Tracks and sessions

Organizers:

• Wu Xiao-Jun, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China
• Andrea Molinari, University of Trento, Italy

Big data and Open data are very important topics of smart city. Big data is a collection of data sets so large and complex that it becomes difficult to process using on-hand database management tools. There are many challenges of big data including acquisition, storage, analysis, processing, search, and visualization, etc. Big data and Open Data has the ambition and the potential to transform society, government, economy and the way we live, work, travel, vote, or even take care of ourselves. The explosive growth in data, the opening of data, large-scale data exchange platforms, data provided by the Internet of Things and social network and increasing computational power creates new opportunities for innovating government. Many initiatives have been addressed to the creation of open data sets and big data from governments, public organizations and industry. The demand for big data and open data processing has been increasing recently in the fields of smart city. Public administrations increasingly develop and use big data and open data solutions for data exchange, including sensor data and vast amounts of data from a multitude of sources. These applications are then used to open up governments and improve the transparency of their actions, engage with the various stakeholders, create value from these huge amounts of data, and contribute to decisions and policymaking. It even supports the development of social and business innovations and services, where big data and open data can be combined with other business. This brings social and technical challenges and questions related to information quality, theoretical and technical considerations about implementation, implications for policies and procedures, and a relevant change in the relationships between stakeholders. Finally, in order to allow an easier data integration with data and contents generated by public entities, the process must be governed at cultural, organizational, and technological levels, etc.

This track event aims at gathering experts from all aspects of big data and open data in order to focus on practices and methods of big data and open data sharing and use, transparency, accountability, open government data, methods for improving big data and open data value and data analytics. These developments have resulted in a repertoire of instruments and tools to gather, process, analyze, visualize and make use of the different types and huge amount of data.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:

• Mathematics of big data
• Methodology of big data processing
• Tools of big data processing
• Machine learning for analysis of big data
• Big data clustering
• Big data knowledge discovery
• Deep learning for big data
• Optimization for big data
• Big data visualization
• Optimization for smart city
• Case studies of big data processing in smart city
• Governance of open data
• Opportunities and challenges of open data on society and/or public administration
• Open data and innovation
• The role of public, private and societal stakeholders in open data sharing and use
• Data processing, analyzing and visualization
• Policies and principles for high quality open data
• Cloud computing and open data in government
• Transparency and accountability of open data
• Infrastructure and enterprise architecture planning for open data deployment
• Internet of Things from an open data perspective
• Open data and rights management
• Open data, measures and metrics
• Open data visualization
• Scalable open data technologies platforms and tools
• Modelling the cost of open data
• Software as service (SaaS), utility computing, shared services
• Metadata, ontologies and semantic approaches to open linked data management
• Predictive and pattern modeling on open linked data
• Natural language processing and entity extraction in linked open data

Besides the specific topics listed above, the research results related to other challenging and emerging issues and needs for smart cities will be arranged, presented and discussed in other technical sessions. They will cover new developments in theory, analytics, numerical simulation and modeling, experimentation, advanced deployment and case studies, results of laboratory or field operational tests, creative endeavors as well as special educational for smart city curricula.

Suitable topics for the general tracks include but are not limited to:

• Smart city theory, modeling and simulation
• Intelligent infrastructure
• Sensors and actuators
• Smart economy development
• Smart emergency management
• Smart environment and policy development
• Environmental capital reduction
• Digital city and smart growth
• Smart buildings
• Smart city implementation
• Smart city for special needs
• Smart manufacturing and logistics
• Environmental monitoring technologies

Organizers:

• Agusti Solanas, Rovira i Virgili University, Spain
• Giandomenico Nollo, University of Trento, Italy
• Li Liu, Affiliated Hospital of Jiangnan Univ, Wuxi, China

The provision of health services is globally changing to take better care of an increasingly demanding population. Smart health is gaining special attention because it has an enormous potential to improve and augment quality and access to healthcare services and citizens wellbeing. Applying information and communication technologies (ICT) to healthcare processes has led to the appearance of the fields of electronic health (e-Health) and mobile health (m-Health). Especially in the context of smart cities and context-aware environments like smart building and smart hospitals, the concept of smart health (s-Health) has been recently proposed as a step forward in the provision of healthcare services within intelligent environments. However, innovative technology per se is not sufficient to deal with healthcare needs and demand. The introduction of technology should be part of the innovation process and in order to constitute a real social value, should take into account sustainability and impact on the existing scenery.

