Single-Board-Computer Clusters for Cloudlet Computing in Internet of Things

The number of connected sensors and devices is expected to increase to billions in the near future. However, centralised cloud-computing data centres present various challenges to meet the requirements inherent to Internet of Things (IoT) workloads, such as low latency, high throughput and bandwidth constraints. Edge computing is becoming the standard computing paradigm for latency-sensitive real-time IoT workloads, since it addresses the aforementioned limitations related to centralised cloud-computing models. Such a paradigm relies on bringing computation close to the source of data, which presents serious operational challenges for large-scale cloud-computing providers. In this work, we present an architecture composed of low-cost Single-Board-Computer clusters near to data sources, and centralised cloud-computing data centres. The proposed cost-efficient model may be employed as an alternative to fog computing to meet real-time IoT workload requirements while keeping scalability. We include an extensive empirical analysis to assess the suitability of single-board-computer clusters as cost-effective edge-computing micro data centres. Additionally, we compare the proposed architecture with traditional cloudlet and cloud architectures, and evaluate them through extensive simulation. We finally show that acquisition costs can be drastically reduced while keeping performance levels in data-intensive IoT use cases.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad TIN2017-82113-C2-1-RMinisterio de Economía y Competitividad RTI2018-098062-A-I00European Union’s Horizon 2020 No. 754489Science Foundation Ireland grant 13/RC/209

Service-Oriented Device Integration for Ubiquitous Ambient Assisted Living Environments

As a result of the increment of population in countries of Europe, a lot of efforts from European Authorities are coming from. In our research we want to bring forward a suite of developments related to build a ubiquitous AAL (Ambient Assisted Living) environment. We consider that recent approaches are based on ad-hoc technologies so its application is in this context isolated just in one domain of application. Our approach addresses to a reliable services platform for heterogeneous devices integration. On this basis we want to consider as well, the underlying benefits that a Service-oriented platform is giving to us in our Ambient Assisted Living Applications.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TSI2006-13390-C02-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-2141Ministerio de Industria, Turismo y Comercio TSI-020400-2008-11

Ontology-Driven Approach for KPI Meta-modelling, Selection and Reasoning

A key challenge in current Business Analytics (BA) is the selection of suitable indicators for business objectives. This requires the exploration of business data through data-driven approaches, while modelling business strategies together with domain experts in order to represent domain knowledge. In particular, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) allow human experts to properly model ambiguous enterprise goals by means of quantitative variables with numeric ranges and clear thresholds. Besides business-related domains, the usefulness of KPIs has been shown in multiple domains, such as: Education, Healthcare and Agriculture. However, finding accurate KPIs for a given strategic goal still remains a complex task, specially due to the discrepancy between domain assumptions and data facts. In this regard, the semantic web emerges as a powerful technology for knowledge representation and data modeling through explicit representation formats and standards such as RDF(S) and OWL. By using this technology, the semantic annotation of indicators of business objectives would enrich the strategic model obtained. With this motivation, an ontology-driven approach is proposed to formally conceptualize essential elements of indicators, covering: performance, results, measures, goals and relationships of a given business strategy. In this way, all the data involved in the selection and analysis of KPIs are then integrated and stored in common repositories, hence enabling sophisticated querying and reasoning for semantic validation. The proposed semantic model is evaluated on a real-world case study on water management. A series of data analysis and reasoning tasks are conducted to show how the ontological model is able to detect semantic conflicts in actual correlations of selected indicators.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Las comunidades vegetales del bosque de coníferas altimontano en el macizo del Tancítaro (Michoacán, México)

Antecedentes y Objetivos: El límite superior del bosque es un ecosistema que alberga comunidades herbáceas y forestales con singular presencia de endemismos y con una función relevante en la captación, recarga y transporte de agua, lo que los define como nodos de provisión de bienes y servicios ambientales. Lo anterior es de particular significado en las montañas intertropicales por ser las que resguardan un banco de germoplasma oriundo significativamente elevado. Ese es el caso del Pico del Tancítaro y volcanes circundantes, región de estudio comprendida entre 2600 y 3800 m de altitud en Michoacán, México. Este trabajo tuvo como objetivo central definir y caracterizar la diversidad florística y fitocenótica, así como las pautas de distribución de las asociaciones vegetales a lo largo del gradiente altitudinal. Métodos: Se realizaron 35 inventarios siguiendo la metodología fitosociológica; en ellos se registraron las especies, su cobertura y los atributos físico-geográficos del sitio muestreado. La información de campo fue corroborada en gabinete; para asegurar los aspectos de identificación florística se utilizó preferentemente la “Flora del Bajío y de regiones adyacentes”. Los datos fueron analizados utilizando técnicas de agrupamiento multivariadas para poder definir las asociaciones vegetales. Resultados clave: Los 35 inventarios se consideraron como base para armar las tablas de vegetación que soportan las siguientes asociaciones vegetales: Gaultherio myrsinoidis-Pinetum hartwegii, Polysticho speciosissimae-Abietetum religiosae y Sibthorpio repentis-Abietetum religiosae; así como otras de rango menor. Para cada asociación se abordaron cuestiones de estructura, composición, ecología, distribución y relación con los pisos bioclimáticos y con otras asociaciones próximas. Conclusiones: Las combinaciones florísticas propias de las asociaciones reflejan las variaciones ambientales que se suceden en el gradiente altitudinal, incluyendo las causadas por perturbación natural y/o antrópica. Dichas asociaciones permiten tipificar la heterogeneidad fitocenótica del bosque estudiado y su papel como proveedoras de servicios ambientales y de biodiversidad.Background and Aims: The timberline occurs as an ecosystem harboring unique forest and grassland types comprising outstanding endemic species. These vegetation types, furthermore, are the centers of capturing, recharging and transporting water so that these are regarded as provider´s nodes of environmental services. This is even more significant in intertropical mountains since these harbor large genetic reservoirs. This is the case of the Pico del Tancítaro and surrounding volcanoes, a region between 2600 and 3800 m elevation, in Michoacán, Mexico. The present study aimed to define and characterize the floristic and phytocenotic diversity, as well as recognize distribution patterns of the plant associations along the elevational gradient. Methods: Thirty five inventories were carried out following the phytosociological approach. At each inventory, a list of species, their coverage, and physical and geographical attributes of the site were compiled. Field information was later verified in the laboratory to ensure species identification; “Flora del Bajío y regiones adyacentes” was preferably consulted. Data were further analyzed via multivariate techniques in order to define plant associations. Key results: The 35 inventories were considered as a basis to assemble the vegetation tables that support three plant associations: Gaultherio myrsinoidis-Pinetum hartwegii, Polysticho speciosissimae-Abietetum religiosae and Sibthorpio repentis-Abietetum religiosae; as well as other units of lower rank. For each one, issues, such as structure, composition, ecology, distribution and relationship with bioclimatic belts and other nearby associations were addressed. Conclusions: The floristic combinations of the associations reflect environmental variations that occur along the altitudinal gradient, including those caused by natural and/or anthropic disturbance. These associations permit a clear classification of the phytocenotic heterogeneity in the forest studied, and confirm its role of environmental service providers and biodiversity

