ERCIM

Number 98

July 2014

NEWS

www.ercim.eu

Special theme

Smart
Cities
Also in this issue:
Keynote:
Smart Cities
by Eberhard van der Laan,
Mayor of Amsterdam
Research and Innovation:
How to Detect Suspect
Behaviour at Sea

Editorial Information

ERCIM News is the magazine of ERCIM. Published quarterly, it reports on joint actions of the ERCIM partners, and
aims to reflect the contribution made by ERCIM to the
European Community in Information Technology and
Applied Mathematics. Through short articles and news
items, it provides a forum for the exchange of information
between the institutes and also with the wider scientific community. This issue has a circulation of about 6,500 printed
copies and is also available online.
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ISSN 0926-4981
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Next issue
October 2014, Special theme: Software Quality

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Keynote

Smart Cities

As a mayor of a European capital city, which is ranked reasonably high in most European rankings and comparisons, I
will try to paint a picture of what a Smart City means to me
and what it means for our city. As well as the benefits of
Smart Cities, I also see a few risks that sometimes go unrecognized. But first a bit of history, because I strongly believe
that the DNA of the city will never change and every development in Amsterdam is based on its (long and prosperous)
history.
One could argue that Amsterdam was the first Smart City in
the world; not with the start of our Smart City program in
2009, but as early as the end of the 16th century when
Amsterdam began to grow in importance as a trading city.
One of the key reasons that Amsterdam became one of the
richest cities of that time, with over 50% of all the sea-vessels in the world departing and arriving at its harbour, was
the availability of data on trade and cargo. In a physical
square of 400 by 400 meters all the information on the cargo,
destination and ownership of all these vessels was gathered.
This enabled tradesman to trade cargo that hadnt even been
offloaded from the vessel yet and to compare one anothers
products. The rich data enabled the start of the first stock
exchange and the opportunity for everybody to invest in
trade, generating investments never seen before. Financial
newspapers shared the information with everybody who
wanted it. Essentially, it was a data driven economy with
Open Data avant la lettre.
The sharing of information provided a whole new dimension: normal citizens of Amsterdam could take part in the
citys welfare and economic growth. This is why Amsterdam
is not a city of bishops and kings but of citizens and merchants, without castles and cathedrals. In Dutch art from the
17th century ordinary people were painted; Vermeer's
Milkmaid now displayed in the national museum is a great
example.
Back to the now: what is the DNA of Amsterdam and how
does it apply to our approach? In this context I would state
that it is about: openness, entrepreneurship, collaboration
and inclusion.
Smart Cities are about openness: open data, open infrastructures and open innovation are at the very heart of the development of our Smart City. Like the data on cargo and the
access to the canals, every Amsterdammer should have
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Photo: S.van der Torren

Smart Cities are a bit like football: Every city has a team
working on a Smart City and wants to be the Smartest City
in the world, and at the start of every season every supporter
thinks his or her team will be the global champion. Various
ranking systems exist, comparing cities on indicators ranging
from energy consumption per capita to life expectancy; from
Wifi coverage to crime-rates. In other words: Smart Cities
are about everything and therefore about nothing. To be
frank: I do not really believe all this Smart City marketing. I
do believe that innovation and technology gives us the
opportunity to improve the quality of life of the citizens and
make our cities more competitive.
Eberhard van der Laan, Mayor of Amsterdam

access to our infrastructure. The sharing of information

drives innovation because individuals and business can build
on jointly gathered knowledge.
The second subject is entrepreneurship. New technologies
will lead to new business opportunities, new business models
and new types of companies; companies that are based on
communities, sharing, or new products and services. This
includes companies that have business models that will lead
to reduced, rather than increased, energy consumption or car
miles - companies such as Car2Go, Spaces or energy service
companies.
The third subject, Collaboration, is of course important on
a European scale, for example within Eurocities or the Smart
Cities and European programmes, but it is particularly
important that strong collaborations occur between companies, knowledge institutes, government(s) and citizens on a
local level. Everybody is a stakeholder in the development
of the city and all stakeholders are equally important, which
means there are hundreds of thousands of stakeholders.
This brings me to the last point: inclusivity - a city for all
Amsterdammers and its visitors. All Amsterdammers
should have the opportunity to be part of the city we are
living in.
I also see many new challenges - challenges relating to privacy, the ability for everybody to benefit from these new
technologies, and the rapidly changing business which will
lead to a large shift in labour. I expect companies, governments and scientists to take responsibility for these challenges and find solutions to address the downside of these
smart developments.
Having said this I would like to conclude on a simple note: A
city is as great as the people living within it. This will still
hold true in a smart city: it is all about the people who live,
work and play there. As a Mayor I will make sure that our
citizens are always ranked first. This will of course make us
the Johan Cruyff of the worlds Smart Cities.
Eberhard van der Laan
3

Contents

SPECIAL tHEME
This special theme section Smart Cities has been coordinated by Ioannis
Askoxylakis, ICS-FORTH, Greece, and Theo Tryfonas, Faculty of Engineering,
University of Bristol, UK.
2

Editorial Information

KEYNOtE
3 Smart Cities
by Eberhard van der Laan, Mayor of
Amsterdam

Introduction to the Special Theme

8 Future Cities and Smart Technologies:
A Landscape of Ambition and Caution
by Theo Tryfonas and Ioannis Askoxylakis
9 Urban Future Outline - A Roadmap on Research for Livable Cities
by Martina Ziefle, Christoph Schneider, Dirk Valle, Armin Schnettler,
Karl-Heinz Krempels and Matthias Jarke

JOINt ERCIM ACtIONS

6 ERCIM Fellowship Programme
6 ERCIM 25 Years Celebration

10 Urban Civics - Democratizing Urban Data for Healthy Smart Cities

by Sara Hachem, Valrie Issarny, Alexey Pozdnukhov and Rajiv Bhatia
12 AppCivist - A Service-oriented Software Platform for Social Activism
by James Holston, Rodrigo Ochigame and Animesh Pathak

6 W3C and the Web of Things

7 COMPOSE - Converging
the Internet of Services with the
Internet of Things

13 CityLab@Inria - A Lab on Smart Cities fostering

Environmental and Social Sustainability
by Valrie Issarny
14 A Framework for Improving the Multi-Device User Experience in
Smart Cities
by Luca Frosini and Fabio Patern
16 Moving Towards Interoperable Internet-of-Things Deployments in
Smart Cities
by Gregor Schiele, John Soldatos and Nathalie Mitton
17 Realizing Smart City Scenarios with the ALMANAC and DIMMER
Platforms
by Mark Vinkovits, Marco Jahn and Ren Reiners
19 Internet of Things Applications for Neighbourhood Embedded Devices
by Joan Fons, Daniel Gaston, Christophe Joubert and Miguel Montesinos
20 Internet of Things: A Challenge for Software Engineering
by Charles Consel and Milan Kabac
22 Semantic Management of Moving Objects in Smart Cities
by Sergio Ilarri, Dragan Stojanovic and Cyril Ray
24 Flexible Access to Services in Smart Cities: Let SHERLOCK Advise
Modern Citizens
by Roberto Yus, Eduardo Mena, Sergio Ilarri and Arantza Illarramendi
25 Quantifying the Benefits of Taxi Trips in New York through
Shareability Networks
by Paolo Santi, Giovanni Resta and Carlo Ratti
26 Integrated Electric Vehicles Sharing and Pooling Mobility Solutions
for Smart Cities
by Marie-Laure Watrinet, Grald Arnould, Hedi Ayed and Djamel
Khadraoui
28 A Carpooling Recommendation System in the Smartphone Age
by Marcell Fehr and Bertalan Forstner
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Joint ERCIM Actions

29 A Smart Parking Campus: An Example of Integrating Different

Parking Sensing Solutions into a Single Scalable System
by Enrique Moguel, Miguel ngel Preciado and Juan Carlos Preciado
31 Stochastic Travel Planning for Unreliable Public Transportation
Systems
by Tim Nonner, Adi Botea, Marco Laumanns
RESEARCH AND INNOVAtION
32 A Quantitative Approach to the Design and Analysis of Collective
Adaptive Systems for Smart Cities
by Maurice ter Beek, Luca Bortolussi, Vincenzo Ciancia, Stefania Gnesi,
Jane Hillston, Diego Latella and Mieke Massink
33 Query-Driven Smart Grid City Management
by Stamatis Karnouskos
34 U-Sense, A Cooperative Sensing System for Monitoring Air Quality
in Urban Areas
by Giuseppe Anastasi, Paolo Bruschi and Francesco Marcelloni
36 Monitoring and Controlling Energy-positive Public Lighting:
The E+grid System
by Balzs Csand Csji, Borbla Hy, Andrs Kovcs, Gianfranco
Pedone, Tibor Rvsz, and Jzsef Vncza
37 Demand-Side Management in Smart Micro-Grids: An Optimization
Perspective
by Talbi El-Ghazali

This section features news about

research activities
and innovative developments from
European research institutes
52 Supporting the Design Process of
Networked Control Systems
by Alexander Hanzlik and Erwin
Kristen
54 How to Detect Suspect Behaviour
at Sea
by Anders Holst
56 A Breakthrough for Balanced
Graph Partitioning
by Fatemeh Rahimian

EVENtS, IN BRIEf
39 Cyber Physical Systems give Life to the Internet of Energy
by Giampaolo Fiorentino and Antonello Corsi
40 When Smart Cities meet Big Data
by Vincenzo Gulisano, Magnus Almgren and Marina Papatriantafilou
41 cItyAM: Managing Big Urban Data for Analyzing and Modelling
Cities
by Alessandro Bozzon, Claudia Hauff and Geert-Jan Houben
43 Urban-Scale Quantitative Visual Analysis
by Josef Sivic and Alexei A. Efros
45 Mobile Augmented Reality Applications for Smart Cities
by Mathieu Razafimahazo, Nabil Layada, Pierre Genevs and Thibaud
Michel
46 Monitoring Peoples Behaviour using Video Analysis and Trajectory
Clustering
by Francois Bremond, Vania Bogorny, Luis Patino, Serhan Cosar, Guido
Pusiol and Giuseppe Donatiello
47 Trusted Cells: Ensuring Privacy for the Citizens of Smart Cities
by Nicolas Anciaux, Philippe Bonnet, Luc Bouganim and Philippe
Pucheral
49 Smart City Operation Center: A Platform to Optimize Urban Service
Rendering
by Filippos Gouidis, Theodore Patkos and Giorgos Flouris
51 Building Smarter Cities through ICT-driven Co-Innovation
by Christophe Ponsard, Robert Viseur and Jean-Christophe Deprez
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

57 Conference and Workshop

Announcements
59 International Innovation Award
for Martin Kersten
59 European Project on Precision
Farming
59 Roberto Scopigno receives the
Eurographics Distinguished
Career Award 2014

Joint ERCIM Actions

W3C and the Web

of things

ERCIM Alain Bensoussan

fellowship Programme
ERCIM offers fellowships for PhD holders from all over the world.
Topics cover most disciplines in Computer Science, Information
Technology, and Applied Mathematics.
Fellowships are of 12-month duration, spent in one ERCIM member
institute.
Conditions
Applicants must:
have obtained a PhD degree during the last 8 years (prior to the application deadline) or be in the last year of the thesis work with an outstanding academic record
be fluent in English
be discharged or get deferment from military service
have completed the PhD before starting the grant (a proof will be
requested).
Application deadlines
30 April and 30 September
More information and application form:
http://fellowship.ercim.eu/

W3C held a workshop on the Web of Things

in Berlin on 25-26 June 2014, hosted by
Siemens. The Web of Things is expected to
have broad and sweeping economic and
societal impact. Open standards will be critical to enabling exponential growth of the
kind we experienced with the early days of
the Web.
Until now, the focus has been on the devices
and communications protocols. There is a
growing awareness that the business opportunities will be centered on the associated
services, moreover, the current situation is
one of fragmentation with products being
developed in isolation due to a plethora of
IoT protocols and a lack of a shared
approach to services.
The workshop examined the opportunities
for open Web standards for service platforms in the network edge (e.g. home gateways) and the cloud, along with the challenges for security, privacy and the integration with the Web of data. A workshop
report is now in preparation. This workshop
was supported by the EU project Compose .
Links:
Compose project:
http://www.compose-project.eu/
WoT workshop:
http://www.w3.org/2014/02/wot/

ERCIM 25 Years Celebration

The 25th ERCIM anniversary and the ERCIMfall meetings will be held
at the CNR Campus in Pisa on 23-24 October 2014.
On the occasion of ERCIMs 25th anniversary, a special session and
panel discussion will be held on 23 October in the afternoon in the auditorium of the CNR Campus. Speakers and representatives from research,
industry, the European Commission, and the ERCIM community will be
invited to present their views on research and future developments in
information and communication science and technology.
For more information, please contact:
Adriana Lazzaroni, CNR, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

COMPOSE - Converging
the Internet of Services
with the Internet of things
COMPOSE (Collaborative Open Market to Place Objects
at your Service) will create an ecosystem for unleashing
the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) via an easy
transformation to an Internet of Services (IoS). The
technology developed by the project will enable the
creation of base services, composite services, and
applications stemming from and operating on smart
objects.
COMPOSE aims at enabling new services that can seamlessly integrate real and virtual worlds through the convergence of the Internet of Services (IoS) with the Internet of
Things. COMPOSE will achieve this through the provisioning of an open and scalable marketplace infrastructure,
in which smart objects are associated to services that can be
combined, managed, and integrated in a standardised way to
easily and quickly build innovative applications. The project
will develop novel approaches for virtualising smart objects
into services and for managing their interactions. This will
include solutions for managing knowledge derivation, secure
and privacy- preserving data aggregation and distribution,
dynamic service composition, advertising, discovering, provisioning, and monitoring.
COMPOSE is expected to give birth to a new business
ecosystem, building on the convergence of the IoS with the
IoT and the Internet of Content (IoC). The COMPOSE marketplace will allow SMEs and innovators to introduce new
IoT-enabled services and applications to the market in a short
time and with limited upfront investment. At the same time,
major ICT players, particularly cloud service providers and
telecommunications companies, will be able to reposition
themselves within a new IoT- enabled value chain.
Technical Approach
The vision of the COMPOSE project is to advance the state
of the art by integrating the IoT and the IoC with the IoS
through an open marketplace, in which data from Internetconnected objects can be easily published, shared, and integrated into services and applications. The marketplace will
provide all the necessary technological enablers covering
both delivery and management aspects of objects, services,
and their integration:
Object virtualization to enabling the creation of standardized service objects
Interaction virtualization - abstract heterogeneity while
offering several interaction paradigms
Knowledge aggregation to create information from data
Discovery and advertisement of semantically-enriched
objects and services
Data Management to handle massive amounts and diversity of data/metadata
Ad hoc creation, composition, and maintenance of service
objects and services
Security, heterogeneity, scalability, and resiliency, incorporated throughout the layers
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Expected Impact
COMPOSE strives for a strong impact on a developing
market by lowering barriers to develop, select, combine, and
use IoT-based standardized value added services. This will
be achieved by providing a complete ecosystem, and having
it adopted by enterprises, SMEs, government-related bodies,
and individual developers and end-users.
We hope that opening the door to this realm for smaller entities will lead to higher innovation. COMPOSE expects to aid
by fostering a developers' community and advocating an
open source/interfaces
Use-Cases
COMPOSE design, development, and validation will be
based on innovative use cases highlighting different aspects
of the platform:
Smart Shopping Spaces: this use cases will pilot COMPOSE in shopping environments, focusing on the dynamic composition and delivery of services starting from products available in shops.
Smart City (Barcelona): Ample amount and diversity of
sensors are deployed at a Barcelona district under the
supervision of a COMPOSE partner. Along with
Barcelona's OpenData, COMPOSE intends to showcase
life in a smart city by creating a group of city services for
the citizens.
Smart Territory (Trentino): With the collaboration of
regional network providers, the tourism board, and meteorological data providers, COMPOSE will explore innovative services for tourists. This pilot aims to enhance the
tourist experience by exploiting COMPOSE technologies
for the creation of personalized, social- and environmentally-aware (web and mobile) tourism services and territory monitoring services that leverage the regional networking and environmental infrastructures
Survey on promising IoT Application Domains
The project is currently collecting useful insights about
existing and future exploitation opportunities in the IoT field
for the expected project outcomes. The questionnaire is targeted at industry and technology experts and asks to identify,
on the basis of their experience, the most promising IoT
application domains and then specify them in terms of: (i)
existing market drivers and inhibitors and (ii) success stories
and associated business models. Eventually, with respect to
the outlined context, experts are kindly asked to provide their
insights about the most promising features of the COMPOSE
project. The questionnaire is available on the project web
site.
W3C is a partner of the project through ERCIM EEIG. A task
of W3C is to facilitate standardization and exploitation of the
activities. Fraunhofer FOKUS the project comprises 12 partners from industry and academia as well as standardization
bodies, including the ERCIM member Fraunhofer FOKUS.
Link: http://www.compose-project.eu
Please contact:
Philippe Hoschka, W3C
E-mail [email protected]

Special theme: Smart Cities

Introduction to the Special Theme

future Cities and Smart technologies:

A Landscape of Ambition and Caution
by Theo Tryfonas and Ioannis Askoxylakis
The old Chinese curse of may you live in interesting times has never been more relevant than
in the field of urban development. For some time
now, the global urban population has exceeded
the global rural population. Cities and city
regions have therefore emerged as the only
growth models capable of meeting the increased
demands and strains facing global supply systems, which are seriously affected by population
growth, climate change, globalization and international security issues. Given these constraints,
urban development is becoming a tough challenge.
Smart technologies may play a role in addressing
these issues. From sensor networks to wireless
connectivity and big data analytics to the Internet
of Things, our planners, architects, infrastructure
engineers and facilities managers have the
ability to harness the power of information generated within the boundaries of cities and the
built environment. Transport planners can better
understand the demand for services and passenger behaviour; similarly, energy providers
can tailor their supply to the real needs of their
customers. End users can benefit from personalized and timely service provision that takes into
account the individuals location and situation from way finding to micropayments to finding a
good place to dine. There is enormous potential
to use these technologies to establish more sustainable behaviour: for example, with energy use
monitoring informed by smart meters, personalized transport assisted by e-ticketing and mobile
technology, wireless infrastructure, to name just
a few possibilities.
This capability, however, comes at a significant
cost. Real time monitoring and bulk data collection call for high performance computational
infrastructure, huge storage capacity, wide
reaching connectivity, digital skills and a positive governance attitude. Furthermore, this technology creates the potential for mass surveillance operations by the state as well as global
corporations, triggering grave concerns for individuals privacy. This is a promising yet challenging field that has a significant role to play in
creating a more sustainable urban future.
Technologies deployed and tested across multiple cities provide insights into a future that we

may wish to see, but also give us forewarnings

about the challenges that lie ahead.
This special issue of ERCIM News captures the
state of art of European research and provides an
insight into smart systems and technologies that
are already, or may become in the future, part of
our daily urban lives. Although it is difficult to
provide an exact definition for it so early in its
development, these technological advances contribute fundamentally to a forward-thinking
concept that has been termed Smart City, i.e.,
an urban environment that capitalizes on contemporary information management capabilities, including ICT infrastructure and applications, to improve on the delivery of public services, transport, health, sustainability, the
economy and the overall wellbeing of its residents. A recent report from the Department of
Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in the UK
estimated the emerging global market of Smart
Cities to worth a minimum of $400 billion. As
an emerging domain, however, there are still a
number of uncertainties to be addressed.
With a wide selection of articles from novel networking technologies to digital entrepreneurial
processes, it is clear from this special issue that
no single technology or vendor can deliver the
promises of the Smart City. No amount of sensors or data will offer a solution without purposeful assembly of the right components,
including technology, skills and governance.
This is an important perspective which highlights the need for European policy, system
architecture and systems integration to be
informed by the challenges of understanding
human behaviour, fostering creativity by developing the human capital and ensuring compliance with the data protection framework
through balancing the need for security with
respect for individual rights. What interesting
times, indeed!
Please contact:
Ioannis Askoxylakis
ICS-FORTH, Greece
E-mail: [email protected]
Theo Tryfonas,
Faculty of Engineering, University of Bristol
E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Urban future Outline A Roadmap on Research for Livable Cities

by Martina Ziefle, Christoph Schneider, Dirk Valle, Armin Schnettler, Karl-Heinz Krempels
and Matthias Jarke
Urban Future Outline (UFO), is a project funded by the Excellence Initiative of the German states and
federal governments at RWTH Aachen University (2013-2015). It aims at developing a holistic
approach, in which energy needs, mobility demands, ecological and climatological requirements and
human demands are addressed, against the background of socially responsible technology
development in urban areas.
One of the key challenges for contemporary research is to develop and maintain
livable, sustainable and resilient cities.
For the first time in history, the majority
of the worlds population live in urban
spaces. The complexity of urban areas
necessitates interdisciplinary approaches
to be taken in research and development.
Goods and services have to be available
at short notice. Mobility must be affordable and reliable. Technical infrastructure needs to be easily accessible.
Citizens require appealing living quarters embedded in open spaces with green
and blue infrastructure. Often, these
demands are contradictory, thus
imposing considerable challenges on
urban planners.
UFO is organized in three subprojects:
Future Mobility refers to sustainable
infrastructure; Future Energy tackles
questions regarding energy supply and
the transition to renewable energy production; and the fields of biodiversity
conservation and climate change adaptation are the targets of Future Ecology.
Future Mobility
Mobility is an essential prerequisite for
people participating in social and economic lifes. In light of the peak oil
debate, the EU guidelines for air pollution control and environmental noise
and demographic developments,
mobility concepts must change drastically. Transport systems need to be
highly adaptive to periods of peak usage
(i.e., rush hours) at multiple scales (e.g.,
day-by-day or seasonally). They must
meet a range of community needs
including accessibility, comfort, safety,
sustainability, affordability and environmental justice. Mobility options must be
intermodal, flexible and designed as
door-to-door mobility chains. The
predominantly technology-centered
planning of infrastructural mobility concepts, without integrating citizens into
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: The overall approach and the topics addressed within UFO

the decision making processes, is no

longer viable.
This sub-project combines city and
mobility planning with the technical
possibilities of information and communication, the cognitive and communicative requirements of urban populations, discursive practices, media strategies and gender aspects. The goal is to
develop a multifactorial information
and communication strategy that
involves the social, individual, communicative and cognitive needs of the citizens, as well as technical and urban
planning related aspects of feasibility.

and realization of energy scenarios.

Within the context of environmental
and technical conditions, acceptancerelevant factors (perceived as the benefits and drawbacks) from different
regional contexts are collected, evaluated and modeled to determine their
relationships. The inclusion of social
knowledge is accomplished via three
data sources: the empirical modelling of
cognitive-affective attitudes, the
analysis of opinion-forming processes
on the Internet and an assessment of
environment-related aspects. Potential
decision trade-offs are identified using
conjoint analyses.

Future Energy
This sub-project focuses on energy
turnaround and the interrelation
between the technical, economical, IT,
ecological and social perspectives. Its
aim is to develop a holistic model and a
methodology for the implementation of
sustainable, robust energy systems that
systematically include social factors
(i.e., user perceptions of energy systems) into the identification, planning

The results are integrated into the development of technical, economical and IT
transformation processes. Based on this
modelling, an understanding on the
technical, economical and social perspectives on energy transition are
derived. These results are useful for
politicians and decision makers and
make an important contribution in
developing transparent and adequate
communication policies.
9

Special theme: Smart Cities

Future Ecosystem
Planning, implementing and sustaining
livable urban spaces that pay equal attention to humans, technology and nature is
a task that has not been solved holistically to date. Situations where combined
stressors are acting pose specific challenges for urban development because
the negative effects of superimposed
stresses such as heat, noise and air pollution cannot be easily discerned when
taking a single stressor perspective. This
deficiency is all the more sensitive at certain times, for example summer, when
thermic differences are more extreme
and higher levels of air pollution are
expected due to climate change.
This sub-project aims to (1) consider
combined stress situations in a measurement and model chain, (2) derive combined stress indices and (3) make these
accessible in a virtual environment
(aixCAVE). Apart from the thermic
component, air quality, acoustic perception and user perception are all considered. Which mix of combined stresses
for urban residents inhabiting differently
designed open spaces will be investigated, as will future scenarios. As
opposed to previous approaches to modelling the effects of thermic and actinic
stresses, (4) stresses will be diversified
by user profiles, gender, and age.

Overall, the research design in UFO

aims to make use of the most recent
developments in technology, information sciences and natural sciences. At
the same time, it sought to develop a
feasible solution to integrating the
social, economic and cultural needs
associated with urban development [1].
An integral part of the UFO project,
therefore, is the multi-disciplinary
approach [2] [3]. The consortium consists of nine scholars from RWTH
Aachen University:
Christoph Schneider - Physical
Geography
Martina Ziefle - Communication Science
Dirk Valle - Urban and Transport
Planning
Matthias Jarke - Information Systems
Armin Schnettler - High Voltage
Technology
Eva-Maria Jakobs - Textlinguistics
Carmen Leicht-Scholten - Gender
and Diversity
Janina Fels - Technical Acoustics
Andreas Schffer - Environmental
Biology
Peter Russell - Computer Aided
Architectural Design
Thomas Niehr - German Linguistics
Thorsten Kuhlen - Virtual Reality

References:
[1] C. Schneider, B. Achilles, H.
Merbitz: Urbanity and Urbanization:
An Interdisciplinary Review
Combining Cultural and Physical
Approaches, Land 2014, 3(1), 105130
[2] S.Krengel, T.Falke, A. Schnettler:
Optimization Model for the Energy
Supply in City Quarters, in proc. of
CIRED 2013, Stockholm
[3] S.Himmel, M Ziefle, K. Arning,:
From Living Space to Urban Quarter:
Acceptance of ICT Monitoring
Solutions in an Ageing Society, in M.
Kuroso (ed.), Human-Computer
Interaction, Users and Contexts of Use.
Springer LNCS 8006, pp. 49-58.
Please contact:
Matthias Jarke,
Fraunhofer-FIT, Germany
E-mail:
[email protected]
Martina Ziefle, Christoph Schneider
RWTH Aachen, Germany
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected]

Urban Civics - Democratizing Urban Data

for Healthy Smart Cities
by Sara Hachem, Valrie Issarny, Alexey Pozdnukhov and Rajiv Bhatia
The Urban Civics project brings together a multi-disciplinary, trans-atlantic team of experts working
towards a common goal that citizens and governments collaborate in achieving participatory democracy
in healthy cities.
Technologies that bring together the
emerging visions for smart, connected
and resource-efficient cities, and the revolutions in social media and mobile networking, offer unprecedented opportunities for participatory democracy,
health and sustainability. Early proponents of Smart Cities have advanced the
idea of hyper-connected city information systems as a means of promoting
operational efficiency and natural
resources conservation. However, the
idea of citizen participation in the design
and control of these systems has been
missing. In democratic political sys10

tems, optimization in cities also means

being responsive to the observations,
attitudes and demands of their citizens.
The widespread adoption of social networking and mobile communication, as
well as the Internet-of-Things (IoT), citizen-science and open data, generate
new information resources for understanding the needs and preferences of
citizens from government services.
Information generated via citizen science and crowd sensing sources, are particularly good at reflecting the priorities
and perceptions of citizens. Inclusive

and participatory, smarter cities can

integrate and leverage these diverse
information resources to improve
responsiveness to citizens and improve
the urban quality of life. For example,
environmental conflicts such as air and
noise pollution can be better managed.
Still, supporting participatory information gathering at urban scales, and integrating that sensed data into information
that is relevant to urban governance and
moreover, actionable, remains a major
research issue. The Urban Civics project
tackles this challenge by bringing
together a multi-disciplinary team of
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

experts, so that citizens and governments may work together toward

healthy cities.
In a nutshell, Urban Civics is developing, from the design to prototype
implementation, a middleware solution
that tackles the following research question (Figure 1): How can urban data
sources be leveraged and comprehensively integrated to accurately capture
nuisance issues facing our cities?. We
have specifically concentrated on
addressing the following associated
research challenges:
How can we develop a distributed
system architecture that leverages the
richness of the urban sensors of the
new digital era (featuring IoT, open
data, citizen science, social networking and mobile computing) at large

els? We address this challenge by

building on the assimilation of observations that deal with time-varying
distributions, and take into account
both model and observational errors to
produce the most accurate map of the
monitored phenomenon (e.g., see [3]).
The Urban Civics middleware solution
applies to a variety of environmental
issues that our cities are currently facing.
Indeed, the physical and social sensing
approach implemented by Urban Civics
remains similar across use-cases dedicated to environment monitoring.
Specifically, the approach requires plugging dedicated sensors to provide quantitative data and applications to enable
end-users to provide qualitative data,
both of which are aggregated through
data modelling & assimilation functionalities. The mathematical details vary

tional information can also be automatically extracted from social networks, e.g., if users are attending a
public event at the measurement time.
Once the various inputs are provided,
the data is analyzed and proper city
models (of noise pollution) are generated.
Air quality monitoring, in particular
the tracking of nitrogen dioxide
(which is mostly emitted from vehicles), can be performed by deploying
static sensors throughout a city. Further, since smartphones do not yet
host sensors that can monitor air pollution, end-users can themselves be
equipped with such sensors and can
provide their own qualitative input to
describe air quality at their locations.
Data assimilation for air quality is
already applied in Paris and leveraged
in several cities in France. However,
urban-scale air quality monitoring is
still challenged by the required
deployment of sensors, which is made
much more tractable using Urban
Civics and its diverse urban sensors.
Urban Civics is under active development, as part of larger research initiatives oriented toward Smart Cities that
are being launched by both University of
California, Berkeley, and Inria. The initiatives will promote collaboration
between the two organisations. In parallel, we are working closely with the
city administration to acquire insights on
the broad applicability of Urban Civics.

Figure 1: The role of Urban Civics in urban democracy

scales? Our approach lies in leveraging relevant probabilistic protocols to

overcome the urban scale challenges
together with building upon semantic
Web technologies to aggregate physical and social data sources [1].
How can we ensure citizen participation? Our approach lies in studying
dedicated machine-learning algorithms (e.g., see [2]), to mine leadership and thereby prompt citizen participation, as well as optimizing data
collection strategies through incentive-driven, pro-active citizen engagement and a more informed approach
to crowd-sensing.
How can we assimilate the rich urban
data to develop significant city modERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

depending on the use-case specific phenomenon. As an illustration, we discuss

noise pollution and air quality below:
Noise pollution, i.e., the undesired
sounds that harm ones well being,
come from several sources including
traffic, neighbors and construction
works. Noise can be measured using a
microphone, hosted on sound/noise
level meters which can be deployed
throughout a city. However, whilst
highly accurate, static sensors alone
cannot account for the fine-grained
spatial variations that occur.. Consequently, smartphone microphones can
be exploited as a complementary data
source; end-users describe noise levels through a dedicated application
plugged in with Urban Civics. Addi-

Link:
CityLab@Inria Project Lab on Smart
Cities: http://citylab.Inria.fr
References:
[1] S. Hachem, A. Pathak, V. Issarny:
Service-oriented middleware for largescale mobile participatory sensing,
Pervasive and Mobile Computing, 2014
[2] F. Kling, A. Pozdnoukhov: When a
city tells a story: urban topic analysis,
in proc. of the 20th International
Conference on Advances in Geographic
Information Systems, 2012
[3] A. Tilloy et al.: BLUE-based NO2
data assimilation at urban scale,
Journal of Geophysical Research,
118(4), 2013.
Please contact:
Valerie Issarny,
Inria@Silicon Valley, France, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
11

Special theme: Smart Cities

AppCivist - A Service-oriented Software

Platform for Social Activism
by James Holston, Rodrigo Ochigame, and Animesh Pathak
Anthropologists and ICT researchers from France and USA join forces to enable
social activists to leverage the tools of the digital revolution.
The increased adoption of mobile
devices and social networking mobilizes
citizens to monitor their living environment actively. Ultimately this engagement is likely to prompt governments to
take action. Therefore, the study of
socially-grounded software systems that
are dedicated to making cities both
smarter and more inclusive holds great
potential for cross-domain research
among social scientists and computer
scientists.
In this context, mobile social networking appears as a significant tool to
support social activism within cities.
However, the development of informa-

zens in social issues, which may

increase the impact of social activism.
The AppCivist Vision
AppCivist is a software system being
developed by the Social Apps Lab in
partnership with Inria, France. It provides a platform for democratic
assembly and collective action that lets
users make their own applications,
called Assemblies, with modular components. An underlying premise of the
project is that the development of ICTs
for social activism crucially depends on
the provision of adequate software tools
so that activists can easily assemble
applications matching their needs. From

Figure 1: AppCivist core platform and associated services for social activism.

tion and communication technologies

(ICT) for social activism is still in its
infancy, ranging from the use of email
for internal communication to the Web
and social media for mass communication. In terms of integrated platforms,
there have been a few initial offerings
such as Google Apps for Non Profits.
However, Google Apps is a generic platform for organizations and requires significant customization to meet the needs
of social activists. At the same time, initiatives like the Social Apps Lab at
CITRIS at the University of California,
Berkeley, clearly show the potential of
mobile devices to generate an active,
critical and direct engagement of citi12

a software engineering perspective,

architectural principles like service-orientation, coupled with the latest
advances in distributed computing,
appear as relevant base building blocks.
From the social science perspective,
social activism relies on a number of
key functionalities that may be leveraged and re-used effectively across
applications. Such functionalities
include the following, among others:
Proposing, deliberating, and voting
allow citizens to have meaningful
discussions based on available information, leading to action. While simple plurality-based voting systems
exist, they fail to enable the nuanced

discussion, filtering, consideration,

and consensus-building that is fundamental to both social activism and
democratic citizenship.
Collaborative mapping helps people
crowd-source the creation of custom
maps that display phenomena of their
interest. The Social Apps Lab has
already successfully deployed this
functionality as part of the Dengue
Torpedo project in the favelas of Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil.
Data visualization enables non-specialist users to gather and convert
information quickly into easily-consumable graphics and reports for
wide dissemination.
Mobilizing citizens encourages people to specify what needs to be done
and to get involved. AppCivist helps
users raise issues, propose solutions,
and evaluate proposals. As activism
depends on follow-through, it also
tracks the progress of activities,
allows citizens to collaborate, and
rewards those who participate.
Linkage with media and administration enables activists to report issues
to those in power and to track their
resolution.

These functionalities encourage proposal-making that is more directly democratic and enable people to make better
arguments for their proposals. Making
better arguments is key to advancing
democratic deliberation. At the same
time, the field of social activism brings
unique challenges to service-oriented
computing in particular and to ICT in
general, including the following:
Focus on Usability. Since the users of
AppCivist are not expected to be ICT
experts or digital natives, it is
imperative that the use of the platforms modular functionalities be
intuitive. The same applies to the
administration of plug-and-play and
interdependent individual services.
Cost-sensitivity. The platform should
accommodate the vastly different
budgets of activist organizations.
Consequently, it should carefully
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

consider the use of costly services

such as SMS gateways and incorporate ways to define and manage budgets.
Privacy. Since activist organizations
and their members may have significant security issues, AppCivist must
provide strong guarantees regarding
the privacy of the data and identity of
users.
Accountability. Nevertheless, certain
activities (such as proposing and
deliberating) may require that people
be accountable for their inputs.
Therefore, AppCivist should also
provide strong guarantees for nonrepudiation, where needed.
Inclusiveness. We do not want the use
of AppCivist to lead to exclusion something that can happen, for example, if the platform restricts access to
messaging to those with smartphones. Consequently, the platform
should enable heterogeneity in different dimensions of communication,
such as language, technology, and so
forth.

Next Steps: Enabling Rapid

Integration of ICT in Social Activism
In view of the above, the objective of our
research is to study, from design to prototype implementation, a service-oriented
architecture and supporting platform
aimed at facilitating the assembly of
applications by social activists. Jointly
performed at Inria and the Social Apps
Lab at the University of California,
Berkeley, this research will also involve
close consultation with activists.
As illustrated in Figure 1, the development of the core platform and associated
services for social activism will include
algorithms and protocols for filtering
and voting, data visualization, assembly
of modular components, real-time
multi-platform communication between
activists and among the general public,
mobile-based crowd-sourcing/sensing,
and dynamic task-allocation and management among participants. Further,
the interplay between mobile and cloud
computing entails assessing both cost
and social effectiveness.

