystems (SECOs) are emerging as a solution proposal for the problem. In SECOs different companies collaborate in order to co-innovate new business opportunities and decrease development costs. The participating companies, so-called actors, are in a critical position in the success of a SECO. Along with the actors, the software platform has a central role in SECOs. Despite its essentiality, the platform is left with little attention in previous studies. The goal of this thesis is to investigate what is important on a platform of a software ecosystem to satisfy actors' expectations. The study was conducted as a qualitative case study in the agricultural domain. Theme interviews and document review were used as data collection techniques. The results were analysed with a whole-text coding approach. Three different kinds of agricultural SECOs were identified. The SECOs varied from the maturity point of view and they included different types of software platforms. All of the software platforms aimed to enable actor cooperation. Also the identified ecosystem actors were in line with the five main actor roles found in previous research. However, the actor role motivations were described only to be either monetary or non-monetary. Further it was discovered that a software ecosystem must provide a unique value proposition to all different actor roles.Nykypäivänä yritysten on vaikea kehittää tuotetta, joka täyttää kaikki asiakkaiden tarpeet. Ohjelmistoekosysteemit ovat nousemassa ratkaisuksi tähän ongelmaan. Ohjelmistoekosysteemeissä yritykset toimivat yhteistyössä luodakseen uusia liiketoimintamahdollisuuksia sekä alennettuja kehityskustannuksia. Yritykset, eli ekosysteemin toimijat ovat tärkeässä roolissa ohjelmistoekosysteemin menestyksen kannalta. Heidän lisäkseen myös ohjelmistoalustalla on keskeinen rooli. Sen merkityksellisyydestä huolimatta sen tutkiminen on jäänyt aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa vähemmälle huomiolle. Tässä tutkielmassa tarkastellaan, mikä on tärkeää ohjelmistoalustassa, jotta se täyttää ohjelmistoekosysteemin toimijoiden odotukset. Tämä tutkielma toteutettiin kvalitatiivisena tapaustutkimuksena maatalouskontekstissa. Data kerättiin teemahaastatteluiden ja dokumenttitarkastelun avulla ja tuloksia analysoitiin kokotekstikoodauksella. Tutkimuksessa löydettiin kolme erilaista maatalousohjelmistoekosysteemiä. Ohjelmistoekosysteemit erosivat niiden kehittyneisyydessä ja niissä oli myös erilaiset ohjelmistoalustat. Eroista huolimatta kaikki löydetyt ohjelmistoalustat pyrkivät mahdollistamaan toimijoiden yhteistyön. Lisäksi löydetyt toimijat vastasivat aikaisemmissa tutkimuksissa löydettyjä toimijoita, mutta toimijoiden motivaatiot esitettiin vain rahallisiksi tai rahattomiksi. Lisäksi havaittiin, että ohjelmistoekosysteemin tulee tarjota yksilöllinen arvolupaus jokaiselle eri toimijaroolille

Ecosistemas de aprendizaje adaptativos

[ES]La conferencia “Ecosistemas de Aprendizaje Adaptativos” fue impartida el 30 de junio de 2016 en el ICE, Universidad de Zaragoza en el contexto de la Jornada “Cómo conseguir aprendizaje personalizado en la formación presencial” dentro del Programa de Actividades de Formación Continua para el Profesorado de la Universidad de Zaragoza

Wearable Computing for Health and Fitness: Exploring the Relationship between Data and Human Behaviour

Health and fitness wearable technology has recently advanced, making it easier for an individual to monitor their behaviours. Previously self generated data interacts with the user to motivate positive behaviour change, but issues arise when relating this to long term mention of wearable devices. Previous studies within this area are discussed. We also consider a new approach where data is used to support instead of motivate, through monitoring and logging to encourage reflection. Based on issues highlighted, we then make recommendations on the direction in which future work could be most beneficial