This track event aims at gathering experts from all aspects of health and well-being, in order to disseminate and analyze recent advances in the context of smart environments (smart health) and to identify the challenges and opportunities that this research area will face in the years to come.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:

• Sensors for e-health, m-health and s-health
• Ethical, privacy & security issues in s-health
• Wearable devices for m-health and s-health
• Solutions for ambient assisted living
• Robotics and s-health symbiotic approaches
• Clinical intelligence
• Digitization of health data
• Market impact and analysis of s-Health
• Real experiences with s-health applications
• Standardization for s-health
• Wireless body area networks for s-health
• Health interoperability in smart environment
• Cloud computing for s-health
• New forms of relationships for s-health
• User center design for s-health
• Evaluation and appraisal of health technology
• Public-private collaboration for s-health

Organizers:

• Roberto Perdisci, Georgia Tech, USA
• Zonghua Zhang, Telecom Lille, France
• Andrea Lanzi, University of Milano, Italy

Modern cities are becoming increasingly connected. The growing number of interactions and communications between smart meters, surveillance devices, intelligent recognition systems, vehicle-to-vehicle communications, traffic management technologies, and a large variety of sensors exposes the need for solutions that provide both security and privacy guaranties for our citizens.

This track event aims at bringing together engineers, students, and researchers from both academia and industry to share their experiences and results on security, privacy, and trust solutions for smart cities.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:

• Security and privacy of cyber-physical systems
• Security and privacy of critical infrastructure
• Secure sensor communications
• Security and privacy for smart meters
• Secure and trustworthy mobile crowd sensing
• Security and privacy of mobile users
• Secure and privacy preserving data storage and analysis
• Privacy issues in video surveillance solutions
• Security, trust, and privacy for vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications
• Authentication systems for the Internet of Things (IoT)
• Security and privacy for IoT devices

Organizers:

• Carlo Alberto Nucci, University of Bologna, Italy
• Davide Brunelli, University of Trento, Italy

Public administrations, enterprises and citizens are increasingly going green and are looking to Smart Cities enabling technologies as the way to reduce and to manage the energy consumption and to become more environmentally responsible. Future Energy Systems will play a key role in achieving this goal and will pose novel research challenges in the development of integrated aspects related to generation, storage, distribution and efficient use of energy sources.

This track event aims at gathering experts from all aspects of smart energy systems, in order to create an opportunity for discussion and cross-fertilization.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:
 

• Distributed and pervasive sensing, monitoring and control
• Energy management for smart city services
• Monitoring of faults in microgrids
• Location of disturbance/fault in microgrids
• Estimation and observation of grid state
• Monitoring of power quality
• Sensors and network of sensors for smart microgrids
• Smart metering technology
• Energy management
• Power flow optimization
• Demand response
• Design of distribution networks with high share of distributed energy
• resources and unpredictable loads
• Smart grid components and power electronic design
• Security and privacy in smart grids
• New roles, services and business models for distribution systems
• Regulatory framework and interaction with transmission system operation

Organizers:

• Marcus Wigan, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
• Marco Pistore, FBK Trento, Italy

Public administrations are under increasing economic and social pressure to innovate and modernize their business processes. In this context, a smart government is achieved when the public administration pursues efficient collaborations across government entities and stronger citizen participation in governmental business in order to achieve transparent access to information and high quality citizen services. Moving towards a smart government unavoidably creates political and organizational restructuring tensions: there is a need to increase awareness of these tensions and to change citizen expectations, which are in general outrunning the capacity to evolve of organizations and political processes. While the goal is set, there is still the need to study the best practices, processes, models, methods, technologies and tools to achieve it.