Links:
Social Apps Lab at CITRIS:
http://socialappslab.com/
CityLab@Inria Project Lab on Smart
Cities: http://citylab.inria.fr/
References:
[1] J Holston: Insurgent Citizenship:
Disjunctions of Democracy and
Modernity in Brazil, Princeton
University Press, 2008.
[2] A. Toninelli, A. Pathak, V. Issarny:
Yarta: A Middleware for Managing
Mobile Social Ecosystems, GPC
2011.
Please contact:
James Holston
University of California, Berkeley, USA
E-mail: [email protected]
Animesh Pathak
Inria, France
E-mail: [email protected]

CityLab@Inria - A Lab on Smart Cities

fostering Environmental and Social Sustainability
by Valrie Issarny
The Inria Project Lab CityLab@Inria which is currently under creation, studies information and
communications technology (ICT) solutions that promote social and environmental sustainability and
facilitate the transition to Smart Cities. The Lab places a strong emphasis on multi-disciplinary
research, integrating relevant scientific and technology studies from sensing up to analytics and
advanced applications. The idea is that the research environment will mirror the predicted Smart City
Systems of Systems. A central concern of the Lab is running experiments so that we are able to
investigate proposed approaches in real-life settings.
Our Motivation
The world is in the midst of an
immense population shift, as people
move from rural to urban areas. This
has led governments, businesses and
communities to rely on technologies, in
particular, information and communication technologies (ICT), to overcome
the challenges posed by this rapid
urbanization. As a result, various academic, industry and city-led ICT initiatives have been launched in recent
years with a view to building smart
urban infrastructures. These provide
detailed information about the functioning of a city to its citizens and businesses, thereby enabling them to better
understand their infrastructures and
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

resources and thus, improve the management of them.

While environmental and economical
sustainability have been on the ICT
research agenda for some time, the
equally important social sustainability
has been overlooked in the context of
Smart Cities. Indeed, cities are first and
foremost places for people, and thus
building cohesive, inclusive and flourishing communities should be at the
forefront of our research agenda.
Without the right social infrastructure in
place, problems such as isolation,
mental health problems, anti-social
behaviours and crime are more likely to
arise, pushing communities into decline.

Research Themes and Challenges

The objective of the CityLab@Inria is to
study ICT-based Smart City systems
from supporting sensing systems up to
advanced data analytics and new services for the citizens that promote social
and environmental sustainability.
Specifically, CityLab@Inria brings
together Inria project teams in networking (FUN and URBANET), distributed software systems (ARLES-MiMove
and MYRIADS), data management
(DICE, OAK and SMIS) and data analytics (CLIME and WILLOW) to investigate the following research questions:
How can urban-scale sensing that
needs to combine both physical and
13

Special theme: Smart Cities

social sensing be effectively sustained

while accounting for the requirements
associated with the target network?
These include scalability, energy-efficiency and privacy preservation.
Sensing the city pulse brings challenges for the supporting data management which must scale-up, as well
as integrate highly heterogeneous data
of various qualities. The literature is
rich with papers addressing these concerns individually. However, they are
seldom tackled together, especially
while simultaneously considering the
urban scale. Our approach to overcome these challenges lies in the
study of scalable protocols from the
networking up to the middleware layers, together with advanced techniques for privacy enhancement and
semantic-aware data management.
How can the data be aggregated so that
the evolution of a city can be not only
understood, but also anticipated and
perhaps even influenced? Data analytics is at the core of Smart Cities, making big data available to us through
sensing. Based on the open data trend,
this can become very useful in providing knowledge on the cities. It is a very
active area of research. However,
numerous open problems remain
regarding how large-scale data is analyzed and the uncertainty associated
with urban-scale, crowd-sourced data

collection must also be overcome. Our

contribution in this area leverages
advanced research results on data
assimilation and machine learning.
While city-scale sensing and data
analytics are two complementary
aspects of Smart City systems, they
are also inter-related as one may adequately inform the design of the
other. Therefore, it is essential to
design crosscutting architectures for
Smart City systems based on the
comprehensive integration of the custom data sensing and analytics that
we will investigate.
Finally, the Smart City vision will
only come true if it is accompanied
by concrete urban services that do
make our (future) cities sustainable
and agile. A number of application
areas have been suggested and these
include smart energy, smart health
and smart transportation. However,
we are still lacking disruptive services that will contribute to making our
cities better places to live while also
addressing the central challenge of
growth. One important question is
how the use of city-scale sensing can
impact city governance, particularly
its social dimension? Our research
will be guided by the study of new
urban services which will be undertaken in close collaboration with
external partners (especially city rep-

resentatives) as well as researchers

from the social science field.
While the scientific focus of
CityLab@Inria is broad, the Labs
research leverages relevant effort within
Inria project-teams that is further revisited as well as integrated to meet the
challenges of smart cities.
An International Lab
CityLab@Inria research builds on the
collaborative effort of the international
research community, especially the
Inria@SiliconValley program. Indeed, a
key characteristic of the CityLab@Inria
Lab is its international dimension which
began with the Paris-San Francisco
cooperation agreement toward smarter
cities . This agreement, signed on
March 20, 2013, is dedicated to developing smarter cities and includes support for targeted research programs
among which is the Joint Inria-CITRIS
CityLabs Program.
Links:
CityLab@Inria Project Lab on Smart
Cities: http://citylab.Inria.fr
Inria@Silicon Valley program:
https://project.inria.fr/siliconvalley/
Please contact:
Valrie Issarny, Inria@Silicon Valley,
E-mail: [email protected]

A framework for Improving the Multi-Device

User Experience in Smart Cities
by Luca Frosini and Fabio Patern
The current evolution of pervasive technologies in our cities means that traditional access
modalities are not always suitable for a particular service. Consequently novel solutions are needed.
Freely moving citizens in urban environments would often like to be able to better exploit available
devices to access services. In such cases, a multi-device user interface in which interactive
components can be dynamically distributed over devices would be extremely useful: unfortunately,
this is not currently supported by available development toolkits. Here, we propose a solution that
extends existing Service Front Ends for Smart Cities and supports multi-device interaction by
exploiting personal devices and public displays.
Our life is becoming a multi-device user
experience. In the last decade, a wide
variety of interactive devices have penetrated the mass market and people are
spending increasing amounts of time
using them. There are two modes of
usage, sequential or simultaneous. The
sequential user moves from one device
to another at different times to accom14

plish a task whilst the simultaneous user

interacts with more than one device at
the same time, for either related or unrelated activities [1]. Recent technological advances have meant that large display screens are now available on the
mass market and these greatly enhance
usage. Given their low cost, such
devices are being installed in great

numbers in many public places (e.g.,

train stations, airports, hospitals, public
offices, museums, universities, shop
centers, bars and restaurants). Thus,
deployment is occurring in both outdoor
and indoor environments, providing
various types of content (e.g., informative, entertainment or advertisements)
[2]. Unfortunately, insufficient attention
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: An example of a supported multi-device user interface, where a) shows the application providing content in the tourist version and
b)shows how the application can be used to exploit public displays.

has been paid to how information is provided accessed and through such
devices, thus diminishing their potential
effectiveness.
People would like to be able to better
exploit available technology when
using multiple devices to interact with
their applications. For example, users
may wish to dynamically move components of their interactive applications
across different devices with various
interaction resources [3]. However,
managing information across devices is
challenging. Unfortunately, the development of multi-device user interfaces
(UIs) is limited by the interaction development toolkits currently available.
These toolkits are still designed under
the assumption that they are supporting
the development of UIs for single
devices, rather than providing support
for multi-device access. Consequently,
the main issues with multi-device UIs
are their poor adaptation to their usage
context, the lack of coordination among
tasks performed through different
devices and inadequate support for
seamless cross-device task performance.
To address this gap we have designed
and developed a novel framework
which is capable of:
providing developers with an API
that can be exploited by both Web
and Android applications in order to
obtain application UIs that can be
more easily distributed dynamically
and/or migrated in multi-device and
multi-user environments,
dynamically
creating
sessions
between groups of users/devices with
a distributed UI. The elements of the
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

UI can be distributed according to

specific device(s), group(s) of
devices, specific user(s) or groups of
users classified by roles, and
avoiding the need for a fixed server to
manage the distribution, which can be
useful when connectivity is limited.
This framework is publicly available at
http://giove.isti.cnr.it/tools/MUDUIDM
E/home. It provides developers with a
small set of commands that allow them
to easily support dynamic situations in
which flexible UI distribution and good
performance are requested, with limited
impact on the code.
Various applications have already been
developed using this framework. One
application was designed to improve the
user experience during a museum visit.
A single user application which was able
to exploit mobile devices, in conjunction
with a public display in an indoor environment, was implemented. The
museum has some large public displays,
which allow visitors to access multimedia content. When users are near the
large screens, they can use their smartphone to select content of interest. For
example, visitors can select and display
some high-resolution images of artworks that cannot be viewed from close
up (e.g., because of security or art
preservation issues). Another application supports city guides who are
accompanying groups, with either
tablets or smartphones. The application
shows information supporting the
mobile visit and allows the visitor to
select what content is to be shown in the
version of the tourist role (Figure 1a) or
exploit the public displays they
encounter (Figure 1 b). Yet another

application is a set of games for multiple users who can participate with the
support of any device, either mobile or
stationary.
The framework we propose can be used
to easily obtain interactive multi-device
applications for different domains and
in different contexts in Smart Cities
including single or multi-user applications, indoor or outdoor environments
and mobile and stationary devices.

Links:
HIIS Lab: http://giove.isti.cnr.it
Framework available at:
http://giove.isti.cnr.it/tools/MUDUIDM
E/home
IUSDM Project:
http://giove.isti.cnr.it/IUDSM
References:
[1] Google: The new multi-screen
world: Understanding cross-platform
consumer behavior, Technical report,
August 2012,
http://www.google.com/think/researchstudies/the-new-multi-screen-worldstudy.html
[2] J. Mller, F. Alt, A. Schmidt, D.
Michelis: Requirements and Design
Space for Interactive Public Displays,
ACM Multimedia, 12851294 (2010)
[3] S. Hosio et al.: Supporting
distributed private and public user
interfaces in urban environments, in
proc. of HotMobile 2010, 25-30.
Please contact:
Luca Frosini, Fabio Patern
CNR-ISTI, Italy.
E-mail: {luca.frosini,
fabio.paterno}@isti.cnr.it
15

Special theme: Smart Cities

Moving towards Interoperable

Internet-of-things Deployments in Smart Cities
by Gregor Schiele, John Soldatos and Nathalie Mitton
The objectives of the European FP7 VITAL project are to overcome Internet-of-Things (IoT) silos in
Smart Cities and enable the deployment and integration of Internet-Connected-Objects (ICO)
independently of the underlying IoT architecture. In achieving these goals, the project assists in the
transition towards smart, secure and cost-effective cities.
Using the Internet-of-Things (IoT) to
deploy Internet-Connected-Objects
(ICOs) in Smart Cities raise several
challenges, especially in terms of interoperability. Drawing on semantic interoperability solutions developed for IoT
systems, the VITAL project aimed to
bridge the numerous silos which exist in
IoT deployments in Smart Cities. This
was achieved by repurposing and
reusing sensors and data streams across
multiple applications, without compromising citizens security and privacy.
This approach promises of increase

Return-On-Investment (ROI) figures

which are associated with the typically
costly development of Smart City infrastructures by expanding the number and
scope of potential applications.
IoT technology enables a large number
of physical and virtual ICOs to be coordinated so as to provide human-centric
services in a variety of sectors, especially
in Smart Cities [1]. Many research, pilot
and commercial applications have been
developed thus far, ranging from those
which use a RFID/Wireless Sensor

Figure 1: IoT application silos within modern Smart Cities

Figure 2: VITAL architecture

16

Network to those which involve large

numbers of different devices and ICOs.
Collectively, these applications have a
significant impact on both business and
society. Thus, the IoT paradigm is relevant to the development and implementation of sustainable urban development
policies. However, a number of IoT systems have been created in parallel which
is leading to the creation of IoT application silos within modern Smart Cities
(Figure 1). These silos often reflect the
organizational structures of local governments. For example, the separation of
law enforcement, transportation and
public works into three separate departments results in different IoT deployments and the creation of three associated technical silos.
Semantic Interoperability Solutions
for the IoT
The interoperability of IoT systems
extends beyond technical or syntactic
interoperability, towards semantic interoperability which mainly explores the
use of a common ontology for
describing resources across disjoint IoT
systems [1]. Recently, several research
initiatives have extended the ontology
of the W3C SSN incubator group,
which aims to overcome the limitations
of pre-existing XML-based formats [2]
and the fragmentation of sensor ontologies into specific domains or applications [3]. This ontology describes sensors, observations and related concepts,
but not domain concepts (e.g., for Smart
Cities).
An example of a system which provides
a common semantic layer is the
OpenIoT project (see link below). This
system enables humans, devices and
services to announce and annotate different (virtual) sensors/devices as W3C
SSN compliant sensors. OpenIoT offers
an open source cloud-based IoT platform which includes components like
sensor middleware, cloud data storage
and a scheduler (see link below).
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

VITAL: Semantic Smart City

Interoperability
The VITAL project builds on these
approaches and extends two main
aspects to ensure the semantic interoperability of evolving Smart City IoT
applications and projects. It uses the
SSN ontology to model data and the
OpenIoT as a common data management component. The first extension
provides a much richer data model for
Smart City applications, including citywide information (e.g., demographics
and stakeholder details) as well as cityspecific Key Performance Indicators.
The second extension provides interoperable access, not only for data coming
from different IoT systems (e.g.,
OpenIoT) but also for services provided
by these systems (e.g., discovery, monitoring and complex event processing).
This allows for higher level services to
be created which can then be integrated
into a single federated service view.
VITAL will be tested in two Smart
Cities, London and Istanbul, who are
represented in the project consortium by
the London Borough of Camden and the

Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality,

respectively.
Conclusion
VITAL will enable applications and
service providers to integrate services
and data streams stemming from multiple
IoT ecosystems, architectures and middleware infrastructures. This will allow
for existing sensors and IoT systems to be
reused and repurposed, increasing the
ROI on Smart City infrastructures. We
hope this will reduce the costs associated
with developing new Smart City applications for city authorities and the open
developer community and bring time
efficiencies, leading to a new wave of
applications in cities across Europe.
VITAL is a three year joint European
project, started in September 2013 by a
consortium of ten partners from Ireland,
France, Greece, Italy, Spain, the UK
and Turkey.
Links:
http://www.vital-iot.com
http://openiot.eu/
http://github.com/OpenIotOrg/openiot

References:
[1] M. Presser, P. Barnaghi, M. Eurich,
C. Villalonga: The SENSEI project:
Integrating the physical world with the
digital world of the network of the
future, IEEE Communications
Magazine, pp. 1-4, 2009
[2] A. Sheth, C. Henson, S. Sahoo:
Semantic Sensor Web, IEEE Internet
Computing, 12 (4), 2008
[3] M. Compton, P. Barnaghi, L.
Bermudez, R. G. Castro, O. Corcho, S.
Cox, et. al.: The SSN Ontology of the
Semantic Sensor Networks Incubator
Group, Journal of Web Semantics:
Science, Services and Agents on the
World Wide Web, ISSN 1570-8268,
Elsevier, 2012.
Please contact:
Gregor Schiele, NUIG, Ireland
E-mail: [email protected]
John Soldatos
Athens Information Technology, Greece
E-mail: [email protected]
Nathalie Mitton, Inria, France
E-mail: [email protected]

Realizing Smart City Scenarios

with the ALMANAC and DIMMER Platforms
by Mark Vinkovits, Marco Jahn and Ren Reiners
Information and communication technology (ICT) is becoming a key factor to develop green and
sustainable applications within Smart City scenarios. Effective management of resources, gathering
and interpreting data as well as ecological considerations are prerequisites for realizing the vision
of smart cities. The two European FP7 projects ALMANAC and DIMMER address these issues by
providing a generic, flexible and quickly customizable platform for application development.
A Smart City service Platform (SCP)
for application design and implementation needs to collect, aggregate, and
analyse real-time or near real-time
data from, e.g., appliances, sensors
and actuators or smart meters that
have been deployed to implement
processes running over a pervasive
data communication network. The
platform must allow decision support,
and implement an intelligent control
of devices through an M2M network
as well as the management of local
installations. The FP7 project
ALMANAC combines real-life validations with simulation techniques
leading to large-scale hybrid simulations that allow to test the entire
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

system and simulate critical loads

conditions within large scale deployments.
ALMANAC focuses on the development of integrated cross-application
information systems. A service delivery
platform with corresponding technology solutions integrates Internet of
Things (IoT) edge networks with communication access for green and sustainable applications. The developed
services contain management of public
and private network access - containing
Telco M2M infrastructure, common
abstraction of resources, handling of
gathering latest and historical values of
heterogeneous information sources, and

reuse of data models provided by individual applications. The ALMANAC

architecture has been designed to
emphasize these services, which are
then demonstrated through three
example applications: Waste management, water management, and citizen
engagement.
The four main services for the SCP that
were indicated as initial starting points
cover interoperability over devices,
such that applications can make use of
any protocol over a uniform webservice based interface. Service virtuality makes it possible to overcome
physical network boundaries and to
simplify application design. Composing
17

Special theme: Smart Cities

rules and data caches help to define

thresholds and detect trends when concrete values are not needed or their
retrieval takes too long for the current
use case. Privacy policies of individual
providers enforce applications to only
access data and functionalities for
which they have explicit access rights.
Another aspect of smart city scenarios
is covered by smart grids where prosumers that are both, energy producers
and consumers at the same time must be
integrated into the grid infrastructure.
This flexibility pose new challenges to
the ICT infrastructure for planning and
managing smart cities. The FP7
European Project DIMMER (District
Information
Modeling
and
Management for Energy Reduction) addresses this emerging aspect that
plays a major role in the field of renewable and independently generated
energy. DIMMER leverages real-time
data from heterogeneous data sources
and subsystems such as smart meters
and wireless sensor networks to model
the environmental characteristics and
energy consumption of districts. At the
district level this information is used to
optimize district heating and cooling
and the energy grid, acting as an enabler
for the visions of smart cities and the
smart grid. The project involves relevant stakeholders as central players in
the research and development process,
such as distribution system operators
(DSOs), energy service companies
(ESCOs), residents, building managers,
and city planners. End user applications
are developed targeting the needs of the
different stakeholders and aiming at
improving the mutual relationship
between them, taking into account the
fact that the concept of a smart city does
not only have a technological dimension but must also consider people and
institutions [1].
Through advanced visualization and
simulation, DSOs will be able to better
understand the usage of their networks
and take informed decisions e.g. to
improve peak demand management and
reduction, energy and cost-analysis,
tariff planning and evaluation, failure
identification and maintenance.
Applications for residents and building
managers will help to create bi-directional feedback channels between
energy providers, consumers and prosumers allowing more effective control
of the energy distribution network. In
18

Figure 1: The three pillars of the DIMMER Project: stakeholders, the technology platform
and the BIM/DIM.

conclusion, the expected results are a

consistent reduction in both energy consumption and CO2 emissions by
enabling efficient energy distribution
policies, according to the real characteristics of district buildings and inhabitants as well as efficient utilization and
maintenance of the energy distribution
network.
Figure 1 shows the described main
pillar of the project, namely stakeholder
involvement, technology platform and
building/district information modelling.
In order to validate the platform, both
public and private buildings included in
mixed urban districts are considered in
two different cities, i.e., Turin (IT) and
Manchester (UK).
Fraunhofer FIT is responsible for the
design and development of the software
platforms architecture, device integration as well as leading the requirements
engineering process. FIT will bring into
the project its extensive knowledge and
experience in middleware development.
It will employ and further develop the
LinkSmart Middleware to allow integration of heterogeneous technologies
and systems in the smart city districts
[2].
LinkSmart, itself was established as an
EU research project and is continuously
reused and further developed in followup research.

