36 research outputs found
Blockchain based Decentralized Applications: Technology Review and Development Guidelines
Blockchain or Distributed Ledger Technology is a disruptive technology that
provides the infrastructure for developing decentralized applications enabling
the implementation of novel business models even in traditionally centralized
domains. In the last years it has drawn high interest from the academic
community, technology developers and startups thus lots of solutions have been
developed to address blockchain technology limitations and the requirements of
applications software engineering. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive
overview of DLT solutions analyzing the addressed challenges, provided
solutions and their usage for developing decentralized applications. Our study
reviews over 100 blockchain papers and startup initiatives from which we
construct a 3-tier based architecture for decentralized applications and we use
it to systematically classify the technology solutions. Protocol and Network
Tier solutions address the digital assets registration, transactions, data
structure, and privacy and business rules implementation and the creation of
peer-to-peer networks, ledger replication, and consensus-based state
validation. Scaling Tier solutions address the scalability problems in terms of
storage size, transaction throughput, and computational capability. Finally,
Federated Tier aggregates integrative solutions across multiple blockchain
applications deployments. The paper closes with a discussion on challenges and
opportunities for developing decentralized applications by providing a
multi-step guideline for decentralizing the design of traditional systems and
implementing decentralized applications.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables, 121 reference
Social Factors in P2P Energy Trading Using Hedonic Games
Lately, the energy communities have gained a lot of attention as they have
the potential to significantly contribute to the resilience and flexibility of
the energy system, facilitating widespread integration of intermittent
renewable energy sources. Within these communities the prosumers can engage in
peer-to-peer trading, fostering local collaborations and increasing awareness
about energy usage and flexible consumption. However, even under these
favorable conditions, prosumer engagement levels remain low, requiring trading
mechanisms that are aligned with their social values and expectations. In this
paper, we introduce an innovative hedonic game coordination and cooperation
model for P2P energy trading among prosumers which considers the social
relationships within an energy community to create energy coalitions and
facilitate energy transactions among them. We defined a heuristic that
optimizes the prosumers coalitions, considering their social and energy price
preferences and balancing the energy demand and supply within the community. We
integrated the proposed hedonic game model into a state-of-the-art
blockchain-based P2P energy flexibility market and evaluated its performance
within an energy community of prosumers. The evaluation results on a
blockchain-based P2P energy flexibility market show the effectiveness in
considering social factors when creating coalitions, increasing the total
amount of energy transacted in a market session by 5% compared with other game
theory-based solutions. Finally, it shows the importance of the social
dimensions of P2P energy transactions, the positive social dynamics in the
energy community increasing the amount of energy transacted by more than 10%
while contributing to a more balanced energy demand and supply within the
community.Comment: to be submitted to journa
Smart Grid Management using Blockchain: Future Scenarios and Challenges
Decentralized management and coordination of energy systems are emerging
trends facilitated by the uptake of the Internet of Things and Blockchain
offering new opportunities for more secure, resilient, and efficient energy
distribution. Even though the use of distributed ledger technology in the
energy domain is promising, the development of decentralized smart grid
management solutions is in the early stages. In this paper, we define a layered
architecture of a blockchain-based smart grid management platform featuring
energy data metering and tamper-proof registration, business enforcement via
smart contracts, and Oracle-based integration of high computational services
supporting the implementation of future grid management scenarios. Three such
scenarios are discussed from the perspective of their implementation using the
proposed blockchain platform and associated challenges: peer to peer energy
trading, decentralized management, and aggregation of energy flexibility and
operation of community oriented Virtual Power Plants.Comment: Accepted and presented at: 19th RoEduNet Conference: Networking in
Education and Research, December 11-12, 202
Expert System for Nutrition Care Process of Older Adults
This paper presents an expert system for a nutrition care process tailored for the specific needs of elders. Dietary knowledge is defined by nutritionists and encoded as Nutrition Care Process Ontology, and then used as underlining base and standardized model for the nutrition care planning. An inference engine is developed on top of the ontology, providing semantic reasoning infrastructure and mechanisms for evaluating the rules defined for assessing short and long term elders’ self-feeding behaviours, to identify unhealthy dietary patterns and detect the early instauration of malnutrition. Our expert system provides personalized intervention plans covering nutrition education, diet prescription and food ordering adapted to the older adult’s specific nutritional needs, health conditions and food preferences. In-lab evaluation results are presented proving the usefulness and quality of the expert system as well as the computational efficiency, coupling and cohesion of the defined ontology
A service-based system for malnutrition prevention and self-management
Malnutrition is considered one of the root causes for the occurrence of other diseases. It is particularly common in the ageing population, where it requires more efficient handling and management to enable longer home independent living. However, to achieve this, a number of related challenges need to be overcome, especially those related to management of health and disease let alone other social and logistical barriers. This paper presents the design of a distributed system that enables homecare management in the context of self-feeding and malnutrition prevention through balanced nutritional intake. The design employs a service-based system that incorporates a number of services including monitoring of activities, nutritional reasoning for assessing feeding habits, diet recommendation for food planning, and marketplace invocation for automating food shopping to meet dietary requirements. The solution is deployed in a small pilot in 12 elder adult houses that, in early results, demonstrates its holistic user-centred scalable approach for malnutrition self-management
Emerging Sensors Techniques and Technologies for Intelligent Environments
The trending techniques for managing indoor and outdoor intelligent environments rely heavily on data acquisition through a diversity of heterogeneous Internet of Things (IoT) devices and sensors [...