This track event aims at bringing together researchers, public administration executives and policy makers, and practitioners from academia and industry to discuss, share experiences and exchange ideas on smart government and, more in general, in innovation and modernization of public administration business processes.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:

• Maturity and quality models for smart government
• Public sector innovation and modernization
• Education for management and operation of the smart city
• Impacts of smarter citizen rising expectations
• Triple- and quadruple helix, public-private-(-people)-partnerships
• Citizen participation and engagement
• Citizen-centric and citizen-directed government
• Engaging the elderly
• Supporting, engaging and including the disconnected and the digitally disempowered
• Platforms for smart government
• Interoperability among public administrations
• Anywhere, anytime access to data
• On-line public services
• Personalized information and services
• Planning for resilience in an increasingly realtime information-dependent city
• Handling emergency responses
• Balancing privacy and efficiency as technological change progresses
• Regulatory responses to massive information changes
• Governance changes due to increasing disintermediation of management and operation

Organizers:

• Qing Shen, University of Washington, USA
• Christoph Sommer, University of Paderborn, Germany
• Annapaola Marconi, FBK Trento, Italy

A massive growth in population, together with urban transformation and a trend towards mega cities, bring about both greater and more challenges for smart transportation for smart cities. New and more integrated modes of transportation, entirely novel concepts of ownership for vehicles, and a trend towards cooperative automated driving fuse with rising demands of high livability in smart cities that offer safe, affordable, and sustainable transportation in old and new markets alike. Within a Smart City, mobility has to be intended as the way in which citizens access and explore the city: it implies being aware of the available mobility resources (public transports, parking facilities, bike lanes, ride sharing) and of their real value (in term of cost, time, carbon emissions, health), but also having an easy and efficient access to city services and events as well as a simple and unified access to transport payments. Supporting such an inter-connected, heterogeneous and dynamic transport system requires the adoption of innovative and sophisticated solutions from traffic management centers and city administration to control the mobility resources and policies and to proactively enhance them.

This track event aims at gathering experts from all aspects of smart transportation to discuss, share experiences and exchange ideas on this research area.

Suitable topics for this track event include, but are not limited to:

• Congestion management and cooperative mobility applications
• Parking and electric vehicle charging applications
• Traffic information systems, traffic management, tolling, and routing applications
• Public transport, traveler information, walking, biking, and multimodal integration applications
• Carpooling, car sharing, on-demand taxi applications
• Mobility as a service and single ticketing solutions
• Commercial vehicles, freight, and cargo management applications
• Vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication modes
• Short range, cellular, and M2M technologies
• Simulation and modeling of smart transportation
• Environmental, pollution, and noise protection aspects of smart transportation
• Participation and gamification Techniques for Carbon-low/Energy-efficient Mobility Behaviors
• Synergies and Data Sharing for Smart Transportation
• Safety Systems and Safety Aspects of Smart Transportation
• Security and Privacy of Smart Transportation
• Projects and Field Operational Tests

Organizers:

• Monjur Mourshed, Cardiff University, UK
• Antonio Bucchiarone, Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Italy

The proliferation of distributed energy resources (DER) in distribution networks makes it necessary for a demand-responsive smart energy grid in districts and neighbourhoods, to reduce: T&D loss, peak demand and congestion.

Matching spatially and temporally-dynamic demand with intermittent DER generation requires the understanding of energy use behaviour and end-user flexibility, with potential for the application of inference, forecasting and information modelling techniques, which can be coupled with distributed control, and optimization – enabling self-organization in the form of collectively provided services, and facilitating the exchange, diffusion and adoption of virtuous energy conservation practices.

Another potential is collective adaptation, as a way to guide users to change their behaviour and optimize overall energy use.

Session topics:

• Business models
• Crowdsourcing for energy management
• Models and algorithms for collective action and adaptation
• Decentralized and incentives-based decision making
• Forecasting generation and consumption
• Inferencing and adapting user behaviour
• Information modelling for distributed energy management
• Integration of distributed energy-related services
• Interactions between heating and electricity grid
• Monitoring low - and medium - voltage grid

Organizers:

• Federico Viani, University of Trento, Italy
• Alessandro Polo, University of Trento, Italy

The rapid diffusion of wireless systems and sensors is the result of the increasing need of advanced services supporting the daily activities and tasks of the smart cities users and citizens. The successful development of such wireless integrated solutions is strongly related to the parallel improvement of smart methods and procedures able to provide simple and direct outputs even if the monitored process is very complex.