Links:
http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/en/fb/ucc/
projects/almanac.html
http://www.fit.fraunhofer.de/en/fb/ucc/
projects/dimmer.html
http://www.almanacproject.eu/news.php
http://dimmer.polito.it
References:
[1] T. Nam, T. A. Pardo:
Conceptualizing smart city with
dimensions of technology, people, and
institutions, in proc. of dg.o 11,
ACM, New York, NY, USA, 282-291,
2011, DOI=10.1145/2037556.2037602
http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/2037556.20
37602
[2] M. Eisenhauer, P. Rosengren, P.
Antolin: Hydra: A development
platform for integrating wireless
devices and sensors into ambient
intelligence systems, in The Internet
of Things (pp. 367-373). Springer New
York, 2010.
Please contact:
Mark Vinkovits, Marco Jahn, Ren
Reiners
Fraunhofer FIT, Germany
E-mail:
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Internet of things Applications

for Neighbourhood Embedded Devices
by Joan Fons, Daniel Gaston, Christophe Joubert and Miguel Montesinos
Smart Cities enable the physical and virtual worlds to merge, based on Internet Of Things (IoT), data
and services. Through Web of Things (WoT), IoT is realized by using the existing web architecture as
a platform, thus making smart things directly accessible as web services on the Internet. This
approach simplifies object and application deployment, commissioning, maintenance, operation and
service composition within both city and building infrastructures. In this work, we focus on
cooperative objects to develop an open smart neighbourhood.
The European project Web of Objects
WoO (ITEA2 - 10028, January 2012December 2014) aims to develop a
service infrastructure for IoT business
applications that enables multi-tenancy,
interoperability, and service composition, thus facilitating the building of
applications on top of embedded
devices. The infrastructure inherits
many features from the Web, including
bookmarking, caching, linking,
searching and securing, and enables
mashups for dynamic and ad-hoc composite applications involving embedded
devices. Figure 1 describes the WoO
architecture based on IoT-A standard.
One of the technical challenges we faced
on the project was creating social
objects with web capabilities. Such features enable to have complex user-created domain oriented applications that
can be used both in indoor and outdoor
contexts.
At home, several sensors, actuators, and
appliances are available (through home
automation technologies). In this
project, all these resources and capabilities were mapped as services, and provided by means of either Web Services
Technologies or REST Technologies [1].
In addition, we used a mobile device
platform that provides access to different sensors and objects (GPS locations, NFC reader, vibrator, accelerometer, etc.) to enable the interaction
between home objects (NFC door, home
appliances, and other sensors managed
by a WSAN [2]) and mobile device sensors (NFC reader/writer, GPS locations,
etc.). Table 1 presents an overview of the
different smart objects that were
deployed on the WoO platform.
In order to semantically define the smart
objects, we used and extended the SSN
ontology (for sensors and actuators) proposed in [3] and the OWL-S (for servERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

ices) to define a WoO ontology. SSN

ontology was also extended to support
the definition of the actuator concept.
By using those semantically described
smart objects, it is possible to facilitate
the integration between smart objects
inside the WoO architecture.

On top of the WoO architecture, we

provided a service layer implemented
as REST services. For instance, a door
lock web accessible service was
designed. This door lock can be discovered by means of an NFC Tag and the
NFC interaction is performed through

Mobile device object

Makes use of multiple sensors (GPS, NFC, Accelerometer, etc.) to

measure physical quantities. It is used to identify the user in other
systems and to access the users profile. It supports the user with
GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) capability.

NFC Door object

Operates an NFC-tagged electromechanical door lock using a mobile

device (equipped with an NFC sensor).

User Profile object

Stores users preferences to query about them.

GNSS Location object

Represents the user's location.

Location Rules object

Represents the rules concerning location sensor-based services in

order to trigger the corresponding requests to the home automation
platform.

Request object

Stores the URI and Payload corresponding to the request performed

by the mobile device.

Home Automation
Platform object

Handles the mobile device requests, and also monitors and manages
the home automation appliances.

Table 1: Social Objects in Open Smart Neighbourhood services

Figure 1: WoO architecture

19

Special theme: Smart Cities

an open-source mobile agent (Gloo

Android application) with profile-management capabilities.
The main challenges that were faced in
this context were: smart object discovery (NFC tags), universal smart
object accessibility, mobile interface
and sensor access, user profiling, and
ad-hoc on-the-fly interaction between
smart objects (heterogeneity). We
developed several scenarios, such as the
Location Sensor-Based Services outside Home (see Figure 2). The mobile
agent running on the device continuously receives the location coordinates
from its GNSS sensor and compares
those locations with a user defined
proximity area. Whenever the user
enters this proximity area, the smartphone automatically triggers a series of
requests (based on user-profile and
preferences) to control smart objects
(for example switching on the heating
to a certain temperature).
The results to date are very promising:
we integrated the previous smart objects
with many partners in order to compose
an Open Smart Neighbourhood
ecosystem on top of the Web of Objects
platform. This allowed us to deploy and
test some recent research results in projects related with the lnternet of Things,
Machine to Machine communication
(M2M) and Ambient Intelligence systems development. We have acquired
insight into the use of smart WoO
objects such as mobile devices, user

Figure 2: GNSS
location-based
automatic house
entities requests

profiles, location rules, requests, doorlocks and smart home objects.

In our research, we collaborated with several SMEs, Universities and Research
Centres, such as DEIMOS, VISUAL
TOOLS, TELESPAZIO, ETIC, UPC,
UPM, UPV (Spain), Thales, Odonata,
Sogeti, UPEM, CEA, IMT (France),
Concordia University (Canada), KAIST,
KT, ETRI, Kwangwoon and Hankuk
University, Innopia, Miksistem (Korea) and
Smartec, Nma, University of Cairo (Egypt).
This research is also part of a horizontal
task force with other ICT Future
Internet projects - such as FIWARE,
BUTLER and SOFIA - that deals with
building new innovative applications
and services for every-day working and
living environments. Our work is partially supported by the Spanish MEC
INNCORPORA-PTQ 2011, MiTYC
TSI-020400-2011-29, and FEDER programs.

Links:
http://www.web-of-objects.com
http://www.youtube.com/user/webofob
jectsproject
References:
[1] F. Belqasmi, R. Glitho, C. Fu:
RESTful web services for service
provisioning in next-generation
networks: a survey, Communications
Magazine, IEEE , vol.49, no.12, pp.6673, 2011
[2] D. Niyato, L. Xiao, L, P. Wang:
Machine-to-machine communications
for home energy management system
in smart grid, IEEE Communications
Magazine, pp. 53-39, vol 49, 2011
[3] L. Ni, Y. Zhu, and M. Jian:
Semantic Sensor Net: An Extensible
Framework, Springer, 2005.
Please contact:
Christophe Joubert
Prodevelop, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]

Internet of things:
A Challenge for Software Engineering
by Charles Consel and Milan Kabac
The Internet of Things (IoT) has become a reality with the emergence of Smart Cities, populated with
large amounts of smart objects which are used to deliver a range of citizen services (e.g., security,
well being, etc.) The IoT paradigm relies on the pervasive presence of smart objects or things,
which raises a number of new challenges in the software engineering domain.
The Objects World project
There are an abundance of research and
industry initiatives that have been undertaken with the aim of promoting the
emergence of IoT [1]. In line with this
goal, the Objects World project brings
together stakeholders from different
domains to build and support the emergence of an IoT sector in France and
20

beyond. The project is lead by SIGFOX,

the world's first cellular network operator dedicated to low-bandwidth wireless objects. The cooperation between
industry and research partners (e.g.,
sensor manufacturers, computer science
and electrical engineering research labs)
is of uttermost importance in overcoming technological barriers. This issue

is currently hindering the development

of an IoT sector. The main objectives of
this project are the development of:
expertise in the low-bandwidth network sector,
low-cost transmitter/receiver chips,
low-energy autonomous sensors, and
software frameworks which cover the
entire lifecycle of IoT applications.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Network infrastructures which support

huge numbers of objects open up a range
of opportunities for innovative services.
Critically, these new opportunities rely
on the ability to address the software
engineering challenges of this new
sector. We promote an approach that
revolves around software frameworks.
In areas such as mobile and web development, this approach has already been
shown to facilitate software development by abstracting over implementation details and guiding the programmer.

Service discovery
Standard service discovery at the individual object level does not address the
needs of applications orchestrating
large numbers of smart objects. Instead,
a high-level approach which provides
constructs to specifying sub-sets of
interest is needed. Our approach allows
developers to introduce applicationspecific concepts (e.g., regrouping
parking spaces into lots or districts) at
the design time and then these can be

mentation of the data processing stage

by providing the developer with a
framework based on the MapReduce [3]
programming model which is intended
for the processing of large data sets.
Future work
We envisage to enrich our designdriven methodology with support for
simulation of infrastructures of smart
objects. To achieve this, we will
leverage design-time declarations to

A design-driven development approach

To guide and support the development
of applications which orchestrate networked objects, our research group
introduced a design-driven software
development approach which draws on
principles and techniques taken from
the programming language domain.
In particular, we developed DiaSuite [2],
a tool-based methodology which guides
the developer through the entire lifecycle of an orchestrating application
(Figure 1). DiaSuite offers a design language, providing high-level, declarative
constructs that are dedicated to
describing the applications architecture,
along with the smart objects it orchestrates. The methodology relies on a compiler that generates support in the form
of a Java programming framework, customized with respect to a given application design. By providing the developer
with a programming framework, our
approach ensures conformity between
the design and implementation. The
generated programming framework provides the developer with an abstract
class per component declaration. The
application logic is implemented by subclassing each abstract class and programming its abstract methods. To further ease the development of orchestrating applications, DiaSuite relies on
Eclipse to guide developers during the
implementation phase by introducing
placeholders that need to be provided
with code. Finally, our approach provides developers with a back-end to
address the deployment and execution
of orchestrating applications.

Data gathering
Applications need to acquire data from
a large number of objects through a
variety of delivery models. For
instance, air pollution sensors across a
city may only push data to the relevant
applications when pollution levels
exceed tolerated levels. Tracking sensors, however, might determine the
location of vehicles and send the
acquired measurements to applications
periodically (e.g., 10 min. intervals).
Data delivery models need to be introduced at design time since they have a
direct impact on the applications program structure. In doing so, the delivery
models used by an application can be
checked against sensor features early in
the development process.

Orchestrating smart objects

at a large scale
The development of orchestrating applications which are responsible for large
numbers of smart objects raises a number
of challenges. We have addressed these
by introducing a new design language.

Data processing
Data that is generated from hundreds of
thousands of objects and accumulated
over a period of time calls for efficient
processing strategies to ensure the
required performance is attained. Our
approach allows for an efficient imple-

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: The DiaSuite tool-based methodology

used to express discovery operations.

Following our design-driven development approach, these concepts are used
to generate code to support and guide
the programming phase.

generate application-specific simulation

support, while keeping the application
code unchanged.
Links:
http://www.sigfox.com/en/
http://www.telecom-design.com/en/
http://phoenix.inria.fr/
References:
[1] D. Miorandi et al.: Internet of
things: Vision, applications and
research challenges, Ad Hoc
Networks, vol. 10, no. 7, 2012
[2] D. Cassou, et al., Towards A ToolBased Development Methodology for
Pervasive Computing Applications,
IEEE Transactions on Software
Engineering, 2011
[3] J. Dean and S. Ghemawat,
MapReduce: simplified data
processing on large clusters,
Communications of the ACM, 2008
Please contact:
Charles Consel
University of Bordeaux / Inria
Bordeaux - Sud-Ouest,
E-mail: [email protected]
Milan Kabac
Inria Bordeaux - Sud-Ouest,
E-mail: [email protected]
21

Special theme: Smart Cities

Semantic Management of Moving Objects

in Smart Cities
by Sergio Ilarri, Dragan Stojanovic and Cyril Ray
Smart Cities depend on information regarding moving objects (e.g., people, vehicles, assets, etc.)
being processed. We propose a framework to enable a fully-fledged semantic management of
moving objects that can be efficiently and flexibly exploited in Smart Cities.
The different types of moving objects in
a city, such as people, vehicles and
assets, that are equipped with mobile
devices (e.g., smartphones, wearable
devices, smart sensors, etc.) have
increasing computing, communication
and sensing capabilities. Thus, they will
play a key role in Smart Cities. The efficient management of the information
generated, provided and used by these
objects (including information on their
locations, trajectories, features, behaviors, activities and environmental contexts) facilitates the improved under-

standing and analysis of how a city performs. In addition, this type of information assists in the goal of providing citizens with contextual and adapted services in a range of areas including traffic
management, urban dynamics analysis,
ambient assisted living, emergency
management, and mobile health. Whilst
significant effort has been invested in
modelling and managing moving
objects, and some progress has been
made regarding the representation of
semantics associated with them, further
efforts are needed to achieve a fully-

fledged semantic management

approach for moving objects that can be
efficiently and flexibly exploited.
By integrating methods and techniques
developed in different fields, including
moving object databases, spatio-temporal data mining, and the Semantic
Web, it is possible to enhance the way
moving object information is managed
(with respect to the modelling,
querying, processing and analysis components). For example, recent proposals
claim that linking Location-Based

Figure 1: The architecture of the SemanticMOVE framework

22

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Services (LBSs) and semantics can provide interesting benefits [1], such as
flexible querying, management of
semantic locations and trajectories,
interoperability among different LBSs
and providers, protection of personal
location information, and reasoning in
complex and dynamic contexts. Our
idea is to develop and provide LBSs that
understand the users requests and interactions, implicitly based on the semantics of mobility and contextual information, and know how to behave and adapt
in dynamic and unexpected situations.
Incorporating semantics in such an
Internet of (Moving) Things provides
valuable semantic information and
services to mobile users, thus supporting enhanced mobility in dynamic
environments such as those found in
Smart Cities. However, there are
numerous research challenges that need
to be adressed to make this idea a
reality. The first lies in the collaborative
collection of the data required (e.g., the
data measured by sensors on the
moving objects). The data collection
can be achieved through participatory/
collaborative sensing but this is subject
to difficulties related to the correlation
and analysis of those data, especially
when this analysis is performed in a distributed way on mobile devices.
Another challenge relates to the
semantic representation of moving
objects, where a unified approach that
takes all the mobility aspects of moving
objects (i.e., their trajectories, contexts,
activities, goals, the physiological
status of the user, environment, and the
accessible services) into account, at different levels of granularity, is still
missing. Thirdly, while interesting work
has progressed on context-awareness,
there is still a need for efficient integrated approaches for query processing
in mobile environments, reasoning, and
semantic searches, as well as an appropriate abstraction layer that enables the
exploitation of the available functionalities. The fourth challenge relates to the
inference of higher-level semantics
(such as group mobility behaviours)
from a large dataset of individual
semantic mobility data and trajectories.
Finally, we have to mention the problem
of privacy protection. This is a particularly critical issue in Smart City environments, as the basic movement data is
enhanced with rich semantics of the
participating moving objects and their

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

trajectories. Thus, it should be preserved according to the required privacy

preferences of the participating users.
Prompted by the COST Action IC0903
on knowledge discovery from moving
objects, we have collaboratively
designed a generic and scalable distributed framework (SemanticMOVE),
whose realization will enable the comprehensive management of the semantics of moving objects. Achieving this
will leverage increased sensing, processing, interaction and communication
capabilities in mobile devices in a scalable and effective way (Figure 1). As
opposed to other related work, we envisioned a quite generic architecture
which supports a fully distributed and
interoperable scenario for the management of semantics of moving objects.
Thus, each moving object can collect,
store and analyze its own semantic
mobility data and trajectories, and
reason over them locally. It can share
and exchange semantic mobility data
and semantic concepts/knowledge (e.g.,
regarding the location, personal and
social status, vehicle conditions, activities, behaviours, environment and
traffic conditions, air pollution levels,
etc.),
with
other
moving
objects/users/services in the vicinity,
over ad-hoc wireless networks. It can
also access and share information and
knowledge through geo-social networks, social media services, and
geospatial information services. Our
framework includes fixed servers as an
additional element of an ecosystem
where the distributed and ad-hoc cooperation among moving objects, encouraged by some incentive mechanisms,
plays a key role.