An Orientation Service for Dependent People Based on an Open Service Architecture

This article describes a service architecture for ambient assisted liv ing and in particular an orientation navigation service in open places for persons with memory problems such as those patients suffering from Alzheimer’s in its early stages. The service has the following characteristics: one-day system autonomy; self-adjusting interfaces for simple interaction with patients, based on behavioural patterns to predict routes and destinations and to detect lost situations; easy browsing through simple spoken commands and use of photo graphs for reorientation, and independence of GISs (Geographic Information Systems) to reduce costs and increase accessibility. Initial testing results of the destination prediction algorithm are very positive. This system is integrated in a global e-health/e-care home service architecture platform (OSGi) that enables remote management of services and devices and seamless integration with other home service domains.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TSI2006-13390-C02-0

Extended sensations on interactive telecommunication

Although computer science and telecommunications have evolved from the 90’s to nowadays, the way people communicate each other through electronic devices has stuck since the appearance of the videoconference. The audiovisual interaction seems enough, but we think the sensation of presence gets higher when we allow the person who we are talking to, taking part in our environment using and enriching it. In that way, the interaction is improved with new sensations which come from outside of our device. In this article, we propose a communication service which provides not only videoconference, but manages the smart environment where the interlocutor of the communication is, allowing him to access to any device connected through domotic and/or wireless network. The application is developed under the OSGi open specification and it almost doesn’t imply any cost increase over the bandwidth used during communication. Once explaining the technical foundations, its diverse applications in ubiquitous meetings and on-line games will be commented

Experiencias en entornos de Computación Ubicua mediante Arquitecturas Orientadas a Servicios

El desarrollo del proyecto Domoweb, cuyo objetivo principal, es la creación de un entorno domótico gestionado vía Web, nos ha permitido acumular experiencia sobre las arquitecturas orientadas a servicio, concretamente sobre la plataforma basada en la especificación de OSGi e implementada con software de fuentes abiertas. En este artículo, comentamos las decisiones tomadas durante el desarrollo del proyecto y ampliamos la visión inicial hacia ámbitos de computación ubicua más genéricos que el hogar digital. Además, señalamos la necesidad de integrar en la arquitectura propuesta, la gestión de los Servicios Web, ampliando de ese modo las capacidades del entorno y su funcionalidad

Bluejay: A Cross-Tooling Audit Framework For Agile Software Teams

Agile software teams are expected to follow a number of specific Team Practices (TPs) during each iteration, such as estimating the effort ("points") required to complete user stories and coordinating the management of the codebase with the delivery of features. For software engineering instructors trying to teach such TPs to student teams, manually auditing teams if teams are following the TPs and improving over time is tedious, time-consuming and error-prone. It is even more difficult when those TPs involve two or more tools. For example, starting work on a feature in a project-management tool such as Pivotal Tracker should usually be followed relatively quickly by the creation of a feature branch on GitHub. Merging a feature branch on GitHub should usually be followed relatively quickly by deploying the new feature to a staging server for customer feedback. Few systems are designed specifically to audit such TPs, and existing ones, as far as we know, are limited to a single specific tool. We present Bluejay, an open-source extensible platform that uses the APIs of multiple tools to collect raw data, synthesize it into TP measurements, and present dashboards to audit the TPs. A key insight in Bluejay's design is that TPs can be expressed in terminology similar to that used for modeling and auditing Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance. Bluejay therefore builds on mature tools used in that ecosystem and adapts them for describing, auditing, and reporting on TPs. Bluejay currently consumes data from five different widely-used development tools, and can be customized by connecting it to any service with a REST API. Video showcase available at governify.io/showcase/blueja

Smart Environment Vectorization : An Approach to Learning of User Lighting Preferences

The automation of smart environment systems is one of the main goals of smart home researching. This paper focus on learning user lighting preference, considering a working field like a standard office. A review of the smart environment and devices setup is done, showing a real configuration for test purposes. Suitable learning machine techniques are exposed in order to learn these preferences, and suggest the actions the smart environment should execute to satisfy the user preferences. Learning machine techniques proposed are fed with a database, so a proposal for the vectorization of data is described and analyzed.Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia TSI2006-13390-C02-02Junta de Andalucía TIC-214