Islamic banking: An alternative financing model for the development in Africa

A partir de la prohibición de operaciones que puedan dañar a la sociedad en su conjunto, la banca islámica se presenta como una alternativa de cara a financiar el desarrollo económico y social en África, y, alejada de la perspectiva de los beneficios y la especulación, encaja de una manera más natural con las tradiciones africanas. No obstante, se encuentra en una fase de desarrollo temprana, a pesar de su potencial a la hora de adaptarse a las necesidades de las poblaciones pobres, musulmanas o no. Así, para extenderse por el continente, la banca islámica tendrá que crear estrategias de desarrollo en los campos de la eficiencia operativa y la gestión de riesgos sin perder la autenticidad del modelo islámico que la hace idónea. Del mismo modo, tanto las legislaciones nacionales (nivel macro) como las capacidades institucionales y la diversidad de productos (niveles meso y micro) serán factores clave a la hora de favorecer su implantación y desarrollo. En este artículo afirmamos que la banca islámica puede convertirse en una herramienta de desarrollo a nivel local y regional. Para ello, analizaremos sus características y potencial a partir del análisis del modelo, los obstáculos a los que se enfrenta, su eficacia operativa y los resultados aportados por el modelo en aquellos países donde se ha puesto en prácticaBecause Islamic Banking forbids transactions that may harm the society as a whole, it’s presented as a viable alternative to fund a different development model, that fits more naturally with African traditions, far away from inappropriate profits and speculation, and being able to replace the current banking system. However, this model is in an early development phase, despite its potential to adapt to the needs of poor population, not only Muslims. So, to expand along the whole continent, Islamic banking has to create development strategies in operational efficiency and risk management without losing the authenticity of the Islamic model that makes it suitable. Also, national laws, institutional capacities and product diversity are key factors to develop and implement this model. In this article we affirm that Islamic banking can foster the development of Africa at local and regional level. Therefore, we will analyze its features and potential, the obstacles it faces to, and the performance of this banking model where it’s use

Integrating a smart city testbed into a large-scale heterogeneous federation of future internet experimentation facilities: the SmartSantander approach

For some years already, there has been a plethora of research initiatives throughout the world that have deployed diverse experimentation facilities for Future Internet technologies research and development. While access to these testbeds has been sometimes restricted to the specific research community supporting them, opening them to different communities can not only help those infrastructures to achieve a wider impact, but also to better identify new possibilities based on novel considerations brought by those external users. On top of the individual testbeds, supporting experiments that employs several of them in a combined and seamless fashion has been one of the main objectives of different transcontinental research initiatives, such as FIRE in Europe or GENI in United States. In particular, Fed4FIRE project and its continuation, Fed4FIRE+, have emerged as "best-in-town" projects to federate heterogeneous experimentation platforms. This paper presents the most relevant aspects of the integration of a large scale testbed on the IoT domain within the Fed4FIRE+ federation. It revolves around the adaptation carried out on the SmartSantander smart city testbed. Additionally, the paper offers an overview of the different federation models that Fed4FIRE+ proposes to testbed owners in order to provide a complete view of the involved technologies. The paper is also presenting a survey of how several specific research platforms from different experimentation domains have fulfilled the federation task following Fed4FIRE+ concepts.This work was partially funded by the European project Federation for FIRE Plus (Fed4FIRE+) from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme with the Grant Agreement No. 732638 and by the Spanish Government (MINECO) by means of the projects ADVICE: Dynamic provisioning of connectivity in high density 5G wireless scenarios (TEC2015-71329-C2-1-R) and Future Internet Enabled Resilient Cities (FIERCE)

Practical Lessons from the Deployment and Management of a Smart City Internet-of-Things Infrastructure: The SmartSantander testbed case

The smart cities vision is inexorably turning into a reality. Among the different approaches used to realize more intelligent and sustainable environments, a common denominator is the role that information and communication technologies will play. Moreover, if there is one of these technologies that emerges among the rest, it is the Internet-of-Things (IoT). The ability to ubiquitously embed sensing and actuating capabilities that this paradigm enables is at the forefront of the technologies driving the urban environments transformation. However, there are very little practical experiences of the IoT infrastructure deployment at a large scale. This paper presents practical solutions to the main challenges faced during the deployment and management of a city-scale IoT infrastructure, which encompasses thousands of sensors and other information sources. The experience we have gained during the deployment and operation of the IoT-based smart city infrastructure carried out at Santander (Spain) has led to a number of practical lessons that are summarized in this paper. Moreover, the challenges and problems examples, excerpted from our own real-life experience, are described as motivators for the adopted solutions.This work was supported in part by the research project SmartSantander through the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission under Grant FP7-ICT-2009-5 and in part by the Spanish Government by means of the project ADVICE "Dynamic provisioning of connectivity in high density 5G wireless scenarios" under Grant TEC2015-71329-C2-1-R