Links:
MOVE: Knowledge Discovery from
Moving Objects:
http://dmsl.cs.ucy.ac.cy/projects/cost/in
dex.html
SemanticMOVE:
http://webdiis.unizar.es/~silarri/Semant
icMOVE/
References:
[1] S. Ilarri et al.: Semantics in
Location-Based Services - Guest
Editors Introduction for Special
Issue, IEEE Internet Computing,
ISSN 1089-7801, 15(6): 10-14, IEEE
Computer Society, 2011
[2] B. Predic ,D. Stojanovic:
Localized Processing and Analysis of
Accelerometer Data in Detecting
Traffic Events and Driver Behaviour,
Journal of Universal Computer
Science, ISSN 0948-695x, 18(9):
1152-1176, 2012
[3] I. Afyouni, C. Ray, C. Claramunt:
Spatial Models for Context-Aware
Indoor Navigation Systems: A
Survey, Journal of Spatial
Information Science, ISSN, 4(1): 85123, 2012.
Please contact:
Sergio Ilarri
University of Zaragoza, Spain
E-mail: [email protected]
Dragan Stojanovic
University of Nis, Serbia
E-mail:
[email protected]
Cyril Ray
Institut de Recherche de lcole
Navale (IRENav), France
E-mail: [email protected]

We believe that the development of

such an approach will facilitate the
deployment of interesting semantic
mobility applications for Smart Cities.
Whilst there are still some significant
research issues that require further
investigation, the initial results represent promising steps towards the
intended direction [2, 3].

23

Special theme: Smart Cities

flexible Access to Services in Smart Cities:

Let SHERLOCK Advise Modern Citizens
by Roberto Yus, Eduardo Mena, Sergio Ilarri and Arantza Illarramendi
Citizens can access a variety of computing services to get information, but it is often difficult to
know which service will offer the best information. Researchers in the SHERLOCK (System for
Heterogeneous mobilE Requests by Leveraging Ontological and Contextual Knowledge) project,
from the University of Zaragoza and the Basque Country University, address this by providing
mobile users with interesting Location-Based Services (LBSs).
As Smart Cities become a reality, citizens are starting to be overwhelmed
with the amount of data they receive
from different sources. This is partly
caused by the sheer number of apps they
can download to obtain information:
most apps are designed for specific scenarios and goals and are embedded with
implicit knowledge about the application context. They also receive data
almost continuously (e.g., information
about pollution, traffic, parking spots,
lighting, etc.), which makes it difficult to
distinguish which information is valuable. In this scenario, the use of
semantic techniques becomes particularly relevant: a system that uses
semantic information can help users
select the most appropriate and relevant
apps to the user's interests and transform
the raw received data into smart data
that represents actionable information.
Mobile devices (e.g., smartphones and
tablets) have become a fundamental part
of our everyday lives. According to a
report by BI (Business Intelligence), one
in five people worldwide owns a smartphone and one in 17 owns a tablet. These
devices not only consume information
but also create huge volumes of data
(e.g., geo-tagged images, videos, text,
etc.). In addition, sensors are ubiquitous
and a common feature on smart and
wearable devices (e.g., activity trackers,
smart glasses and watches) as well as

city-based sensors (e.g., sensors that

measure air pollution, noise and traffic
levels). These city-based sensors are
useful in the context of Smart Cities.
New management approaches are
required for all this information to
ensure users do not become overwhelmed. The semantic management of
data in wireless environments can help
users in a variety of ways including
assisting with the process of determining what information a user really
needs to finding the most appropriate
information from a range of different
sources and presenting it in an integrated
way. For example, imagine tourists who
arrive on an evening flight and need to
reach their city hotel. At first, it would
be useful to infer what kind of information the tourists might need, for
example, with regards to transport information they might need to know the different options (e.g., buses, metros, taxis
or car rental options), traffic conditions
and perhaps even where available
parking spaces are located. This information comes from a variety of heterogeneous sources (e.g., websites, citybased sensors, other users and vehicles)
and it is difficult to reconcile and present
these data as they are needed.

Our main focus is to develop a general

and flexible system that is able to respond
to the information needs of mobile users.
We met a number of challenges in this
project, but there were three main problems. Firstly, the system has to be able to
understand the information needs of the
user. For this task, SHERLOCK leverages the users context (e.g., location,
activity, etc.) that can be extracted for a
range of sources, for example, from sensors in his/her mobile device. A personal
agent guides the user in the process of
selecting an interesting LBS. This agent
uses context information along with

In developing the SHERLOCK [1]

system, we sought to provide mobile
users with interesting Location-Based
Services (LBSs). Begun in 2011, this

Figure 1: SHERLOCK finding appropriate transport in a city

24

collaborative project brings together the

Distributed Information Systems (SID)
group at the University of Zaragoza
(Spain) and the Interoperable Database
Group (BDI) group at the Basque
Country University (Spain). Since we
started, we have developed an Android
prototype [2] that can be downloaded
from the website of the project (see
Figure 2 for a screenshot of the app).

Figure 2: SHERLOCK app for the transports

scenario
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

information about the services, encoded

in ontologies (i.e., a formal representation
of knowledge) and a semantic reasoner
(i.e., a software to infer logical consequences), to deduce which LBSs would
be useful for the user. Secondly, the
system has to be able to find the information the user needs. For this task, SHERLOCK deploys a network of mobile
agents (i.e., software that is able to move
from one device to another
autonomously) to search all available
information among the distributed data
sources and bring back the results to
his/her device. Finally, the system has to
be able to present the results to the user
and keep this information updated for as
long as the user requires.

We believe that a system such as SHERLOCK is very useful in the context of

Smart Cities, as it can support citizens
and visitors in achieving their tasks
more efficiently and effectively. Any
developed city services could easily be
made available to SHERLOCK, simply
by defining it in the form of an
ontology.
Links:
SHERLOCK:
http://sid.cps.unizar.es/SHERLOCK
Smartphone and tablet penetration in
2013: http://www.businessinsider.com/
smartphone-and-tablet-penetration2013-10

References:
[1] R. Yus, et al.: SHERLOCK:
Semantic Management of LocationBased Services in Wireless
Environments, Pervasive and Mobile
Computing, 2013.
[2] R. Yus, et al.: SHERLOCK: A
System for Location-Based Services in
Wireless Environments Using
Semantics, WWW 2013
Please contact:
Roberto Yus
University of Zaragoza, Spain
Tel: +34 976 76 26 50
E-mail: [email protected]

Quantifying the Benefits of taxi trips

in New York through Shareability Networks
by Paolo Santi, Giovanni Resta and Carlo Ratti
Shareability networks demonstrate that more than 95% of taxi trips taken in New York can be
shared with minimal passenger discomfort.
The increasing pervasiveness of digitalized information has unleashed unprecedented opportunities for understanding
aspects of human behaviours and social
lives, including individual mobility. An
enormous amount of digital traces are
now obtainable from a range of sources
(e.g., cell phone records, taxi GPS
traces, etc.) which allows human
mobility to be analyzed to an extent that
would have been inconceivable several
years ago [1]. Although this raises privacy concerns, this big data era offers
unique opportunities to improve understanding around human mobility needs
and, hence, improve transportation
system efficiencies.
The goal of this project, performed in
cooperation with a team from the MIT
Senseable City Lab (Michael Szell, Stan
Sobolevsky and coordinated by Carlo
Ratti), is to quantify the benefits of taxi
sharing in New York City (NYC). Our
analysis was based on a dataset which
captured all the taxi trips taken in NYC
in 2011 (over 150 million trips). For
each trip, the dataset captures the pickup time and location and drop-off time
and location.
In this project, we posed the fundamental question, How many taxi trips
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: The shareability of taxi rides taken in New York City is constrained by the length of
time customers are willing to be delayed. As the delay time lengthens, trip sharing opportunities
increase. Results indicated that a delay of 5 min meant more than 95% of the taxi rides could be
shared.

can be shared in NYC?. To answer this

question, the intrinsic trade-off between
shareability opportunities and passenger discomfort must be considered:
the longer a passenger is willing to wait
for a shared trip, the higher the sharing
opportunities. This tradeoff is made
explicit by the novel notion of a shareability network in which we have
defined the model sharing opportunities: each network node represent a sep-

arate trip and links between two nodes

represents a sharing opportunity
between those trips. The criterion used
to determine whether two trips can be
shared is based on spatial and temporal
constraints. For two trips, T1 and T2, a
sharing opportunity only exists if a
route connects the respective pick-up
and drop-off points such that both passenger groups can be picked up and
delivered to their destinations with a
25

Special theme: Smart Cities

delay of no more than ,where explicitly models the tradeoff between passenger discomfort and shareability. A
higher value of results in a denser
shareability network and corresponds to
more opportunities for trip sharing.
Using a shareability network allows an
optimal solution to be found to an otherwise computationally intractable
problem. Shareability networks impose
a structure to an otherwise unstructured,
immense search space by constraining
the number of trips that can be shared
(up to k, where k is a user-defined
parameter, set to 2 or 3 in this study) and
considering only static trip sharing. This
term means that once two or more trips
are combined into a shared trip, the
combined trip is served by a single taxi
that cannot be rerouted for further
sharing. Once the search space has been
reduced and structured, an optimal trip
sharing figure can be computed in

approximately 0.1 seconds by running a

computationally efficient maximum
matching algorithm on the shareability
network (10,000 nodes and 100,000
links) [2] using a standard Linux workstation. Thus, our proposed methodology is suitable for real-time implementation.
A notable result of our analysis is that
constraining the search space to reduce
computational complexity does not
impair trip sharing opportunities. The
percentage of shareable trips is shown
to increase with the delay parameter and
we found it was as high as 95% if a
delay in the order of five minutes was
permitted. Thus, the vast majority of
taxi trips taken in NYC can be shared
with minimal passenger discomfort.
We also investigated the effects of the
sharing penetration rate which accounts
for the true fraction of passengers that

want to use a shared taxi service. We are

extending this analysis to other cities
(Singapore, Vienna, San Francisco, etc.)
to investigate whether similar sharing
opportunities arise in other urban contexts.

References:
[1] M. Gonzales, C. Hidalgo, A.L.
Barabasi, Understanding Individual
Human Mobility Patterns, Nature,
2008
[2] Z. Galil, Efficient Algorithms for
Finding Maximum Matching in
Graphs, ACM Comp. Surv. 1986.
Please contact:
Paolo Santi
Istituto di Informatica e Telematica and
MIT Senseable City Lab
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]

Integrated Electric Vehicles Sharing and Pooling

Mobility Solutions for Smart Cities
by Marie-Laure Watrinet, Grald Arnould, Hedi Ayed and Djamel Khadraoui
Integrating public transport systems with individual car-and-ride sharing concepts is considered as an
attractive, convenient and emissions reducing mobility concept in the frame of Smart Cities. The
pooling of mobility services is considered to be an important enabler of the Smart Cities concept,
especially with regards to achieving flexibility and integration with existing transport modes (mostly
public transport). Even if the levels of user acceptance towards new smart sustainability concepts are
still challenging their uptake, it is important to address ICT-related challenges to ensure adaptive
solutions are found to reduce complexities. This is especially relevant in the case of electro-mobility
related systems.
Tudor, via its mobility projects, has
developed a concept for sharing electric
vehicles (EVs) and cross-company optimization solutions. This concept aims to
increase sustainable resource productivity by sharing EVs across various
companies or organizations. This
approach is likely to increase the overall
usage of each vehicle but reduce costs
per kilometre and users. During the
work-day the vehicles are used for professional activities, but for the rest of the
time, they become a collective resource
that can be placed in carpooling mode.
Such a combined usage presents significant algorithmic complexity and solving
this so that an e-fleet can be used for
public and professional purposes is challenging, The actual concept was evalu26

ated via simulations of different scenarios using MATSIM, A multi-agent

approach was considered, where each
agent represented a traveler. A previous
national project, Moebius [1,2], provided the simulation data. The main
objectives were to validate the concept
of combined car-sharing and carpooling from the perspective of
resource optimization and find strategic
charging locations [3].
The EV sharing service concept presents users with a hop-on, hop-off
system that has demand responsive
fleet management (which includes predictions of what locations are going to
have the highest user needs). The
systems resources (e.g., EVs, e-bikes
and associated infrastructures) are

mutualized along with an information

system, the service and, in future,
public transport services.
The goal of the mutualisation concept
is to maximize the use of vehicles
across the day (both work and recreational times) but decrease the residual
cost of the EVs. This can be achieved
with an optimization algorithm [1] that
can minimize the required number of
vehicles at all times, based on planned
usage (determined using statistics and
simulation tools), real-time demand,
and third party companies that can
manage the fleets (by zones) with new
business models. EV sharing can also
be associated with other transport
means such as car-pooling and public
transport.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: Zac-eMovin mutualized mobility service

infrastructure

The experimentations
Two real experimentations (via two
European Regional Development Fund
(ERDF) projects called ZAC-eMovin
and Nordstad-eMovin) have been
deployed under the actual concept. The
first project is on the professional use of
shared EV fleets and infrastructure
between companies. The second
focuses on the citizen oriented integration of several types of e-mobility services. In both projects, a coherent
approach is considered, including the
use of public transportation systems and
the identification and integration of the
required IT services. Each project provide recommendations on the best way
to integrate e-mobility services, based
on in-depth analyses of relevant systems and user behaviours.
In the ZAC-eMovin project, employees
of the three project partners are using
the EV in their companys fleet for dayto-day professional travel as well as

Figure 2: Nordstad-eMovin mutualized mobility services

travels between home and work (and

visa versa). The goal of the project is to
mutualize the resources, EV and
charging infrastructure in an activity
zone between the companies.
The fleet management service relies on
a resource allocation algorithm which
take the limited range of EVs and their
charging periods into account, following which it optimizes the EV. The
service proposes public transport trips
instead of EV leases where possible,
and allows for resources to be shared
across the participants which guaranteeing safe data exchange and privacy.
The Nordstad-eMovin project is considering the shared usage of EVs and ebike in Nordstad (Luxembourg) from
the citizens perspective. This project is
also considering the integration of
public transport systems. Citizens can
use any of the three services offered by
the system in an integrated way: EV

Figure 3: Service mutualisation in three activity zones

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

short-time renting, e-bike renting or private vehicle charging. E-bikes are preferred for short-distance travel or when
there are heavy traffic conditions. EVs
can be used to go shopping, or for
longer-distance travel, depending on the
requirements of the user. A typical
usage could cover the last mile of travel
from the train station to work or home.
Resources will be mutualized to allow
for both the professional and private use
of the services.

Links:
http://www.nordstad-emovin.lu
http://www.zac-emovin.lu
References:
[1] H. Ayed, D.Khadraoui: Local
Search Algorithm for the Daily Car
Pooling Problem, International
Conference on Metaheuristics and
Nature Inspired Computing 2014
[2] H. Ayed, B. Gateau, D. Khadraoui:
Simulating daily mobility in
Luxembourg using multi-agenda based
system, 28th European Conference on
Modelling and Simulation 2014.
[3] G. Arnould, et al.: Modelling and
simulating a dynamic carpooling
system for improving citizens
mobility, International Journal on
Space-Based and Situated Computing,
Vol 1, 2013.
Please contact:
Marie-Laure Watrinet, Grald Arnould,
Hedi Ayed, Djamel Khadraoui
CRP Henri Tudor, Luxembourg
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected]
[email protected],
[email protected]
27

Special theme: Smart Cities

A Carpooling Recommendation System

in the Smartphone Age
by Marcell Fehr and Bertalan Forstner
Worldwide, the one billion cars in use emit enormous amounts of carbon dioxide. Potentially these
emissions could be drastically reduced if people shared their daily commutes. The idea of carpooling
has been around for a long time and already, millions of gallons of gas have been saved, but the
widespread adoption of this strategy is yet to come. Here, we introduce a carpooling service which is
easy to use and aims to minimize user effort, thus encouraging the switch to this smart,
environmentally friendly transportation option.
In recent history, cars have become our
primary choice of transport. However,
this high number of motor vehicles have
become a significant contributor to climate change, emitting approximately
five billion tons of carbon every year.
The transportation sector currently
accounts for approximately 15% of
overall greenhouse gas emissions, a
figure which grew by 45% between
1999 and 2007. While getting drivers to
swap the comforts of a car for public
transport seems like an unattainable
goal, encouraging them to carpool is a
more appealing prospect and with an
estimated 3.75 empty seats per car, per
trip [1], the efficiency potential is significant. Changing the mindset of car commuters might not be the task of computer science, but making carpooling
services more accessible definitely is. In
the era of smartphones, with location
tracking abilities and always-on connectivity, providing the public with an easyto-use recommendation system is no
longer impossible.
According to our vision here at the
Budapest University of Technology and
Economics, the ideal computer-aided
carpooling system should require very
little effort from the users. In the last two
years, research engineers at the
Department of Automation and Applied
Informatics developed the underlying
algorithms such a system would use, and
we describe that system below.
It depends on a light-weight application
runs constantly on the smartphones of
both the drivers and the passengers,
tracking their locations and learning
their transport usage habits. This data is
not uploaded to any server, but rather
movement patterns are extracted on the
phone itself using advanced, mobileoptimized algorithms. The recurring patterns, identified as routines, consist of a
day reference (i.e., what days of the
28

week they happen on), the approximate

time window (e.g., between 7:30 and
8:20) and the actual route typically
taken by the user.
When a user wants to either volunteer as
a driver or seek a ride, they can securely
upload their routines to a central server,
where the matching process takes place.
Here, the routines of the drivers and
passengers are compared to find good

Figure 1: An example of the proposed

carpooling system where Passenger Xs usual
departure and destination locations are
indicated with the blue markers. Following a
comparison process with drivers in the same
location, two possible carpooling suggestions
are identified (indicated by the red and green
tracks).

