B2S4B: A Platform for Smart City Business Processes Management and Adaptation

This paper deals with the design and development of the B2S4B platform that bridges Smart City ecosystems (the business world) and city sensors: the IoT and citizens (the IoT and the social worlds). This platform allows the reconfiguration of Smart City business processes (BPs) based on the detected events and knowledge derived over time. In support of this, the concept of Smart City Observers (SCO) was introduced which acts as a man-in-a-middle between BPs, and the IoT and the social worlds by defining what should be monitored and how the respective observations could impact these worlds. In its turn, B2S4B analyses the detected events from all active SCOs and based on the predefined knowledge allows the synchronized reconfiguration of a BP and of the city sensors that feed the SCOs with accurate information. This paper proposes an approach for manual and automatic adaptation of Smart City BPs based on events reported by SCOs. In order to demonstrate the usability and effectiveness of the proposed approach this paper illustrates how this platform could be used in a case study on Smart City traffic control

How to Restrict Web 2.0 Applications Use in the Workplace? Example of Google+ Hangouts

© 2016 IEEE. This paper presents a system that ensures the compliance of Web 2.0 applications use with organizations\u27 policies. These applications are usually perceived as distractions more than productivity booster. To this end, guidelines are provided as restrictions that capture how, when, and where to use Web 2.0 applications\u27 social actions (e.g., chat, post, and comment). The restrictions are formalized and then implemented into an application deployed on top of Google+ Hangouts. Examples of restrictions that the application enforces at run-time, include maximum number of messages to exchange and authorized time slots for exchanging messages

On capturing and quantifying social qualities in business processes

© 2016 IEEE. It is largely known that objective criteria like profit and market-share drive the decisions of engineering business processes. However, there are cases where subjective criteria (e.g., reputation and attitude) need also to be taken into account, which will definitely impact the objective criteria. These cases fall into examining business processes from a social perspective. This paper discusses the mechanisms of making a business process\u27s components (task, person, and machine) exhibit certain social qualities like selfishness and goodwill. This exposure is dependent on three criteria that are resource availability, transactional properties of tasks, and profit. An online system demonstrates the use of these criteria when capturing and quantifying the social qualities in business processes

Social web services management

As part of our ongoing work on social-intensive Web services, also referred to as social Web services, different types of networks that connect them together are developed. These networks include collaboration, substitution, and competition, and permit the addressing of specific issues related to Web service use such as composition, discovery, and high-availability. Social is embraced because of the similarities of situations that Web services run into at run time with situations that people experience daily. Indeed, Web services compete, collaborate, and substitute. This is typical to what people do. This chapter sheds light on some criteria that support Web service selection of a certain network to sign up over another. These criteria are driven by the security means that each network deploys to ensure the safety and privacy of its members from potential attacks. When a Web service signs up in a network, it becomes exposed to both the authority of the network and the existing members in the network as well. These two can check and alter the Web service\u27s credentials, which may jeopardize its reputation and correctness levels

Tracking users\u27 actions over social media: Application to Facebook

© 2016 IEEE. This paper presents a system for tracking the execution of social actions over Facebook along with the execution of business tasks. Putting social actions like post and comment together, results into developing social flows. Webhooks is used to listen to the changes happening over Facebook pages. Keywords: Business Task, Facebook, Social Action, and Social Flow

Re-engineering of Smart City\u27s Business Processes Based on Social Networks and Internet of Things

This paper reports our experience with developing a Business-2-Social (B2S) platform that provides necessary support to all this platform\u27s constituents, namely business processes, social media (e.g., social network), and Internet of Things (IoT). This platform is exemplified with smart cities whose successful management requires a complete integration of IoT and social media capabilities into the business processes implementing user services. To ensure a successful integration, social actions, that a smart city would allow citizens execute, are analyzed in terms of impact of these smart city\u27s business processes. Reactions to these actions are tracked and then analyzed to improve user services

Adapting selection strategies of executors of business processes based on profit and social qualities

© 2017 Elsevier Ltd This paper discusses an approach for selecting executors of business processes based on profit and social-quality criteria. The approach relies on a trusted authority to ensure the transparency and fairness of the selection. Executors are known as slaves and exhibit certain social qualities (e.g., selfishness and goodwill) in response to the requests of owners of business processes known as masters. A set of simulation tests are carried out to demonstrate the feasibility of the approach in term of what selection strategy is best, i.e., profit-based, social quality-based, or both

Social web services management

As part of our ongoing work on social-intensive Web services, also referred to as social Web services, different types of networks that connect them together are developed. These networks include collaboration, substitution, and competition, and permit the addressing of specific issues related to Web service use such as composition, discovery, and high-availability. Social is embraced because of the similarities of situations that Web services run into at run time with situations that people experience daily. Indeed, Web services compete, collaborate, and substitute. This is typical to what people do. This chapter sheds light on some criteria that support Web service selection of a certain network to sign up over another. These criteria are driven by the security means that each network deploys to ensure the safety and privacy of its members from potential attacks. When a Web service signs up in a network, it becomes exposed to both the authority of the network and the existing members in the network as well. These two can check and alter the Web service\u27s credentials, which may jeopardize its reputation and correctness levels

Norm-based and commitment-driven agentification of the Internet of Things

There are no doubts that the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has conquered the ICT industry to the extent that many governments and organizations are already rolling out many anywhere,anytime online services that IoT sustains. However, like any emerging and disruptive technology, multiple obstacles are slowing down IoT practical adoption including the passive nature and privacy invasion of things. This paper examines how to empower things with necessary capabilities that would make them proactive and responsive. This means things can, for instance reach out to collaborative peers, (un)form dynamic communities when necessary, avoid malicious peers, and be “questioned” for their actions. To achieve such empowerment, this paper presents an approach for agentifying things using norms along with commitments that operationalize these norms. Both norms and commitments are specialized into social (i.e., application independent) and business (i.e., application dependent), respectively. Being proactive, things could violate commitments at run-time, which needs to be detected through monitoring. In this paper, thing agentification is illustrated with a case study about missing children and demonstrated with a testbed that uses different IoT-related technologies such as Eclipse Mosquitto broker and Message Queuing Telemetry Transport protocol. Some experiments conducted upon this testbed are also discussed

Initiating and tracking social actions to adapt and improve smart city\u27s business processes

© 2017 IEEE. This paper presents Business-2-Social (B2S) platform. It is a Web-based application that provides connection of a smart city\u27s components, namely business processes, Internet of Things (IoT), and social networks. B2S collects and processes IoT-related data in preparation of supporting the decision makers. Based on IoT data and defined guidelines, B2S automatically initiates social actions and collects citizens\u27 feedback. The objective is to drive the interactions between smart cities and citizens so that necessary services are offered