Smart City Artifacts Web Portal

International audienceIn the smart city domain, many projects and works are generating essential information. Open and efficient sharing of this information can be beneficial for all parties ranging from researchers, engineers or even governments. To our knowledge, there is currently no full-fledged semantic platform which properly models this domain, publishes such information and allows data extraction using a standard query language. To complement this, we developed and deployed the Smart City Artifacts web portal. In this paper, we present our approach used within this platform and summaries some of its technical features and applications

On Using Blockchains for Safety-Critical Systems

Innovation in the world of today is mainly driven by software. Companies need to continuously rejuvenate their product portfolios with new features to stay ahead of their competitors. For example, recent trends explore the application of blockchains to domains other than finance. This paper analyzes the state-of-the-art for safety-critical systems as found in modern vehicles like self-driving cars, smart energy systems, and home automation focusing on specific challenges where key ideas behind blockchains might be applicable. Next, potential benefits unlocked by applying such ideas are presented and discussed for the respective usage scenario. Finally, a research agenda is outlined to summarize remaining challenges for successfully applying blockchains to safety-critical cyber-physical systems

ENERGY DATA ANALYTICS FOR IMPROVED RESIDENTIAL SERVICE QUALITY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY

Utility companies generally have an extensive customer base, yet their knowledge about individual households is small. This adversely affects both the development of innovative, household specific services and the utilities’ key performance indicators such as customer loyalty and profitability. With the goal to overcome this knowledge deficit, persuasive systems in the form of customer self-service applications and efficiency coaching portals are becoming the getaway of data exchange between utility and user. While improved customer interaction and the collection of customer data within respective information systems is an important step towards a service-oriented company, the immediate value generated from the collected data is still limited, mostly due to the small fraction of customers actually using such systems. We show how to utilize the knowledge gained from the sparse number of active web users in order to provide low-cost and large-scale insights to potentially all residential utility customers. We do so using machine-learning-based Green IT artifacts that allow for improving decision-making, effectiveness of energy audits, and conservation campaigns, thus ultimately increasing the customer value and adoption of related services. Moreover, we show that data from the publically available geographic information systems can considerably improve the decision quality

Indirect Wayfinding Navigation System for the Elderly

Difficulty in wayfinding is one of the signs of ageing. Different types of people have the same difficulty in navigation including older people, people with mild dementia, mild cognitive impairment, and head injury. These problems do not only impact the person’s life and expose them to different risks, but their caregivers also report personal issues such as depression. This study aims to address this issue by creating a smart phone application called Indirect Wayfinding (IW) that helps affected people and their caregivers by acting as a guide to the elderly person. This paper reviews and summarizes the shortages of the current GPS-based solutions that need to be overcome, and then proposes a solution that mainly uses geofencing technology. This paper outlines the conceptual design, the mobile application, an algorithm to detect the direction of the user, feedback on the design from the caregivers, and an evaluation of the geofencing technology

A framework for dashboarding city performance : an application to Cascais smart city

Project Work presented as the partial requirement for obtaining a Master's degree in Information Management, specialization in Information Systems and Technologies ManagementThere has been a recent move to open up the data about the cities and transform it in indicators of interest to share with citizens through online, interactive data visualizations, often termed ‘city dashboards’. This project reflects on the building of dashboards mainly based on open data generated in the smart city context of Cascais. The main goal of these dashboards is to provide detailed information about city performance and trends, without citizens or the managers of the municipality needing to collect or learn how to handle data. These open data and dashboard initiatives are changing not only the relationship between government and the public, but also the way that the municipality is managed. The work begins with a literature review composed by a framework describing the characteristics of a smart city followed by an approach about the open data and a perspective about dashboards. Then, a benchmarking is presented as a means to select a series of indicators that can efficiently capture the performance of the smart city. These indicators will feed the dashboards that will permit to see Cascais as visualized facts, changing the way how managers and citizens know their municipality. The work also identifies the need of a graphic rules manual to follow up in future dashboards in order to achieve coherence in the public share of dashboards by the various departments of Cascais. The project ends with the presentation of a set of key indicators that describe the municipality in several dimensions and with an application case of the constructed dashboards to the open data portal of Cascais

An Open Platform for Modeling Method Conceptualization: The OMiLAB Digital Ecosystem

This paper motivates, describes, demonstrates in use, and evaluates the Open Models Laboratory (OMiLAB)—an open digital ecosystem designed to help one conceptualize and operationalize conceptual modeling methods. The OMiLAB ecosystem, which a generalized understanding of “model value” motivates, targets research and education stakeholders who fulfill various roles in a modeling method\u27s lifecycle. While we have many reports on novel modeling methods and tools for various domains, we lack knowledge on conceptualizing such methods via a full-fledged dedicated open ecosystem and a methodology that facilitates entry points for novices and an open innovation space for experienced stakeholders. This gap continues due to the lack of an open process and platform for 1) conducting research in the field of modeling method design, 2) developing agile modeling tools and model-driven digital products, and 3) experimenting with and disseminating such methods and related prototypes. OMiLAB incorporates principles, practices, procedures, tools, and services required to address the issues above since it focuses on being the operational deployment for a conceptualization and operationalization process built on several pillars: 1) a granularly defined “modeling method” concept whose building blocks one can customize for the domain of choice, 2) an “agile modeling method engineering” framework that helps one quickly prototype modeling tools, 3) a model-aware “digital product design lab”, and 4) dissemination channels for reaching a global community. In this paper, we demonstrate and evaluate the OMiLAB in research with two selected application cases for domain- and case-specific requirements. Besides these exemplary cases, OMiLAB has proven to effectively satisfy requirements that almost 50 modeling methods raise and, thus, to support researchers in designing novel modeling methods, developing tools, and disseminating outcomes. We also measured OMiLAB’s educational impact