Virtual Power Plant Optimization in Smart Grids: A Narrative Review
Virtual power plants (VPPs) are promising solutions to address the decarbonization and energy efficiency goals in the smart energy grid. They assume the coordination of local energy resources such as energy generation, storage, and consumption. They are used to tackle problems brought by the stochastic nature of renewable energy, lack of energy storage devices, or insufficient local energy flexibility on the demand side. VPP modeling, management, and optimization are open to research problems that should consider, on one side, the local constraints in the operation of the energy resources and power flows and the energy grid’s sustainability objectives on the other side. There are multiple goals to create a VPP, such as to deliver energy services on a market or to the grid operator, to operate a microgrid in autonomy decoupled from the main grid, or to sustain local energy communities. In this paper, we present the results of a narrative review carried out on the domain of VPP optimization for the local energy grid integration. We have defined a search strategy that considers highly rated international databases (i.e., Elsevier, IEEE, and MDPI) in a six-year timeframe and applied objective inclusion/exclusion criteria for selecting articles and publications for the review; 95 articles have been analyzed and classified according to their objectives and solutions proposed for optimizing VPP integration in smart grids. The results of the study show that VPP concepts and applications are well addressed in the research literature, however, there is still work to be done on: engaging prosumers and citizens in such a virtual organization, developing heuristics to consider a wider range of local and global constraints and non-energy vectors, and to decentralize and make transparent the services delivery and financial settlement towards community members. This study can help researchers to understand the current directions for VPP integration in smart grids. As a next step we plan to further analyze the open research directions related to this problem and target the development of innovative solutions to allow the integration of multi-energy assets and management of cross energy sector services in energy communities
THE MODEL OF HISTORICAL COST AND FAIR VALUE IN THE CONTEXT OF NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL REGULATIONS
The concept of a true and fair view is representative for the submission of the entities’ financial statements, considering that all other principles are derived and shall be subject to it. Along with the entry into force of Directive IV of the EEC, the financial statements should give a true and fair view on enterprises, and historical cost has been officially considered the main basis of assessment in accounting, the other bases being considered derivative thereof. This step oriented and opened the process of accounting normalization to the capital market, giving priority to the accounting mechanisms based on common law, against the rigorous and exhaustive ones. Our research takes into consideration a quantitative research, by analyzing the reevaluation alternatives of the listed Romanian entities on the Bucharest Stock Exchange, components of the BET index.historical cost, fair value, tangible assets
A Review of Blockchain Technology Applications in Ambient Assisted Living
The adoption of remote assisted care was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This type of system acquires data from various sensors, runs analytics to understand people’s activities, behavior, and living problems, and disseminates information with healthcare stakeholders to support timely follow-up and intervention. Blockchain technology may offer good technical solutions for tackling Internet of Things monitoring, data management, interventions, and privacy concerns in ambient assisted living applications. Even though the integration of blockchain technology with assisted care is still at the beginning, it has the potential to change the health and care processes through a secure transfer of patient data, better integration of care services, or by increasing coordination and awareness across the continuum of care. The motivation of this paper is to systematically review and organize these elements according to the main problems addressed. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies conducted that address the solutions for integrating blockchain technology with ambient assisted living systems. To conduct the review, we have followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) methodology with clear criteria for including and excluding papers, allowing the reader to effortlessly gain insights into the current state-of-the-art research in the field. The results highlight the advantages and open issues that would require increased attention from the research community in the coming years. As for directions for further research, we have identified data sharing and integration of care paths with blockchain, storage, and transactional costs, personalization of data disclosure paths, interoperability with legacy care systems, legal issues, and digital rights management