Análisis del comportamiento de la dispensación de antidiabéticos y costo per cápita desde la perspectiva de un gestor farmacéutico en Colombia

Contexto: el consumo de medicamentos antidiabéticos ha aumentado mediante el incremento en el número de dispensaciones y el costo asociado a estos consumos. Objetivo: describir los cambios en las terapias farmacológicas y determinar las variaciones en el costo per cápita de medicamentos antidiabéticos en Colombia. Metodología: mediante la observación de una cohorte abierta de población en la que se comenzó la dispensación de medicamentos antidiabéticos en el periodo del 1 de junio del 2015 y el 30 de junio del 2017, con seguimiento hasta mayo del 2021 (dos años), se describieron las características sociodemográficas de la población y se analizaron las variaciones entre el tratamiento inicial y el final. Se realizaron comparaciones por sexo y régimen de afiliación y se utilizó el programa SPSS para el análisis descriptivo. Resultados: la cohorte analizada contó con 11?782 pacientes (56?% hombres), con una mayor concentración de población en el rango de 50 a 74 años (70?%). El costo por paciente encontrado al final del seguimiento fue de $108.271 pesos (colombianos), lo que indica que hubo un aumento considerable en el costo per cápita de$83.214 pesos durante el periodo de análisis. Conclusiones: los costos de tratamiento farmacológico de los pacientes diabéticos generan una alta carga económica al sistema de salud colombiano

A privacy-aware crowd management system for smart cities and smart buildings

Cities are growing at a dizzying pace and they require improved methods to manage crowded areas. Crowd management stands for the decisions and actions taken to supervise and control densely populated spaces and it involves multiple challenges, from recognition and assessment to application of actions tailored to the current situation. To that end, Wi-Fi-based monitoring systems have emerged as a cost-effective solution for the former one. The key challenge that they impose is the requirement to handle large datasets and provide results in near real-time basis. However, traditional big data and event processing approaches have important shortcomings while dealing with crowd management information. In this paper, we describe a novel system architecture for real-time crowd recognition for smart cities and smart buildings that can be easily replicated. The described system proposes a privacy-aware platform that enables the application of artificial intelligence mechanisms to assess crowds' behavior in buildings employing sensed Wi-Fi traces. Furthermore, the present paper shows the implementation of the system in two buildings, an airport and a market, as well as the results of applying a set of classification algorithms to provide crowd management information.This work was supported in part by the Spanish Government (MINECO) by means of the Project Future Internet Enabled Resilient CitiEs (FIERCE) under Grant RTI2018-093475-A-I00, and in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Programme through the European project Federated CPS Digital Innovation Hubs for the Smart Anything Everywhere Initiative (FED4SAE) under Grant 761708

¿Qué son los determinantes sociales de la salud?

Resumen La salud se ha convertido en un punto primordial de debate, tanto a nivel internacional como nacional, así como en la piedra de toque para las instituciones gubernamentales y de diversos organismos internacionales, dirigidos hacia el desarrollo y a evitar las desigualdades en salud entre los países como al interior de los mismos. En dichos debates persiste el enfoque biomédico, que da una visión reducida de la realidad de la salud y enfermedad, al dejar fuera del análisis el contexto en que la vida de las personas se desarrolla, favoreciendo la permanencia de las desigualdades en salud. El enfoque de los determinantes sociales de la salud ha evidenciado la urgente necesidad de retomar las condiciones de vida de las personas para comprender debidamente el proceso de la salud y enfermedad, y brindar así respuestas más adecuadas que mejoren las condiciones de salud de la población y modifiquen las inequidades. Sin embargo, aún se tiene un desconocimiento sobre su concepto y cómo integrar este enfoque en las políticas de salud. Abstract Health has become a key point of discussion both at the international and national levels, as well as in the touchstone for government institutions and various international organizations, directed towards development and to avoid inequalities in health both among countries and inside them. In these discussion the biomedical approach persists, which gives a reduced view of the reality of health and disease, leaving out of the analysis the context in which people’s lives develop, favoring the permanence of inequalities in health. The focus of the Social Determinants of Health has evidenced the urgent need to consider the living conditions of the people to properly understand the health and disease process and thus provide more adequate responses that improve the health conditions of the population and modify the inequities. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about their concept and even more about how to integrate this approach into health policies. &nbsp

¿Qué son los determinantes sociales de la salud?