Personalization in cultural heritage: the road travelled and the one ahead

Over the last 20 years, cultural heritage has been a favored domain for personalization research. For years, researchers have experimented with the cutting edge technology of the day; now, with the convergence of internet and wireless technology, and the increasing adoption of the Web as a platform for the publication of information, the visitor is able to exploit cultural heritage material before, during and after the visit, having different goals and requirements in each phase. However, cultural heritage sites have a huge amount of information to present, which must be filtered and personalized in order to enable the individual user to easily access it. Personalization of cultural heritage information requires a system that is able to model the user (e.g., interest, knowledge and other personal characteristics), as well as contextual aspects, select the most appropriate content, and deliver it in the most suitable way. It should be noted that achieving this result is extremely challenging in the case of first-time users, such as tourists who visit a cultural heritage site for the first time (and maybe the only time in their life). In addition, as tourism is a social activity, adapting to the individual is not enough because groups and communities have to be modeled and supported as well, taking into account their mutual interests, previous mutual experience, and requirements. How to model and represent the user(s) and the context of the visit and how to reason with regard to the information that is available are the challenges faced by researchers in personalization of cultural heritage. Notwithstanding the effort invested so far, a definite solution is far from being reached, mainly because new technology and new aspects of personalization are constantly being introduced. This article surveys the research in this area. Starting from the earlier systems, which presented cultural heritage information in kiosks, it summarizes the evolution of personalization techniques in museum web sites, virtual collections and mobile guides, until recent extension of cultural heritage toward the semantic and social web. The paper concludes with current challenges and points out areas where future research is needed

Forum Session at the First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC03)

The First International Conference on Service Oriented Computing (ICSOC) was held in Trento, December 15-18, 2003. The focus of the conference ---Service Oriented Computing (SOC)--- is the new emerging paradigm for distributed computing and e-business processing that has evolved from object-oriented and component computing to enable building agile networks of collaborating business applications distributed within and across organizational boundaries. Of the 181 papers submitted to the ICSOC conference, 10 were selected for the forum session which took place on December the 16th, 2003. The papers were chosen based on their technical quality, originality, relevance to SOC and for their nature of being best suited for a poster presentation or a demonstration. This technical report contains the 10 papers presented during the forum session at the ICSOC conference. In particular, the last two papers in the report ere submitted as industrial papers

Student-Centered Learning: Functional Requirements for Integrated Systems to Optimize Learning

The realities of the 21st-century learner require that schools and educators fundamentally change their practice. "Educators must produce college- and career-ready graduates that reflect the future these students will face. And, they must facilitate learning through means that align with the defining attributes of this generation of learners."Today, we know more than ever about how students learn, acknowledging that the process isn't the same for every student and doesn't remain the same for each individual, depending upon maturation and the content being learned. We know that students want to progress at a pace that allows them to master new concepts and skills, to access a variety of resources, to receive timely feedback on their progress, to demonstrate their knowledge in multiple ways and to get direction, support and feedback from—as well as collaborate with—experts, teachers, tutors and other students.The result is a growing demand for student-centered, transformative digital learning using competency education as an underpinning.iNACOL released this paper to illustrate the technical requirements and functionalities that learning management systems need to shift toward student-centered instructional models. This comprehensive framework will help districts and schools determine what systems to use and integrate as they being their journey toward student-centered learning, as well as how systems integration aligns with their organizational vision, educational goals and strategic plans.Educators can use this report to optimize student learning and promote innovation in their own student-centered learning environments. The report will help school leaders understand the complex technologies needed to optimize personalized learning and how to use data and analytics to improve practices, and can assist technology leaders in re-engineering systems to support the key nuances of student-centered learning

Remediating the professional classroom: the new rhetoric of teaching and learning

The incarnation of many Internet-based courses is informed by traditional notions of classroom instruction, in which course/content management systems (CMSs) like WebCT and Blackboard are used to reproduce actions undertaken in brick-and-mortar classrooms. In this dissertation I argue that the way in which the CMS is configured and deployed can provide students with the sense that they are immersed in a social activity other than taking a college course. Elaborating on simulation-building methodologies, I show how we have created a CMS called MyCase that helps classroom instructors evoke and immerse students in discourse-demanding situations within several disciplines. This sense of immersion is especially important for communication-intensive courses in which students seek to practice disciplinary and workplace genres whose social motive may not be readily reproducible within the confines of the (computer) classroom;The dissertation details qualitative studies conducted in a management course and a professional communication course of students and instructors who used simulations built with MyCase. Results indicate that students participating in these simulations (1) attribute greater significance for their professional lives to the activities in which they engage within the simulation than they do to other classroom activities and (2) engage in activities that more closely match established definitions of active learning than other classroom activities, including those involving traditional (Harvard) case studies. In addition, by providing concrete examples of student actions, I argue that the affordances of an online environment for simulating time and space enable students to reflect on their practices and even engage in critique and critical practices (ranging from quotidian resistance to organized activism)