This special session focuses the attention on the recent and future methodologies developed on top of wireless platforms to support the decisions of the end‐users in the management and optimization of complex tasks, starting from the acquisition of heterogeneous data coming from distributed wireless devices and smart sensors.

Session topics include but are not limited to:

• Distributed wireless sensing and actuation control methods for wireless sensor networks
• Smart algorithms for wireless decision support systems
• Efficient methods for real‐time processing of data streams from distributed wireless networks
• Optimization strategies and self‐adaptive learning methods applied to wireless systems

The application fields of interest include all those scenarios where the advanced analysis of multiple data and the understanding of complex processes are required. Some representative examples related to the improvement of the citizens quality of life are listed in the following:

• Emergency management and resources allocation
• Localization and tracking for location‐aware services
• Museum monitoring and control
• Road security and traffic management
• Smart lighting applications
• Energy saving in smart grids
• Smart building applications
• Healthcare and well‐being
• Precision agriculture

Organizers:

• Roberta Cuel, University of Trento, Italy
• Loris Gaio, University of Trento, Italy

The stream salience of smart cities research, implementations, and deployments is continuously rising. Smart cities solutions and models dramatically impact on the way in which people and organizations share information and do business, and come with a multitude of social, legal, technical and economic challenges.

For those reasons, we are soliciting submission of contributions conveying new developments in management, economics, and organization science, reporting advances in theories and empirical analysis related to the topics of smart cities.
This special session aims to bring together researchers and practitioners from various disciplines and industries who are interested in the scientific and economical challenges of smart cities.

Relevant topics include but are not limited to:

• Social implication of platforms, tools, and technologies supporting smart city theories, models, and simulations
• Human capital and smart economy development
• Safety and security systems in relation with governmental policies and human being
• Smart health and their social effects
• Gamifying smart cities
• Human smart cities
• Smart environment and policy development for companies and industries
• Network externalities and social credit in garnering data
• Citizen engagement and smart governance and their social and economic impacts
• Social based innovation on smart mobility and transportation
• Business models and smart cities
• Business impacts of smart grid
• Human environmental capital reduction
• Digital city and smart growth and managerial impacts
• Smart buildings and cost reductions
• Smart city implementation and managerial effects
• Human capital and pedestrian and bicyclist behaviors
• Mobility systems and business models
• Quality assurance mechanisms and metrics

Organizers:

• Stefano Rinaldi, University of Brescia, Italy
• Claire Penny, IBM, Ireland

The integration of infrastructures of a city, such as energy and water distribution grids or transportation system, with communication network for the optimization of the services offered to the citizenship, forms the so-called smart city. The integration of technologies at home level, such as home automation systems or lighting control systems, each of them characterized by a certain level of intelligence forms the so-called smart building.

Technologies, like Internet of Thing (IoT) will provide possible solutions to make easier the interconnection of different sub-systems, for monitoring and control applications in smart building.

The area covered by the special session ranges from research works in the area of technologies and system for sustainable energy management and improvement of quality of life of citizens.

Session topics:

• Internet of Things (IoT)
• Cyber physical system
• Energy management system
• Cloud-based computing for control system
• Demand side management for energy control
• Active user interaction
• Ambient assisted living
• Cognitive energy management
• Building information modelling
• Big data
• Smart sensors
• Home automation system
• Heat ventilation and air conditioning system

Organizers:

• Leonardo Lizzi, University of Nice-Sophia Antipolis, France
• Michele Magno, Integrated Systems Laboratory (IIS), Zurich, Switzerland

Cities around the world are harnessing the power of Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Machine-to-Machine (M2M) technologies to build smart cities. Usually, wireless communication technologies for IoT and M2M applications are over cellular and WiFi networks. However, out of the 50 billion predicted nodes to be connected to the Internet by 2020 only around 10% are going to use cellular technology. In fact, as cities are becoming digital, the billions of sensors placed in everyday objects and assets require much more cost effective, low power, low throughput, and long range access network. This special session focuses on low-power wireless networks and sensors devices for Smart Cities. The objective is to present recent solutions, which can enable battery powered sensors connectivity and simple backend infrastructure, due to their low-power characteristics.