Resumen La salud se ha convertido en un punto primordial de debate, tanto a nivel internacional como nacional, así como en la piedra de toque para las instituciones gubernamentales y de diversos organismos internacionales, dirigidos hacia el desarrollo y a evitar las desigualdades en salud entre los países como al interior de los mismos. En dichos debates persiste el enfoque biomédico, que da una visión reducida de la realidad de la salud y enfermedad, al dejar fuera del análisis el contexto en que la vida de las personas se desarrolla, favoreciendo la permanencia de las desigualdades en salud. El enfoque de los determinantes sociales de la salud ha evidenciado la urgente necesidad de retomar las condiciones de vida de las personas para comprender debidamente el proceso de la salud y enfermedad, y brindar así respuestas más adecuadas que mejoren las condiciones de salud de la población y modifiquen las inequidades. Sin embargo, aún se tiene un desconocimiento sobre su concepto y cómo integrar este enfoque en las políticas de salud. Abstract Health has become a key point of discussion both at the international and national levels, as well as in the touchstone for government institutions and various international organizations, directed towards development and to avoid inequalities in health both among countries and inside them. In these discussion the biomedical approach persists, which gives a reduced view of the reality of health and disease, leaving out of the analysis the context in which people’s lives develop, favoring the permanence of inequalities in health. The focus of the Social Determinants of Health has evidenced the urgent need to consider the living conditions of the people to properly understand the health and disease process and thus provide more adequate responses that improve the health conditions of the population and modify the inequities. However, there is still a lack of knowledge about their concept and even more about how to integrate this approach into health policies. &nbsp

Managing large amounts of data generated by a Smart City internet of things deployment

The Smart City concept is being developed from a lot of different axes encompassing multiple areas of social and technical sciences. However, something that is common to all these approaches is the central role that the capacity of sharing information has. Hence, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) are seen as key enablers for the transformation of urban regions into Smart Cities. Two of these technologies, namely Internet of Things and Big Data, have a predominant position among them. The capacity to "sense the city" and access all this information and provide added-value services based on knowledge derived from it are critical to achieving the Smart City vision. This paper reports on the specification and implementation of a software platform enabling the management and exposure of the large amount of information that is continuously generated by the IoT deployment in the city of Santander.This work has been partially funded by the research project SmartSantander, under FP7- ICT-2009-5 of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community. The authors would also like to express their gratitude to the Spanish government for the funding in the following project: "Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future", COSAIF (TEC2012-38574-C02-01)

Large-scale mobile sensing enabled internet-of-things testbed for smart city services

Smart cities are one of the key application domains for the Internet-of-Things paradigm. Extending the Web into the physical realm of a city, by means of the widespread deployment of spatially distributed Internet-addressable devices with sensing and/or actuation capabilities, allows improving efficiency of city services. Vehicles moving around the city become excellent probes when the objective is to gather information across the city in a cost effective manner. Public transportation fleets, taxis, or vehicles such as waste collection trucks cover most of the urban areas with a limited number of vehicles. This paper presents the deployment of a large scale Internet-of-Things testbed that has been carried out in the city of Santander. It extends previous descriptions by providing a specification of one of the unique features of the testbed, namely, the devices that have been installed on 140 buses, taxis, and vans that every day drive around the city. Besides the physical characteristics of the devices installed and the lessons learnt during the deployment, the paper introduces the three mobile sensing network strategies used for distributing the data gathered. Finally, the paper sketches some of smart city services which might be provided using the information coming from the mobile IoT devices.This work has been partially funded by Research Project SmartSantander, under FP7-ICT-2009-5 of the 7th Framework Programme of the European Community. The authors would like to acknowledge the collaboration with the rest of partners within the consortium leading to the results presented in this paper.The authors would also like to express their gratitude to the Spanish government for the funding in the following project: “Connectivity as a Service: Access for the Internet of the Future,” COSAIF (TEC2012-38574-C02- 01)

Mercado de datos IoT sustentado en tecnologías Blockchain

El despliegue de infraestructuras de la Internet de las Cosas ha supuesto una revolución en la adquisición de información del contexto alrededor de los servicios provistos para y por los usuarios. Sin embargo, las soluciones globales más comunes se basan en metodologías propietarias que no implementan mecanismos que acrediten y garanticen el origen y futuro uso confiable de los datos generados y compartidos. Estas, además, excluyen al usuario como fuente de los datos de contexto de la cadena de valor. Este artículo describe y evalúa un ecosistema de gestión de datos IoT basado en Blockchain, que garantiza al proveedor el control sobre quién, cómo y cuándo hace uso de los datos, al tiempo que permite explotar nuevos modelos de negocio y monetización de los mismos.Este trabajo ha sido realizado en el marco del proyecto FIERCE "Future Internet Enabled Resilient CitiEs" perteneciente al Programa Estatal de I+D+i Orientada a los Retos de la Sociedad (RTI2018-093475-A-I00