BHiveSense: An integrated information system architecture for sustainable remote monitoring and management of apiaries based on IoT and microservices

Precision Beekeeping, a field of Precision Agriculture, is an apiary management strategy based on monitoring honeybee colonies to promote more sustainable resource usage and maximise productivity. The approach related to Precision Beekeeping is based on methodologies to mitigate the stress associated with human intervention in the colonies and the waste of resources. These goals are achieved by supporting the intervention and managing the beekeeper’s timely and appropriate action at the colony’s level. In recent years, the growth of IoT (Internetof-Things) in Precision Agriculture has spurred several proposals to contribute to the paradigm of Precision Beekeeping, built on different technical concepts and with different production costs. This work proposes and describes an information systems architecture concept named BHiveSense, based on IoT and microservices, and different artefacts to demonstrate its concept: (1) a low-cost COTS (Commercial Off-The-Shelf) hive sensing prototype, (2) a REST backend API, (3) a Web application, and (4) a Mobile application. This project delivers a solution for a more integrated and sustainable beekeeping activity. Our approach stresses that by adopting microservices and a REST architecture, it is possible to deal with long-standing problems concerning interoperability, scalability, agility, and maintenance issues, delivering an efficient beehive monitoring system.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Scientific citizens, smartphones and social media – reshaping the socio-spatial networks of participation: Insects, soil and food

The conjunction of citizen science and social media through the mediation of the smartphone is investigated in this Scientific Communication, following on from the last issue of the Moravian Geographical Reports (2019, Vol. 27, No. 4). Through a reconsideration of three previously published articles, in part written by the author, this paper reflects on these topics with regard to farmer innovation, local food networks and citizen-informed ecology. Each of these papers has used Twitter to gather data about practices of innovation and observation that have revealed new insights about innovation networks amongst farmers, urban-rural connections and insect behaviours. The reflections reported here are embedded in a discussion of the rise of the term ‘Citizen Science’. Recent experiences in areas as diverse as fisheries management and combating Ebola, have informed societal needs for greater engagement in finding inclusive, comprehensive solutions to urgent socio-ecological problems. This paper suggests a compositional approach to studies using citizen scientists and their data as a new avenue of practice and investigation

Outlook Magazine, Winter 2015

https://digitalcommons.wustl.edu/outlook/1197/thumbnail.jp

The Emergent City (2007- 2017): Artistic explorations of the control and the ethics of data

The PhD by Published Works examines selected practice-based artworks made by the author - the artist Stanza - over a ten-year period. This thesis represents an opportunity to reflect back on a body of digital artworks after they have been made and to re-examine the artworks that were conducted through artistic practice-based research and to contextualise them in an academic framework. This PhD focuses on selected art projects made in the period 2007 to 2017 but are grounded in work under the title The Emergent City developed from the author's AHRC research fellowship at Goldsmiths College, University of London from 2006 to 2009. The research became an investigation into the ubiquity of real-time data within the city to create new media artworks. The practice resulted from technical investigations via sensor-based inquiry into real-time global observations currently employed via data harvesting technologies which cannot be separated from the artworks made and presented. This thesis discloses how, through practice-based research, these artworks contribute to the field of new media art by investigating real-time data flows, that simultaneously allow the meaning to be shifted, altered, parsed, and represented back to us, the audience, as art. Furthermore, and in context, the work incorporates inquiry into dataveillance , the smart city and the Internet of Things (IoT). The body of work The Emergent City incorporates research based digital artworks which are all in turn investigations into archives of these data that are controlled via bespoke online interfaces, which have been reformed and recounted into real-time experiences, as emergent artworks made by the author. The artworks are not only expressions of ideas that create a rich understanding of complex concepts of the contemporary issues of surveillance and privacy. They could also be described as technological demonstrators that cross multi-disciplinary boundaries, including art, computing and urban studies. Through numerous commissions, and research grants, these artworks have in common that they scrutinised the real-time city as a panoptic control system. Over twenty art projects (2007 - 2017) have been made using live real-time environmental data, surveillance and security data that have been presented and exhibited in various galleries worldwide from the Bruges Museum to the V&A and supported by numerous curators, which will be discussed. Finally, conclusions drawn at the end relate to the possibilities offered to artists by representing city environments with data and how artworks can enable us to critically reflect upon issues concerning surveillance through data-oriented new media artworks. The projects are all viewable online at www.stanza.co.uk where all these art projects are archived as online interfaces and online visualizations, as well as data-driven dynamic artworks in the form of large scale installations, or sculptural objects

The Timescape of Smart Cities

To date, critical examinations of smart cities have largely ignored their temporality. In this article, I consider smart cities from a spatiotemporal perspective, arguing that they produce a new timescape and constitute space–time machines. The first half of the article examines spatiotemporal relations and rhythms, exploring how smart cities are the products of and contribute to space–time compression, create new urban polyrhythms, alter the practices of scheduling, and change the pace and tempos of everyday activities. The second half of the article details how smart cities shape the nature of temporal modalities, considering how they reframe and utilize the relationship among the past, present, and future. The analysis draws from a set of forty-three interviews conducted in Dublin, Ireland, and highlights that much of the power of smart urbanism is derived from how it produces a new timescape, rather than simply reconfiguring spatial relations

Scientific citizens, smartphones and social media – reshaping the socio-spatial networks of participation: Insects, soil and food

The conjunction of citizen science and social media through the mediation of the smartphone is investigated in this Scientific Communication, following on from the last issue of the Moravian Geographical Reports (2019, Vol. 27, No. 4). Through a reconsideration of three previously published articles, in part written by the author, this paper reflects on these topics with regard to farmer innovation, local food networks and citizen-informed ecology. Each of these papers has used Twitter to gather data about practices of innovation and observation that have revealed new insights about innovation networks amongst farmers, urban-rural connections and insect behaviours. The reflections reported here are embedded in a discussion of the rise of the term ‘Citizen Science’. Recent experiences in areas as diverse as fisheries management and combating Ebola, have informed societal needs for greater engagement in finding inclusive, comprehensive solutions to urgent socio-ecological problems. This paper suggests a compositional approach to studies using citizen scientists and their data as a new avenue of practice and investigation