Session topics:

• Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN)
• Wake-Up Radios (WUR)
• Energy efficient antennas and RF front-ends
• Low power design of sensor devices
• Rectennas and energy harvesting systems
• Energy efficient communication protocols
• Wearable and mobiles sensors and systems
• Architectures for energy-neutral sensing systems
• Resilient energy-neutral sensors
• IoT – Internet of (low-power) Things

Organizers:

• Stefano Bracco, University of Genova, Italy
• Federico Delfino, University of Genova, Italy

The special session will be focused on the role of smart campuses as a key transition between the cities of today and the smart cities of the future. Smart campuses represent cutting-edge facilities where innovative smart and sustainable energy projects can be easily achieved, more than in other contexts where a plurality of public and private entities operate.

The installation of smart devices and technologies, smart microgrids and smart buildings, and demonstration pilot facilities in smart campuses can raise the awareness of citizens about important issues relative to the eco-friendly energy scenarios of the future; furthermore, smart campuses can attract the interest of companies to develop and test new technologies for smart cities.

The main goal of the special session is that of presenting a series of successful cases of smart campuses focused on the implementation of innovative and sustainable projects guiding the community toward a smarter future.

Session topics:

• Low voltage smart microgrids
• Smart buildings within smart microgrids
• E-mobility in smart campuses
• Efficient systems of users (SEU) and closed distribution systems (SDC)
• Demonstration pilot facilities for smart microgrid technologies
• District heating networks
• Regulatory framework on electricity and gas tariffs for microgrids
• New roles and business models for smart campuses
• LCOE (Levelized Cost of Electricity) evaluation
• Simulation and optimization models for smart energy systems
• Smart waste management
• LCA analyses and CO2 mitigation
• Cyber security aspects for smart energy systems
• ICT architecture for energy and big data management in smart grids

Organizers:

• Massimo Macucci, University of Pisa, Italy
• Bernardo Tellini, University of Pisa, Italy

There is a constant increase of the fraction of the total population living and working in urban areas, which leads to a growing complexity of transportation, in particular in terms of the exchange among different carriers.

This special session focuses on technological solutions for the smart organization of passenger and freight exchange in railway systems. Examples can be tracking the position of a passenger and providing him/her customized information about transfers, or knowing the exact nature of all the goods on a train, in order to automatically enforce speed limitations or to simply route the goods to their final destination.

Smart handling of rail transportation relies also on an advanced infrastructure capable of supporting new functionalities in terms of safety, communication, and proactive maintenance.

Session topics:

• Rail safety technology
• Rail monitoring systems
• Passenger and freight routing
• Railway logistics and infrastructure
• Rail communications and networking

Organizers:

• G.C.Alex Peng, University of Sheffield, UK
• Miguel Nunes, Sun Yat-sen University, China

It is increasingly recognized by governors, academics and industrial practitioners that, although the smart city concept is driven by advanced information and communication technologies, its success can be highly influenced by a wide range of socio-technical factors and challenges. However, current studies on smart cities focused mainly on technical and engineering aspects.

In contrast, there is a significant scarcity of studies to explore potential social, cultural, political, managerial, organizational, and human aspects related to the design, development, deployment and usage of smart city applications and services.

This special session thus aims to serve as a forum to bridge this knowledge gap, as well as to offer a socio-technical angle to complement the very technical view in the current smart city agenda.

Main topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Public trust, user acceptance, user behaviors, citizen needs, and citizen engagement in smart city services
• Emerging economic, business and service models in smart cities
• Technochange management in smart cities
• Data integration, archiving and management issues in smart cities
• Cultural, institutional, and any other socio-technical challenges affecting the development and deployment of smart solutions in the context of specific cities

In addition, submissions to this special session can consider smart city as a whole or focus on a specific area in the city, e.g. transportation, healthcare, energy, safety, etc.