matches which are then suggested to the

user. For example, the usual departure
and destination locations of Passenger
X are indicated by blue markers in
Figure 1. After cross-comparing his
departure and destination preferences
with the morning routines of drivers in
the same area, the system found two
potential cars Passenger X may be able
to join (displayed by the red and green
tracks). Note that the full routes are
intentionally not shown since they considered sensitive, private information.
When Passenger X receives his suggested options, he can clearly see the
proposed pick-up and drop-off locations, as well as approximate timings.
He can also call the driver using the

phone icon displayed next to their

name.
This system assumes that arrival times
are strictly held on morning routes since
people are typically going to work at
this time. Conversely, with afternoon
routes, departure times are more important since users dont want to wait long
for their rides after work. Therefore,
when a carpooling search is performed
for the morning, the system considers
the distance between the drop-off and
destination points and (using a five kilometer per hour walking speed) calculates the possibility of being able to
walk to the destination and arrive before
the strict arrival time.
While these carpooling recommendations a very useful feature by themselves, the large set of learned routines
enable a much broader family of services. For example, in case of a traffic
jam or road works, the system is able to
identify their location(s) by identifying
the lower car speeds of drivers who usually take that route. Other regular route
users could then be automatically notified of such a disruption, thus enabling
them to leave at a different time or take
a different route. Our team is currently
working on supporting several usages
of this geo-social information.
Links:
http://amorg.aut.bme.hu/
http://www.internationaltransportforum
.org/2010/
Reference:
[1] Mayinger, F. (Ed.). Mobility and
Traffic in the 21st Century. Springer.
Please contact:
Marcell Feher
Budapest University of Technology
and Economics, Hungary
E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

A Smart Parking Campus:

An Example of Integrating Different Parking
Sensing Solutions into a Single Scalable System
by Enrique Moguel, Miguel ngel Preciado and Juan Carlos Preciado
Smart Parking is based on a software system that links hardware and software, with support from
Augmented Reality technologies, to provide an enhanced solution in the query of information regarding
parking spaces. Smart Parking responds to the need of people with disabilities who have to know the
availability of adapted parking spaces.
Under the promise of improving the
management and efficiency of cities, the
concept of Smart Cities has gained relevance over recent years. Local councils
have promoted individual Smart City
practices through investments in different sensor systems, infrastructures,
measurements and modernisation. An
enormous amount of data is now available, collected from sensors with different architectures and specifications.
The challenge in turning this into relevant information for citizens. This
project aimed to research and develop a
single framework for the design of an
integral Smart City strategy based on a
single plug&play scalable system and
diverse data sources.
The Quercus Software Engineering
Group, University of Extremadura in
collaboration with the Vodafone Spain
Foundation designed (2013) and
launched (2014) the first version of a
Smart City living lab at the Polytechnic
School of Cceres, thus transitioning it
into a Smart Campus. A campus environment features the majority of behaviours that occur across the broader city
environment.
One of the main problems that citizens
and municipalities face is the mobility

Table 1: The three types of data producers

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

and parking. This is the main motivation for the Smart Parking project. The
goal of this project was to design a lowcost single system that allowed for different data sources to connect in a
plug&play mode, being scalable and
mainly based on software engineering
techniques. This system would 1) offer
drivers real-time assistance to find
available parking spaces near them, 2)
know the occupation ratios for taking
decisions about parking space vehicle
occupancy and 3) provide useful information for disabled people who typically require more time to find free
parking spaces.

intelligence to the system using algorithms that transforms the data into relevant information; and the users (CONSUMERS) that query this information
in real-time.
The layer of the data producers (PRODUCERS) is formed by three types of
sensors which are outlined in Table 1.

In this context, sensors were installed in

the parking spaces of the Cceres
campus, using three different data
source technologies. We aim to compare reliability, costs, performance, and
other factors between the different technologies [1] in an empirical way to
determine which is best.

The data produced by the sensors are

sent to the server, where the occupancy
status of each parking spaces is stored.
This layer is responsible for providing
intelligence to the system, processing all
data captured and transforming them
into relevant information. Then the users
can access the services offered by the
system from any device with internet
access. They can check the real-time
occupancy status of parking spaces and
view the history of occupation. It is also
possible to know if a space is under- or
over-utlized. The Smart Parking
architecture is shown in Figure 1.

Hardware architecture
The architecture of the system is based
on a three-layer model, ProducersServer-Consumers, in which sensor
devices are responsible for producing
(PRODUCERS) and sending data to the
server [2]; the server (SERVER) gives

Software architecture
The software layer has been developed
using web engineering technologies
(WebRatio 7.1/HTML 5) and provide
access to any user from any device with
internet access. The main view of the
system is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 1: The hardware architecture of the Smart Parking system

29

Special theme: Smart Cities

Figure 2: Real-time view of the occupancy status for each parking space
in the campus parking lot.

Figure 3: Distribution of devices by type and status of parking spaces.

Augmented reality layer

In innovative addition has been development of an augmented reality system
[3] that provides the user with context to
around where the parking spaces are
placed. This differential technology
solution can help any user find the correct position of a parking space and its
occupancy status.

Figure 4: The augmented reality layer

which provides users additional spatial
context so that they can find the correct
parking space.

Conclusions and future lines

Developing a single plug&play scalable
multi-layer system has enabled us to
conceptualize the design of a Smart City
(parking dimension). This development
process was founded on our extensive
R&D of systems engineering but innovation opportunities that came from lessons learnt also played a key role. These
lessons were from experiences in a wide
range of fields including big data, cloud
computing, business intelligence, business analytics, data visualization, open
data and packed services.
This experience has allowed us to
manage Smart City concepts at the laboratory level and investigate different
software/hardware alternatives. A
system based on software engineering
offers a scalable and plug&play design
and at the sensing level we can develop
a low-cost product.
We are also managing cameras (available in Figure 3) which sense parking
places via software. In investigating this
avenue, we are seeking to maximise the
opportunities (i.e., cheaper infrastructure, more control about cars) but solve
the associated problems (i.e., more
server processing).
Acknowledgement:
Work funded by Spanish Contract
MIGRARIA - TIN2011-27340 at
Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion and
Gobierno de Extremadura (GR-10129)
and European Regional Development
Fund (ERDF)
30

Table 2: Results obtained in the sensors comparison.

Link: http://uex.be/SmartSpaces
References:
[1] G. Revathi, V.R.S.Dhulipala: Smart parking systems and sensors: A survey,
in proc.of Computing, Communication and Applications (ICCCA), Prag 2012,
p.1-5
[2] U.Mnni: Smart sensing and time of arrival based location detection in
Parking Management services, in proc. of Electronics Conference (BEC) 2010, p.
213-214.
[3] P. Pulli: Mobile Multimodal Virtual Reality for Personal Teleservices,
ERCIM News No.31, October 1997.
Please contact:
Enrique Moguel, University of Extremadura,, Spain.
E-mail: [email protected]
Miguel ngel, Preciado, Homeria Open Solutions, Spain.
E-mail: [email protected]
Juan Carlos, PreciadoUniversity of Extremadura, Spain.
E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Stochastic travel Planning for Unreliable Public

transportation Systems
by Tim Nonner, Adi Botea, Marco Laumanns
As part of an IBM First-Of-A-Kind project, the IBM research labs in Dublin and Zurich joined forces to
investigate planning approaches for unreliable and highly stochastic public transportation systems (PTS).
When commuting via public transport, a common problem is finding
the right direction. Typically getting
to the correct destination requires
several bus or train changes. Many
public transport providers, as well as
independent companies, offer online
planning tools to simplify this task.
The use of these tools usually
involves the user entering the origin
and destination locations for a given
journey along with nominating several preferences (e.g., maximum
number of interchanges). The results
then provide the user with a
sequence of directions, nominating
the different buses and trains that
must be taken. Ideally, multiple options
are suggested, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. For example,
Option 1 might present a route with a
short travel time, but requiring multiple
changes, Option 2 a slow but direct
route, and Option 3 may be the cheapest
option but it includes an extended wait
time at an intermediate stop. For any
given option, missing one step in the
sequence can result in the route
requiring re-planning to address the different conditions now faced by the user.
A traveller who is familiar with a PTS
might blend aspects from the variety of
solutions presented to develop their own
unique solution. This offers the user the
advantage of being able to adjust their
journey dynamically in response to their
own shifting needs. For example, if the
user misses a connecting bus, he/she
may be aware of an alternative bus
which also suits their current needs. This
dynamism is especially necessary if the
PTS is unreliable and features rule of
thumb scheduling or only publishes
vehicle frequencies as opposed to actual
times (e.g., three buses per hour vs. three
buses at 11:20am, 11:40am and
12:00pm).
Challenge and Policy-based Planning
Turning this intuitive planning approach
based on personal experiences into a stochastic planning tool presents an
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1: An example policy for travelling

from Stop A to Stop D.

ongoing challenge which the authors

have addressed using a number of different approaches. Instead of providing
a simple sequence of options to follow,
these approaches all suggest a tree of
options, called a policy. The policy outlined above (Figure 1) includes four
stops A, B, C and D: at each stop the
traveller can pick one of the provided
alternatives. For example, at Stop A the
user can select Bus 1 or Metro 1.
Choices can be made according to a
first-come-first-serve rule which is easy
to execute (even in an offline mode) or
to a more detailed timing regime which
might be supported by a smartphone
application. We have developed several
algorithms to compute such policies.
Drawing on the heuristic search used in
the Artificial Intelligence area, the first
algorithm uses a forward planning perspective (i.e., the user is at the beginning of their journey) [1] [2] and
attempts to factor in all the possible
events and options to find a policy that
is flexible within each situation. The
second algorithm, inspired by the classical shortest path algorithms, takes a
backward planning perspective using
dynamic programming techniques [3].
Thus, this algorithm iteratively builds
stochastic plans starting from the destination. Both the algorithms we developed are fast enough to allow for realtime application.

There is, of course, the need to build

an abstraction of reality in both
algorithms. For example, the stochastic behaviour of buses must be
simplified to make their movements
computationally
tractable.
Therefore, to make a final check and
comparison of the algorithms proposed solutions, we used a more
detailed simulation that aims to
more closely approximating the real
world. For example, tests undertaken on public transport timetable
data showed that waiting times can
be significantly decreased in many
cases by providing more alternatives
at each stop: in fact our results showed a
25% decrease in waiting time in 20% of
the scenarios considered. Therefore,
mainstreaming such policy-based planning approaches in every-day life would
significantly improve the user experience of many PTS.
Link:
http://resweb.watson.ibm.com/research
er/view_group_subpage.php?id=4130
References:
[1] A. Botea, E. Nikolova, M.
Berlingerio: Multi-modal journey planning in the presence of
uncertainty, in proc. of ICAPS'13,
AAAI, 2013.
[2] B. Chen, et al.: Uncertainty in
urban mobility: Predicting waiting
times for shared bicycles and parking
lots in proc. of ITSC'13, IEEE, 2013.
[3] T. Nonner: Polynomial-time
approximation schemes for shortest
path with alternatives in proc. of
ESA12, Springer, 2012.
Please contact:
Tim Nonner, Marco Laumanns
IBM Research - Zurich, Switzerland
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected]
Adi Botea
IBM Research - Dublin, Ireland
E-mail: [email protected]
31

Special theme: Smart Cities

A Quantitative Approach to the

Design and Analysis of Collective
Adaptive Systems for Smart Cities
by Maurice ter Beek, Luca Bortolussi, Vincenzo Ciancia, Stefania Gnesi, Jane
Hillston, Diego Latella and Mieke Massink
Its smart to be fair. Researchers from the Formal Methods and Tools group of ISTICNR are working on scalable analysis techniques to support smart applications for
the efficient and equitable sharing of resources in the cities of our future. The
research is being carried out under the European FET-Proactive project, QUANTICOL.
The Smart City concept is on the research
agenda of many European Union (EU)
and other international institutions and
think-tanks. As urban populations grow,
innovative information and communication technology (ICT) initiatives are seen
by many as one of the key factors that will
allow modern cities to reach or maintain a
good and sustainable quality of life for
their inhabitants, allowing for the timely
and equitable distribution of resources.

32

acting objects such as molecules in a gas.

The possibly non-linear behaviour of such
systems is conveniently modelled by a
deterministic approximation, i.e., the limit
for an infinite number of agents, given as
the solution of a set of differential equations (in the continuous case) or difference equations (in the discrete case). Their
combined application with modelchecking techniques provides a way to
verify properties of individual entities in
the context of a large system on which
they depend, but also properties of the
global system or combined local and
global properties. An example is the study
of the potential effects of user-incentives
on maintaining a satisfactory distribution
of bikes and empty parking slots over
time. The extension of these techniques to
address spatial aspects, including spatial
model-checking, is a major objective of
the project [2].

These ICT-based systems are based on

decentralised and distributed designs,
comprised of many autonomous and interacting entities, known as collective adaptive systems (CAS). CAS are required to
adapt their services seamlessly to the
changing needs of their users, who also
form an integral part of the system. They
typically consist of a large number of spatially distributed, heterogeneous entities
with decentralised control and varying
degrees of complex autonomous behaviour. This requires the development of
novel scalable analysis techniques to
investigate their dynamic behaviour and
support the design and operational management of a wide range of such systems.
In the QUANTICOL project [1], three
principal case studies drive the development of a design and analysis framework
for CAS: two smart urban transportation
systems (smart bus systems and bikesharing schemes) and smart grid applications. We present some of the QUANTICOL research performed at ISTI-CNR.

A further objective of QUANTICOL is to

study the relationships between (representations of) small populations and a compact (family) representation of a large
population built from these smaller populations, by indicating the commonalities
and variabilities of single entities in their
overall environment. As an initial step in
this direction, we performed variability
analyses on a bike-sharing product line,
considering its behaviour to exhibit variability, not only in the kind of features
involved but also in the timing and probability characteristics of these features.

In the first year of the project, we developed several scalable analysis techniques
that exploit mean field and fluid flow techniques, in combination with logic-based
model-checking, to support the investigation and prediction of dynamic resource
usage. Mean field techniques were originally developed in the field of statistical
physics to cope with the analysis of very
large scale systems composed of inter-

In this context, ISTI-CNR initiated a collaboration with PisaMo S.p.A. azienda

per la mobilit pisana, an in-house
public mobility company in the
Municipality of Pisa, that had recently
introduced a public bike-sharing system
(CicloPi) in Pisa. This led to an initial feature model of a family of bike-sharing
systems, annotated with attributes and
global quantitative constraints aiming to

Figure 1: public bike-sharing system

(CicloPi) in Pisa

minimize the total cost of a chosen configuration while simultaneously aiming

to maximize customer satisfaction and
capacity (of docking stations).
We have studied the specification and
analysis of the possible behaviour of a
family of bike-sharing systems in terms
of the capacity of their docking stations in
a value-passing modal process algebra,
considering a dynamic redistribution
scheme as an optional feature. Future
work includes studying a further parametric extension of the value-passing
modelling and verification environment
as well as the addition of a quantitative
dimension to the behavioural model.
QUANTICOL will run until March 2017
and is coordinated by Jane Hillston from
the University of Edinburgh (UK). Other
partners are EPFL (Switzerland), IMT
Lucca (Italy), University of Southampton
(UK), LMU (Germany), INRIA (France)
and ISTI-CNR (Italy). We thank Marco
Bertini from PisaMo S.p.A. for generously sharing his knowledge on bikesharing systems with us.
Links:
QUANTICOL: http://www.quanticol.eu/
PisaMo: http://www.pisamo.it
References:
[1] L. Bortolussi et al.: A Quantitative
Approach to the Design and Analysis of
Collective Adaptive Systems, FoCAS13,
Taormina, Sicily, Italy, 2013.
[2] J. Hillston: Challenges for
Quantitative Analysis of Collective
Adaptive Systems, TGC 2013, Buenos
Aires, 2013, Springer LNCS, Vol. 8358,
pp.14-21, 2014, DOI: 10.1007/978-3319-05119-2_1.
Please contact:
Mieke Massink, ISTI-CNR, Italy
E-mail: [email protected]
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Query-Driven Smart Grid City Management

by Stamatis Karnouskos
Cyber-physical systems underpin modern Smart Grids and Smart Cities. New approaches are
required to enable efficient, secure and decentralized use of the huge amount of generated data in
value-added applications. The SmartKYE project (www.smartkye.eu) is investigating such directions
for query-driven integration of Smart Grid City Systems.
We witness a revolution that capitalizes
on the prevalence of networked
(embedded) devices ranging from
simple ones, such as sensors, to complex
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), in order
to empower a new generation of innova-

tive anytime-anywhere services. The

CPS revolution enables system interconnection and fine-grained information acquisition at unprecedented
scales. The analytics of CPS data pave
the path towards informed real-time

Figure 1: The SmartKYE concept of query-driven integration and management

Figure 2: The SmartKYE architecture

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

decision making in complex infrastructures. For Smart Grid Cities this implies
innovative solutions [1] in energy management, sophisticated demandresponse (DR) and demand-side management (DSM), optimal resource
usage, reliability and security, new business opportunities etc. The Smart Grid
and its services [2] are seen as an integral part of the Smart City of the future.
Several ongoing efforts [1] strive
towards capitalizing on the hyper-connected information infrastructure and
the collaboration among the things,
services, and systems expected to exist
in the Smart City.
The SmartKYE project project goes
beyond existing efforts towards a realistic approach for future Smart Grid
Cities. Most research projects [1] that
deal with aspects of energy management are still focusing on core infrastructure issues that will enable them to
measure energy production and consumption and potentially manage it [3].
Some go a step further towards building
analytics and value-added services
based on the data acquired. Recent
advances in cloud computing and high
performance in-memory databases
tuned for delivering timely analytics
and various web tools/apps [3]
empower such efforts.
One key point that may be problematic,
however, is information ownership and
management. Most of the approaches
developed today assume usually centralized unconditional access to the data
[2]. This is a valid assumption within
the scope of an organization, such as an
energy provider, that controls the whole
value chain. However, in large-scale
infrastructures multiple such stakeholders will emerge with portions of the
data, and many are likely to be reluctant
to share their data unconditionally since
it represents a key asset and competitive
advantage of an enterprise. Hence, business models need to be extended to
include interactions among stakeholders that will deliver value-added
33

Special theme: Smart Cities

services without revealing all of the

data, i.e., that will reveal relevant
details without handing over an enterprises core advantages.
The SmartKYE project capitalizes
exactly on that vision. Contrary to currently overwhelmingly centralized
information gathering approaches,
SmartKYE considers a query-driven
interaction with the vast number of
stakeholders and their systems (as illustrated in Figure 1). A loosely coupled
infrastructure enables stakeholders to
join or leave the SmartKYE system,
and the core infrastructure data may
still be owned by the respective systems. To what extent and to what resolution such data is communicated to
other stakeholders, depends on the
queries issued and the willingness or
contract-based negotiated actions. By
not owning the data, and having an
infrastructure that intelligently handles
the communication between consumers
and producers of information, scalability can be achieved, as well as
coevolution at both ends. As depicted
in Figure 1, several stakeholders monitor and control parts of the smart grid
city infrastructure. As Figure 2 illustrates, the acquired information is gathered via various Energy Management
Systems (EMS) which also host control
capabilities for actuating the underlying infrastructure.