On Evaluating Commercial Cloud Services: A Systematic Review

Background: Cloud Computing is increasingly booming in industry with many competing providers and services. Accordingly, evaluation of commercial Cloud services is necessary. However, the existing evaluation studies are relatively chaotic. There exists tremendous confusion and gap between practices and theory about Cloud services evaluation. Aim: To facilitate relieving the aforementioned chaos, this work aims to synthesize the existing evaluation implementations to outline the state-of-the-practice and also identify research opportunities in Cloud services evaluation. Method: Based on a conceptual evaluation model comprising six steps, the Systematic Literature Review (SLR) method was employed to collect relevant evidence to investigate the Cloud services evaluation step by step. Results: This SLR identified 82 relevant evaluation studies. The overall data collected from these studies essentially represent the current practical landscape of implementing Cloud services evaluation, and in turn can be reused to facilitate future evaluation work. Conclusions: Evaluation of commercial Cloud services has become a world-wide research topic. Some of the findings of this SLR identify several research gaps in the area of Cloud services evaluation (e.g., the Elasticity and Security evaluation of commercial Cloud services could be a long-term challenge), while some other findings suggest the trend of applying commercial Cloud services (e.g., compared with PaaS, IaaS seems more suitable for customers and is particularly important in industry). This SLR study itself also confirms some previous experiences and reveals new Evidence-Based Software Engineering (EBSE) lessons

Mapping and assessment of ecosystems and their services. Urban ecosystems

Action 5 of the EU Biodiversity Strategy to 2020 requires member states to Map and Assess the state of Ecosystems and their Services (MAES). This report provides guidance for mapping and assessment of urban ecosystems. The MAES urban pilot is a collaboration between the European Commission, the European Environment Agency, volunteering Member States and cities, and stakeholders. Its ultimate goal is to deliver a knowledge base for policy and management of urban ecosystems by analysing urban green infrastructure, condition of urban ecosystems and ecosystem services. This report presents guidance for mapping urban ecosystems and includes an indicator framework to assess the condition of urban ecosystems and urban ecosystem services. The scientific framework of mapping and assessment is designed to support in particular urban planning policy and policy on green infrastructure at urban, metropolitan and regional scales. The results are based on the following different sources of information: a literature survey of 54 scientific articles, an online-survey (on urban ecosystems, related policies and planning instruments and with participation of 42 cities), ten case studies (Portugal: Cascais, Oeiras, Lisbon; Italy: Padua, Trento, Rome; The Netherlands: Utrecht; Poland: Poznań; Spain: Barcelona; Norway: Oslo), and a two-day expert workshop. The case studies constituted the core of the MAES urban pilot. They provided real examples and applications of how mapping and assessment can be organized to support policy; on top, they provided the necessary expertise to select a set of final indicators for condition and ecosystem services. Urban ecosystems or cities are defined here as socio-ecological systems which are composed of green infrastructure and built infrastructure. Urban green infrastructure (GI) is understood in this report as the multi-functional network of urban green spaces situated within the boundary of the urban ecosystem. Urban green spaces are the structural components of urban GI. This study has shown that there is a large scope for urban ecosystem assessments. Firstly, urban policies increasingly use urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions in their planning process. Secondly, an increasing amount of data at multiple spatial scales is becoming available to support these policies, to provide a baseline, and to compare or benchmark cities with respect to the extent and management of the urban ecosystem. Concrete examples are given on how to delineate urban ecosystems, how to choose an appropriate spatial scale, and how to map urban ecosystems based on a combination of national or European datasets (including Urban Atlas) and locally collected information (e.g., location of trees). Also examples of typologies for urban green spaces are presented. This report presents an indicator framework which is composed of indicators to assess for urban ecosystem condition and for urban ecosystem services. These are the result of a rigorous selection process and ensure consistent mapping and assessment across Europe. The MAES urban pilot will continue with work on the interface between research and policy. The framework presented in this report needs to be tested and validated across Europe, e.g. on its applicability at city scale, on how far the methodology for measuring ecosystem condition and ecosystem service delivery in urban areas can be used to assess urban green infrastructure and nature-based solutions