Does project portfolio management approach fit smart city management?

Nowadays public administrations have to face many challenges related to Smart City initiatives and must coordinate these projects executing effective Smart City strategies with the adoption of an efficient portfolio management framework. Except for a few aspects, literature about this topic is scarce so this study was carried out as an attempt to evaluate the feasibility of adopting PMI’s Project Portfolio Management methodology to handle Smart City initiatives. A specific survey investigating how much Smart City projects mirror portfolio dynamics has been submitted to experts across the globe and the collected results have been analysed according to our possibilities. Results are twofold: on the one hand, it appears that the Project Portfolio Management approach could be beneficial for managing Smart City project sets, on the other hand, the Project Portfolio Management seems to be a very suitable tool when the Smart City project portfolio is heavily influenced by external stakeholders

Detection and prevention of Denial-of-Service in cloud-based smart grid

Smart Grid (SG), components with historical set of security challenges, becomes more vulnerable because Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has its own share of problems while Cloud infrastructure adds yet another unpredicted layer of threats. Scalability and availability, which are strong aspects of the cloud platform making it attractive to users, also attracts security threats for the same reasons. The malware installed on single host offers very limited scope compared to attack magnitude that compromised Cloud platform can offer. Therefore, the strongest aspect of Cloud itself becomes a nightmare in Cloud-Based SG. A breach in such a delicate system can cause severe consequences including interruption of electricity, equipment damage, data breach, complete blackouts, or even life-threatening consequences. We mimic Denial-of-Service (DoS) attacks to demonstrate interruption of electricity in SG with open-source solution to co-simulate power and communication systems

Extending OFDM Symbols to Reduce Power Consumption

Existing communication standards have limited capabilities to adapt to low SNR environments or to exploit low data rate requirements in a power efficient way. Existing techniques like e.g. control coding do not reduce the computational load when reducing data rates. In this paper, we introduce differential Extended Symbol OFDM (differential ES-OFDM) which is based on the transmission of symbols that are extended in time. This way it can operate at low SNR. Using differential BPSK modulation, approximately 2.1 dB SNR improvement per doubling of the symbol length (halving the bitrate) is obtained. The sensitivity to frequency offsets of differential ES-OFDM is basically independent of symbol extension. Extending symbols reduces the computational load on the radio modem within the transmitter which is essential to reduce overall power consumption. The differential ES-OFDM receiver architecture also offers opportunities to reduce power consumption

Beyond a Usage Threshold, NO Form of Energy is Sustainable or Green We are Running Out of “Garbage Dump Space ” To Dissipate “Used ” Energy Into

To date, almost all of the research on green/sustainable energy has been concerned with procurement of ever increasing amounts of energy for human consumption. This singular focus only on the supply-side of the problem completely overlooks what happens to the energy after we use it; thereby implicitly making the dangerously wrong assumption that the earth has unlimited capacity to dissipate energy. In this position paper, we remind the reader that the earth can dissipate only a finite amount of even the greenest of the green forms of energy, while still maintaining thermal equilibria that have evolved over eons. Any long term sustainable energy solution therefore must include a curbing/limiting/controlling our demand for (and consequently, our consumption of) energy. Otherwise, even if and even after all the green-house-effects are fully eliminated, the earth still might eventually experience unnaturally large temperature increase because the amount of energy dissipated is too large

Simulating Vehicle Movement and Multi-Hop Connectivity from Basic Safety Messages

The Basic Safety Message (BSM) is a standardized communication packet that is sent every tenth of a second between connected vehicles using Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC). BSMs contain data about the sending vehicle's state, such as speed, location, and the status of the turn signal. Currently, many BSM datasets are available through the connected vehicle testbeds of U.S. Department of Transportation from all over the country. However, without a proper visualization tool, it is not possible to analyze or visually get an overview of the spatio-temporal distribution of the data. With this goal, a web application has been developed which can ingest a raw BSM dataset and display a time-based simulation of vehicle movement. The simulation also displays multi-hop vehicular network connectivity over DSRC. This paper gives details about the application, including an explanation of the multi-hop partitioning algorithm used to classify the vehicles into separate network partitions. A performance analysis for the simulation is included, in which it is suggested that calculating a connectivity matrix with the multi-hop partitioning algorithm is computationally expensive for large number of vehicles

Economical Analysis of Flexibility in Micro Grids

International audienceAs energy demand increased and production means diversified, conventional approaches of looking into distri- bution grids need to evolve. The Smart Grid paradigm introduces new possibilities of real-time market sensing and interaction models between producers and consumers. In particular, by understanding the types of con- sumers and their potential willingness to adapt their energy demand with price incentives, innovative pricing strategies in the Smart Grid are expected to lead to better production management, profit maximization and end consumers satisfaction levels. In this work we propose a novel framework and a simulation scenario of a global energy network with heterogeneous types of producers and consumers from which different types of behaviors and interactions can be studied

Making smart cities smarter using artificial intelligence techniques for smarter mobility

The term Smart City is tipically applied to urban and metropolitan areas where Information and Communication Technologies provide ways to enable social, cultural and urban development, improving social and political capacities and/or efficiency. In this paper we will show the potential of Artificial Intelligence techniques for augmenting ICT solutions to both increase the cities competiveness but also the active participation of citizens in those processes, making Smart Cities smarter. As example we will describe the usage of Artificial Intellgence techniques to provide Smart Mobility in the context of the SUPERHUB Project.Postprint (published version