Each EMS has its own local view and

can operate autonomously from the
rest. In the cloud, the Open Energy
Services Platform (OESP) acts as the
glue among the disparate systems and
the information consumers who, in our
example case, are portrayed at the top
as the municipal information systems.
The OESP hosts several advanced
functionalities including: the capability
of accepting queries from the end-user
applications, disaggregating them to
see which EMS need to be addressed,
contacting the EMS to acquire the necessary information, aggregating the
answers, and delivering the information
as requested. The latter is done with
additional indicators on the quality of
data delivered. In addition, OESP
offers services via which management
actions can be undertaken on the infrastructure. Finally the end-users interact
via cockpits with the system. In
SmartKYE, as a proof of concept, two
cockpits are addressed with different
contexts:
the Business Cockpit (BC) targets the
municipal administrators and decision makers who can get high-level
information and can be assisted in
their decision processes; and
the Monitoring and Control Cockpit
(MCC) which targets the municipality
technical personnel and infrastructure
technical managers, by providing
them with fine-grained technical

information as well as control (management) capabilities.

References:
[1] V. Giordano, A. Meletiou, C. F.
Covrig, et al: Smart Grid projects in
Europe: Lessons learned and current
developments 2012 update, Joint
Research Center of the European
Commission, JRC79219, 2013
[2] S. Karnouskos, D. llic, P.
Goncalves Da Silva: Assessment of
an Enterprise Energy Service Platform
in a Smart Grid City Pilot, in IEEE
11th International Conference on
Industrial Informatics (INDIN),
Bochum, Germany, 2013
[3] S. Karnouskos, P. Goncalves Da
Silva, D. Ilic: Developing a Web
Application for Monitoring and
Management of Smart Grid
Neighborhoods, in IEEE 11th
International Conference on Industrial
Informatics (INDIN), Bochum,
Germany, 2013.
Link:
SmartKYE Project Web Site:
http://www.smartkye.eu
Please contact:
Stamatis Karnouskos
SAP, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]

U-Sense, A Cooperative Sensing System

for Monitoring Air Quality in Urban Areas
by Giuseppe Anastasi, Paolo Bruschi and Francesco Marcelloni
Air quality has a serious impact on public health, the environment and, ultimately the economy of
European countries. In this article we present U-Sense, a cooperative sensing system for real-time
and fine-grained air quality monitoring in urban areas. U-Sense allows for monitoring to occur in
places where people spend the majority of their day-to-day lives.
Air quality continues to be a serious
issue for public health, the environment
and ultimately, the economy of
European countries. Poor air quality
results in ill health and premature deaths
and damages ecosystems, crops and
buildings. Urban areas, where the
majority of Europeans live, are most
seriously affected. In recent years,
Europe has significantly reduced the
emissions of several air pollutants such
as sulphur dioxide (SO 2 ), carbon
34

monoxide (CO), benzene (C 6H 6) and

lead (Pb). However, particulate matter
(PM), ozone (O 3 ), nitrogen dioxide
(NO2) and some organic compounds
still represent a serious threat. The
report, Air Quality in Europe, published in October 2013 by the European
Environment Agency (EEA) [1]
describes the effects of air pollution on
health, ecosystems and the climate. It
also provides an overview of policies
and measures introduced in Europe to

improve air quality and minimize the

impacts of air pollution impacts.
Real-time, accurate monitoring of air
pollution levels in urban areas plays a
key role in enabling appropriate and
timely public health decisions to be
made and thus, is of paramount importance. Currently, air quality is typically
monitored through large and expensive
sensing stations, installed at strategic
locations (few) such as intersections.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

These stations do allow for accurate

monitoring but their limited spatial coverage means this information is
restricted to specific areas. In addition,
the sensing stations are managed by
public authorities which means that the
pollution data they gather are often not
publicly available. Citizens, however,
are typically interested in knowing the
air quality conditions in places which
are relevant to their daily lives such as
at home, school, work, or public
species.

Figure 1: The architecture of the

U-Sense system

With this need in mind, we have developed U-Sense, a cooperative sensing

system which allows for real-time, finegrained air quality monitoring in urban
areas (Figure 1). U-Sense relies on lowcost sensor nodes, equipped with appropriate gas sensors, which can be privately installed by citizens. The sensor
nodes are powered by batteries which
allow for flexible deployment and easy
relocation. Users can share their measurements using social networking
which enables cooperating sensing.
Data transfer can occur in a number of
different ways. For example, sensor
nodes can be connected directly to the
database through a home-based WiFi
router. Alternatively, data can be first
transferred to an intermediate relay
node and then on to the database. This
relay node can be the users smartphone
or, more commonly, any mobile agent
(e.g., a mobile relay node mounted on a
bus or taxi). The sensor nodes can only
transfer their locally acquired data when
the relay node comes nearby. Hence, an
opportunistic communication protocol
is used for data transfer. Data accumulated on the database can be used for
providing a number of community services through a variety of different user
interfaces (e.g., the Web, smartphone or
tablet). The range of services envisaged
include access to air quality data measured by individual sensor nodes at any
given location, the visualization of pollution maps and search facilities for less
polluted paths. The web-based user
interface for U-Sense is shown in
Figure 2.
The U-Sense project is still in progress.
We have completed the software implementation component and we have
deployed a number of sensor nodes in
across our city (Pisa, Italy). Libelium
Waspmote sensor nodes have been used
for this testing phase which are
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 2: Web-based user interface for the U-Sense system.

equipped with a sensor board that

allows for the following air quality
parameters to be measured: CO (carbon
monoxide), CO2 (carbon dioxide), NO2
(nitrogen dioxide), O 3 (ozone), VOC
(volatile organic compound), temperature and humidity.
This research activity is being undertaken as part of the SMARTY Project,
funded by the Regional Government of
Tuscany using European funds. The
project aims to develop innovative services for sustainable transport and
mobility in smart cities. Along with the
University of Pisa, the University of
Florence and a number of small and
medium enterprises are contributing to
this project.

Reference:
[1] European Environment Agency,
Air quality in Europe - 2013 Report,
October 2013. Available at:
http://www.eea.europa.eu/publications/
air-quality-in-europe-2013.
Link:
http://www.iet.unipi.it/~anastasi/
Please contact:
Giuseppe Anastasi
Dept. of Information Engineering,
University of Pisa,
Tel: +39 050 2217 559
E-mail: [email protected]

35

Special theme: Smart Cities

Monitoring and Controlling Energy-positive

Public Lighting: the E+grid System
by Balzs Csand Csji, Borbla Hy, Andrs Kovcs, Gianfranco Pedone, Tibor Rvsz, and Jzsef
Vncza
The concepts of smart cities and self-sustaining renewable energy systems are revolutionizing the
world of public lighting. This paper presents the architecture of a novel, adaptive and energy-positive
outdoor lighting system, as well as the IT solutions that control and monitor the operation of the
whole system.
This research was motivated by the
potential opportunities to use renewable,
solar energy in public lighting services
via the appropriate combination of LED
luminaries, energy generation and
storage, as well as sensor technologies
with novel data processing, communication and control methods. To this end,
an industry-academy consortium formed
by GE Hungary, the Budapest
University of Technology and
Economics, and two institutes of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MFA
and SZTAKI) developed a so-called
energy-positive community microgrid
(E+grid). E+grid balances energy
demand against production and guarantees the required level of street lighting
even at times of moderate-duration
power outages. In this article, we outline
the key aspects of the information, communication and control features of the
E+grid system.
System architecture
The E+grid system reduces the energy
consumption of street lighting by using
LED luminaries that regulate their
lighting levels according to the surrounding environmental conditions, thus
providing just the required level of
lighting at all times. This is achieved by
mounting motion sensors and smart controllers to each light pole, which are then
connected by wireless communication.
A positive yearly energy balance is
achieved by photovoltaic (PV) energy
generation, whereas protection against
power outages is guaranteed by battery
storage. The system has a bi-directional
grid connection, which enables trading
with electricity and can be used to
exploit variable energy tariffs. Energy
flows are monitored by smart meters. A
local weather station collects weather
data and hosts a twilight switch which
allows for the lighting periods to
respond to the current environmental
conditions. The overall system (Figure
1) is monitored and controlled by a cen36

tral computer (CC): black connectors

indicate power flow while red lines
show information flow (smart meters
are not depicted).

nization process, whereas the control

of the outdoor lighting system is delegated to a specific lighting scheduler.

The central computer

The CC of E+grid, an innovative clouddeployed software application, is one of
the key orchestrators of the system,
enabling the adaptive lighting behaviour. Its core functions include:
which are delivered by a web application and the extensive use of
JavaScript. The graphical user interface (GUI) (Figure 2) provides
friendly access to, among others, the
geographic information system (GIS)
of the installed luminaries, the management of the energetic components
and the visual analysis and export of
the collected data; and
which enable the outer platform components to communicate with the CC.
These are provided through a dedicated layer which is responsible both for
handling the connections and validating the semantics. Each component is
assisted by a proper data synchro-

Controlling the energy flow

One of the main roles of the CC is controlling the energy flow, not only for
minimizing the total energy cost, but
also for ensuring the robustness against
power outages through the use of battery storage. To achieve this, energy
production and consumption must be
forecasted. This is carried out by fitting
time series models to the available data
[1]. An assessment of several different
models showed that good predictions of
energy production can be obtained
using nonlinear autoregressive exogenous (NARX) models. These models
use wavelet-type nonlinearities, where
the exogenous components come from a
clear-sky model. Efficient energy consumption forecasts can also be achieved
using Box-Jenkins type models, where
the exogenous inputs come from averaged historical data. The controller
itself uses a model-predictive approach

Figure 1: Architecture of the E+grid system

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

panels in order to evaluate their longterm performance under real-life environmental conditions.
Acknowledgement
This project has been supported by
grants from the National Development
Agency, Hungary, under contract numbers KTIA KMR 12-1-2012-0031 and
NF ED-13-2-2013-0002. B. Cs. Csji
acknowledges the support of the Jnos
Bolyai Research Fellowship No.
BO/00683/12/6.
Reference:
[1] B. Cs. Csji, A. Kovcs, J. Vncza:
Prediction and robust control of
energy flow in renewable energy
systems, in proc. of the 19th IFAC
World Congress, to appear, 2014.
Figure 2: A graphical user interface (GUI) of the central computer

and works on a rolling-horizon where

each time step involves solving a linear
optimization problem [1].
Prototype system
The E+grid system design has been validated through simulation experiments
which confirmed that the system can

achieve a slightly positive yearly energy

balance. A physical prototype, containing 130 luminaries and 152 m2 of
PV panels is currently being deployed at
the campus of the MFA Institute of the
Hungarian Academy of Sciences. This
prototype adopts three different battery
technologies and four types of PV

Please contact:
Andrs Kovcs
Fraunhofer PMI, SZTAKI, Hungarian
Academy of Sciences, Hungary
Tel: + 36 1 279 6299
E-mail: [email protected]

Demand-Side Management in Smart

Micro-Grids: An Optimization Perspective
by Talbi El-Ghazali
With the smart grid revolution, the energy consumption of houses will play a significant role in the
energy system. Indeed, home users are responsible for a significant portion of the worlds energy
needs but market prices for this energy remain inelastic (i.e., energy demands do not follow energy
prices). Thus, the performance of the whole energy generation and distribution system can be
improved by optimizing the management of household energy use. There are a number of
challenges associated with this goal including cost, the environmental considerations, user comfort
and the presence of multiple decision makers (e.g., the end users and energy operators).
The smart micro-grid is an integrated
system which supports distributed
energy resources and multiple electrical
loads but operates as a single power grid
[1]. It is a smaller version of the traditional electrical grid or the smart digitalized grid which working independently
of, or interconnected with, a larger
existing power network. Smaller scale
grids can deliver a wide range of
improvements including greater reliability, fewer line losses, better fail recoveries, increased energy efficiencies,
carbon emission reductions, reduced
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

demands on the transmission infrastructure, cost reductions. Finally, it introduces the possibility of using alternative
energy sources because more localized
sources of power generation can be
relied on. The global interest in
reducing fuel consumption in favor of
renewable energies has been a catalyst
for the growth in the use of smart microgrids. They are an ideal way to integrate
renewable resources at the community
level and allow for customer participation in the electricity enterprise. They
enable electricity to be locally gener-

ated, distributed and electricity flows to

consumers to be regulated.
A smart building system has its own
micro-grid and some decentralized
resources (e.g., a wind generator, CHP
generator, boiler, thermal storage and
electrical storage), to provide the basic
electricity needs (Fig.1). It may also
feature a grid connection which allows
it to obtain electricity during peak hours
or sell electricity (back to the grid)
when surplus electricity is generated.
Electric micro-grids are also regarded
37

Special theme: Smart Cities

as a security mechanism as they ensure

homes have access to energy during
events such as weather-related blackouts or military attacks. All of these
benefits are stimulating an increased
demand worldwide for micro-grids
which are being applied in a variety of
contexts including campus and residential environments, military sectors and
commercial and industrial markets. The
global market for micro-grids topped
$5billion in 2011, according to the 2013
Microgrid Market Report and is it
seems likely this figure will reach $27
billion by 2022.
Optimization perspective
With the Smart Grid revolution, the
energy consumption of households will
play a significant role in the energy
system. Indeed, home users are responsible for a significant portion of the
worlds energy needs but market prices
for this energy remain inelastic (i.e.,
energy demands do not follow energy

according to time of day). The Smart

Homes of the future will include
automation systems which may simultaneously provide lower energy consumption costs and a comfortable and
secure living environment for end users.
Residential users are expected to play a
key role in improving network efficiency,through the adoption of intelligent mechanisms that manage energy
demand. These days, most electricity
consumers act as price takers with flat
rates and no acknowledgement of the
differences that exist in electricity
prices. Therefore, they dont have any
incentives to adjust their electricity consumption patterns. However, consumers
can optimally adjust their energy consumptions by participating in a house
management program which seeks to
minimize electricity bills. To achieve
this end goal, consumers must respond
to shifting electricity prices and
redesign their consumption patters to
match with periods of lower electricity

users requirements, there is potential

for reducing peak demand periods. As
all electricity grids require a minimum
energy generation capacity so as to prevent failures and power cuts, overall
grid costs might be reduced if peak
demands can also be reduced. Peak
shaving, as this phenomena is known,
reduces the burden on the central grid
and any upgrade expenses which may
be incurred to ensure the grid can fulfill
increasing energy demands. Finally, it
also offers savings to both the utility
companies and customers by reducing
the need for generation capacity and
energy amounts the utility companies
must purchase on the open market
during peak demand periods to prevent
failures and power cuts. Thus, reducing
the global contractual peak would bring
multiple advantages, not just to the electric grid but also to residential users and
energy retailers. In the DOLPHIN
project, these challenges have been formulated as multi-objective optimization
problems.
Energy prices have to be defined not
only to retrieve their production costs
but also to understand consumer
behavior. Consumers choose their services or energy providers with the aim of
minimizing their disutility values. A
failure to recognize this may lead to significant revenue losses. To ensure this
hierarchical and multi-objective decision process is captured, where the
leader (energy provider) explicitly takes
the reaction of a follower (consumer)
into account in their decision process,
the energy pricing and management
problems can be formulated as bi-level
multi-objective problems [2].

Figure 1: Demand-side management in a smart home.

prices). Thus, the performance of the

whole energy generation and distribution system can be improved by optimizing the management of household
energy use. Smart Grid technologies
have been deployed in a variety of contexts including smart sensors on distribution lines, smart meters in homes,
advanced metering, transmission efficiencies, smart switches, enhanced
demand response capabilities, distribution automation, electric vehicle integration and integrated communication
systems. These pave the way for the
creation of smart self-managing energy
grids within a time varying pricing
scheme (i.e., where prices may vary
38

prices. The user can define the earliest

and the latest starting times that a
service can be processed, with a utility
value identified for each time slot which
indicates his or her comfort expectations. Thus, the challenge for the household energy management is to calculate
when the optimal starting point occurs
across the different household appliances in order to minimize energy costs
for the user whilst maximize their satisfaction. In addition to reducing the
energy bills of single users, joint management of multiple users can also be
advantageous. If energy consumption
tasks occurring across multiple homes
can be scheduled, based on the suite of

References:
[1] J. Ekanayake et al: Smart grid:
Technology and applications, Wiley
2012.
[2] E. Alekseeva, L. Brotcorne, E-G.
Talbi: A new exact method finding a
feasible solution for the bi-level energy
pricing problem with two objectives at
the lower level, in META2014,
Marrakech Morocco, October 2014.
Please contact:
Talbi El-Ghazali
University of Lille, Inria, CNRS,
France
E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Cyber Physical Systems give Life

to the Internet of Energy
by Giampaolo Fiorentino and Antonello Corsi
A new overlay network which runs on top of the electricity grid, puts together old and new renewable
energy sources, giving life to the Internet of Energy. A coordinated and controlled Internet of Things will
optimize the Distribution Grid Control and the Demand Side Management (DSM) based on business,
comfort and occupancy dynamic, introducing the autonomous intelligent Commercial Prosumer Hub.
The introduction of new kinds of energy
mixes to the electricity grid is a challenging environmental task for present
and future generations as they fight the
pollution and global warming issues
associated with urbanization. Individual
appliances and whole buildings that continuously incorporate local intelligence
which originates from the new technologies of Internet Of Things (IoT) are the
new infrastructure that this integration
will be based on. Smart Electricity Grids
are becoming more intensively integrated with tertiary building energy
management systems and distributed
energy generators such as wind and
solar. Optimal energy management
strategies require the ability to control
and predict energy consumption incorporating all types of DER (distributed
energy resources), at both local and
global scales.
The INERTIA project
In the context of the EU FP7- ICT
project INERTIA, a consortium of 10
complementary partners from six different European Countries aims at
addressing the important challenges that
future energy systems will face by
building a new modelling methodology
that integrates physical components and
cyber technologies, thus creating Cyber
Physical Energy Systems. The
INERTIA project works on the definition of a new data management infrastructure to allow electricity production
and consumption to be measured,
reported and controlled, delivering an
efficient Distribution Grid overlay control/management infrastructure (Figure
1). This new infrastructure will maximize the response capacity of the vast,
small-commercial prosumer base (e.g.,
tertiary buildings, offices, etc.), presenting incentives and delivering benefits through their automated active participation in the energy market.
INERTIA extends the DSM strategies by
incorporating various types of DER
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

going beyond simple consumer loads,

and treats both local generation and
consumption under a single unified
framework. The concept of DER flexibility will also be extended to incorporate various local context parameters,
which affect DER operation and per-

formance, as well as potential capacity

of DER to provide flexible services to
the Distribution Grid. This model
includes the impact of communication
networks and further, cyber components
as well as the relevant information of
the physical system.

Figure 1 - The concept behind the INERTIA project. The overlay network will have the task of
balancing distributed energy resources (micro-generation, RES, energy storage systems and
demand) in the grid through the intelligent mining of energy flexibility, as a balancing power
between local generation and local demand.

Figure 2: Holistic flexibility engine - This component is able to integrate and provide forecast
energy consumption providing a real time tool for integrating medium voltage points of the net
in the new smart grid energy.

39

Special theme: Smart Cities

The INERTIA framework

The old approach [1, 2] was to try to
align consumption by asking consumers
to reduce their power usage rather than
increasing the power generation facilities. Under this approach, consumers
that cooperated might receive incentive
payments from the power company. In
comparison, the INERTIA project
claims to solve this issue using IoT technologies to expand DR services based
on the analysis of users historical interactions with the lighting, HVAC and
other appliances controls. This has been
realized calculating energy consumption, flexibility and forecast demand
using a holistic flexibility model, which
calculates several key performance indicators which can be categorized in
Business, Energy, Comfort and
Flexibility. Furthermore, real-time
employee activities including arrival
and departure times and meetings attendance (Figure 2) are also simulated.
Besides, INERTIA takes into account
how demand response can change the
end user comfort using a Bayesian formalism. This formalism is applied to
infer the probability that any environmental situation should be considered
by the user as environmentally uncomfortable, defining the upper and lower

limits of the energy flexibility that can

be offered to the whole energy system.
So, the holistic flexibility model is able
to safeguard the electricity grid, facing a
trade-off between energy provided by
the local generation facility and consumers consumption. In this respect,
the holistic flexibility model generates
the suitable energy demand strategy
deploying DSM operations, which takes
into account the final users comfort.
The comfort is evaluated also by the
facility manager selected to enroll a
specific DR program

usage scenarios (occupancy rates) can be

implemented to compute energy consumption and identify available flexibilities from DER. This could be conducted
in a non-invasive way that would respect
the comfort of the end user.
Acknowledgments
This work was partially supported by
the EU project INERTIA - Integrating
Active, Flexible and Responsive
Tertiary Prosumers into a Smart
Distribution Grid (FP7-ICT-2011-8,
Grant Agreement No. 318216).
Link: http://www.inertia-project.eu/

Conclusion
New IoT technologies are essential for
implementing electrical power systems
in Smart Cities and reducing environmental impacts and social costs. At the
moment, appliances can self-adjust to
consume less power or even turn themselves off. Using the data collected from
all the devices, algorithms can calculate
the exact energy demand so to reduce the
need for standby generation. Over time,
generation can be automatically shifted
according to predicted increases and
decreases in demand. Morover, a framework that receives input from relevant
sources such as weather information,
heating, cooling, lighting equipment and

References:
[1] A Di Giorgio, L Pimpinella: An event
driven Smart Home Controller enabling
consumer economic saving and
automated Demand Side Management
[2] P Palensky, D Dietrich: - Industrial
Informatics, IEEE , 2011 - Demand side
management: Demand response,
intelligent energy systems, and smart loads
Please contact:
Giampaolo Fiorentino, Antonello Corsi
R&D Lab - Engineering Ingegneria
Informatica S.p.A, Italy
E-mail: {giampaolo.fiorentino,
antonello.corsi}@eng.it

When Smart Cities meet Big Data

by Vincenzo Gulisano, Magnus Almgren and Marina Papatriantafilou
Sharing information is a key enabler in the transition of a city becoming smart. Information,
generated by the ICT backbone of a city, and maintained by distinct public and private entities,
comes with processing challenges that must be addressed in order to increase citizens quality of
life and make their cities sustainable. In CRISALIS and SysSec, we investigate such challenges
from a security perspective in order to protect and enhance smart cities sensitive infrastructures.
The possibilities enabled by Information
and Communication Technologies
(ICTs) are driving the evolution and
transition of cities to Smart Cities. The
ultimate goal is to increase the awareness of citizens, companies and authorities and improve their quality of life
while also making it sustainable. A considerable number of research directions
embrace Smart Cities: users' privacy
protection [1], detection of malicious
actions and misuses and users' awareness through social media. More
research efforts are dedicated to specific
features of a Smart City. As an example,
the energy forecast techniques used to
40

predict consumption and allow the

usage of alternative energy resources
(e.g., solar or wind power) to be scheduled. What all these research fields have
in common is their dependency on the
(possibly sensitive) data produced by
the devices forming the Internet of
Things (IoT) of a city. The possibilities
enabled by Smart Cities demand for
novel data processing paradigms to
form the expertise of public and private
companies. Based on our experience
with both academic and industrial partners, in this article we discuss some of
the challenges associated with data processing in Smart Cities.

Scalable and online access to the

data
In a Smart City, millions of messages
will be exchanged on a daily basis by
hundreds of thousands of devices (e.g.,
mobile phones, electrical meters,
weather stations, etc.). For example,
more than 1.2 million messages are
exchanged on a daily basis within an
AMI infrastructure (owned by one of
our industrial partners) that covers a
metropolitan area with roughly 600,000
inhabitants [2]. The information generated by such devices could be matched
and joined to enhance the management
of Smart Cities. For example, energy or
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 1:
Key enablers

water losses caused by faulty devices

could be reduced by matching the consumption measured by users meters
with the one measured by other utilities
systems. To this end, on-the-fly processing of data becomes all the more
important while traditional store-thenprocess approaches in which each company retrieves its data and stores it in
order to access it sometime in the future
might be no longer appropriate.
Think in a distributed and parallel
fashion
Smart Cities will be composed of several independent networks (even within
the same stakeholder). Hence, no centralized application will embrace the
information carried by the messages
exchanged by the devices. At the same
time, the huge volume of information
shared by ICT devices will make parallel processing a necessity [3]. To this
end, pushing the analysis closer to the
sources of information would be a natural way of analyzing the messages
exchanged by them and leverage the
information they carry. Challenging
aspects in this context will be imposed

by the constrained resources of such

devices.
Validate, estimate and protect the
data
Cheap, resource-constrained devices
are largely employed to build the networks that will form the IoT of a Smart
City. Unfortunately, the data measured
and reported by such devices (e.g.,
energy consumption readings) is usually noisy and lossy. Reasons of this are
not limited uniquely to the devices
themselves (e.g., faulty or badly calibrated devices, lossy or overloaded
communication channels) but can also
be caused by (possibly malicious) citizens. As an example, incorrect consumption readings could be manipulated by malicious users aiming to
lower their bills. To this end, validation
schemes, estimation schemes and security countermeasures must be adopted
in order to ensure that who leverages the
information is not mislead by incorrect,
partial or malicious data.
The shift from cities to Smart Cities
depends on the efficiency with which

information is shared among citizens

and private and public companies. This
information brings challenges, and, following the big data revolution, novel
processing schemes must be adopted to
enable the possibilities that exist of this
domain. All the possibilities enabled by
smart cities, like improved quality of
life or energy efficiency, shall build on
top of efficient data processing and
users privacy protection schemes.
CRISALIS may be contacted at [email protected]. SysSec may
be contacted at the corresponding [email protected], followed in
twitter (twitter:syssecproject) and
Facebook
(http://www.facebook.com/SysSec).
References:
[1] V. Tudor, M. Almgre, M.
Papatriantafilou: Analysis of the
Impact of Data Granularity on Privacy
for the Smart Grid, in proc. of
WPES13
[2] Z. Fu et al.: Managing your Trees:
Insights from a Metropolitan-Scale
Low-Power Wireless Network, in
proc. of CCSES14, held in
conjunction with the INFOCOM 2014
[3] V. Gulisano, M. Almgren, M.
Papatriantafilou: METIS: a Two-Tier
Intrusion Detection System for
Advanced Metering Infrastructures, in
ACM e-Energy, 2014.
Please contact:
Vincenzo Gulisano
Chalmers, Sweden
E-mail: [email protected]

cItyAM: Managing Big Urban Data

for Analyzing and Modelling Cities
by Alessandro Bozzon, Claudia Hauff and Geert-Jan Houben
As we race towards fully connected living environments at full speed, urban stakeholders and decision
makers are demanding analytic solutions that are able to provide actionable insights about citizens
and their interactions with these environments. The Web Information Systems group at Delft
University ofTechnology responded to this challenge by developing cItyAM, an integrated platform that
supports the analysis and modelling of urban data. This data is received from a wide range of sources
including social media, (social) sensors, open government data and a multiple knowledge repositories.
An open and extendable urban analytics
platform, cItyAM is designed to cope
with big urban data, providing stakeholder and decision makers with a set of
tools to 1) integrate and analyze various
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

urban data types and 2) model, engage

and interact with people in urban spaces.
In view of the trend toward making
cities fully connected and rising urban

population densities, cItyAM provide

the wherewithal to exploit big urban
data, thus allowing urban phenomena
to be mapped (e.g., the mobility, environmental, sustainability and social
41

Special theme: Smart Cities

aspects associated
lifestyles).

with

urban

The cItyAM platform has been developed as part of a research initiative

started by the Web Information Systems
group at the Delft University of
Technology in 2012. It was driven and

inspired by several European- and

national-level initiatives including the
City Data Fusion EIT ICT Lab project
(conducted in collaboration with
Politecnico di Milano, CNR Pisa,
SIEMENS, and Telecom Italia), the
Amsterdam Institute for Advanced
Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) initia-

Figure 1: The role of the cItyAM platform

Figure 2: The Amsterdam Social Dashboard, developed on top of the cItyAM platform for the
Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS) opening day.

42

tive (which includes WAGENINGEN

UR, MIT, TNO, and other societal and
industrial partners), the SHINE project,
the ImReal EU FP7 project, and the
COMMIT SEALINCMedia project
(conducted in collaboration with the VU
Amsterdam, CWI, the Rijksmuseum,
and others), as well as the experience
gained from the spinoff activities around
Twitcident. The goal of the cItyAM platform is to progress urban data management, by advancing our ability to feel
the pulse of cities: it provides methodologies and systems for data fusion,
analysis and visualization.
The cItyAM platform capitalizes on the
experience of the Web Information
System group and employs four main
pillars:
1. Semantic user modelling techniques,
drawn from the experiences gained
during the ImReal project [1], and in
this project tailored to the needs and
features of urban citizen modelling. It
allows for the semantically enriched
analysis of conversations and activities which take place on social media
channels (e.g., Twitter, Instagram and
Foursquare).
2. Crowdsourcing and crowdsensing
techniques for data collection, refinement and verification, integration and
interpretation and processing. Cityassociated data can be patchy, noisy
and disparate. Creating city related
knowledge is driven by an extendable
set of social sensing tools, like the
CrowKnow system. Automatic techniques for data cleansing and linking
often fail to achieve the levels of
accuracy required for the effective
fusion of urban data. Crowd-sourcing
this cleansing and linking function is
emerging as an effective means to
solve the task when automatic methods fail.
3. Expert finding and crowd engagement strategies, developed within the
COMMIT SEALINCMedia project
[2] which actively drive the routing
and engagement of citizens upon
request from stakeholders. An example of this is when a crowdsensing
campaign is initiated. The cItyAM
incorporates incentive and engagement techniques that are specifically
designed for urban environments and
life styles.
4. Using the semantic data integration
techniques that were also developed
in the context of the ImReal project,

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

cItyAM can interface with a broad

range of data sources. The RDFGears
framework [3] allows for the integration, publication and retrieval of data
coming from physical sensors, crowds
and existing knowledge repositories
such as DBpedia and Freebase.
Selected components of the cItyAM
platform have been deployed in the last
two years to monitor and analyze cityscale events like the Milano Design
Week, the Lucca Comics & Games, the
Dutch Kings Day and others. In the
future, we plan to deploy cItyAM as a
continuous service operating in multiple
cities around the world. In the context of
Amsterdam, for instance, we plan to
integrate with urban data sources managed by the municipality to support
studies on urban mobility and social city

life. In Rotterdam, the plan is to create

social sensing solutions for water management, with a specific focus on emergency management for flooding events.
Finally, we plan to provide a 24/7 social
recommendation service covering the
EXPO 2015 event in Milan.
Links:
http://citydatafusion.org
http://www.ams-amsterdam.com/
http://direct.tudelft.nl/shine-117.html
http://www.imreal-project.eu
http://www.commit-nl.nl
http://twitcident.com
http://www.wis.ewi.tudelft.nl/CroKnow
http://www.wis.ewi.tudelft.nl/researchlines/rdfgears

References:
[1] Qi Gao, et al.: A Comparative
Study of Users Microblogging
Behavior on Sina Weibo and Twitter,
UMAP 2012
[2] J. Oosterman, et al.: Crowd vs.
experts: nichesourcing for knowledge
intensive tasks in cultural heritage,
WWW (Companion Volume) 2014
[3] M. Grabowski, J. Hidders, J. Sroka:
Representing MapReduce,
Optimisations in the Nested Relational
Calculus, BNCOD 2013
Please contact:
Alessandro Bozzon, Claudia Hauff,
Geert-Jan Houben
TU Delft, The Netherlands
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected],
[email protected]

Urban-Scale Quantitative Visual Analysis

by Josef Sivic and Alexei A. Efros
Urban-scale quantitative visual analysis opens up new ways Smart Cities can be visualized,
modelled, planned and simulated by taking into account large-scale dynamic visual inputs from
a range of visual sensors.
Map-based street-level imagery, such as
Google Maps with Street View, provides
a comprehensive visual record of many
cities around the world. For example,
the visual appearance of Paris has been
captured in almost 100,000 publically
available Street View images. We estimate there are approximately 60 million
Street View images for France alone,
covering all the major cities. In the near
future, additional visual sensors are
likely to become more wide-spread, for
example, cameras are being built into
most newly manufactured cars. Another
increasing trend is the ability for individuals to continuously capture their
daily visual experiences using wearable
mobile devices such as the Google
Glass. Collectively, all this data provides
large-scale, comprehensive and dynamically updated visual records of urban
environments.
Automatic analysis of urban visual data
The next opportunity lies in developing
automatic tools that allow for the largescale quantitative analysis of the available urban visual records. Imagine a scenario where we could provide quantitative answers to questions like:
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

What are the typical architectural elements that characterize the visual
style of a city (e.g., window or balcony type)? (Figure 1a)
What is their geo-spatial distribution?
(Figure 1b)?
How does the visual style of an area
evolve over time?
What are the boundaries between
visually coherent areas in a city?
These examples just touch on the range
of interesting questions that can be
posed regarding the visual style of a
city. Other types of questions concern
the distribution of people and their
activities For example, how does the
number of people and their activities at
a particular place evolve during a day,
the seasons or years? Or perhaps you
might want to know the make-up of
activities on a given street: the presence
of tourists sightseeing, locals shopping,
the elderly walking their dogs, or children playing. This type of data can also
be used to respond to significant urban
issues, for example, what are the major
causes of bicycle accidents?

New applications
To progress the way we can respond to
these types of questions would open-up
new ways Smart Cities can be visualized, modelled, planned and simulated
by taking large-scale dynamic visual
inputs from a range of visual sensors
into account. Some examples of how
this data might be applied include:
the real-time quantitative mapping
and visualization of existing urban
spaces [1] to support architects and
decision makers (Figure 1),
the ability to predict and model the
evolution of cities [3] (e.g., land-use
policies and the way they impact on
the visual appearances of different
neighbourhoods),
obtaining detailed dynamic semantic
city-scale 3D reconstructions and
using them to simulate different environmental scenarios, e.g., levels of
noise, energy consumption or illumination, and
the analysis of human activities, e.g.,
evaluating the future success of a
restaurant or the need of to introduce
new traffic security measures.

43

Special theme: Smart Cities

Figure 1: Quantitative visual analysis of urban environments from street view imagery [1].
1a: Examples of architectural visual elements characteristic of Paris, Prague and London, identified through the analysis of thousands of Street
View images. 1b: An example of a geographic pattern (shown as red dots on the map of Paris) of one visual element, balconies with cast-iron
railings, showing their concentration along the main boulevards. This type of automatic quantitative visual analysis has a potentially significant
role in urban planning applications.

The challenge of urban-scale visual

analysis
Impressive demonstrations of the
analysis of large-scale data sets have
already started to appear in other scientific disciplines. In natural language
processing, an analysis of more than 5
million books published between 1800
and 2000 revealed interesting linguistic,
sociological and cultural patterns [2]. In
the visual domain, however, a similar
large-scale analysis has yet to be
demonstrated. As visual data and computational resources are becoming more
widely available, the key scientific
challenge now lies in developing powerful models which can competently
meet the spatio-temporal, widely distributed and dynamic characteristics of
this visual data. For example, while the
vocabulary and grammar of written text
are well defined, there is no accepted
visual vocabulary and grammar that
captures the subtle but important visual
differences in architectural styles, or the
different visual appearances of human
activities on city streets.
Example: quantitative analysis
of architectural style
In this first phase of investigation, we
considered quantitative visual analysis
of architecture style [1]. Using the large
repository of geo-tagged imagery, we
sought to find a way of automatically
identifying which visual elements, e.g.,
windows, balconies and street signs
define a given geo-spatial area (in this
44

case Paris). This is a tremendously difficult task as the differences between the
distinguishing features of different
places can be very subtle. We were also
faced with a difficult search problem:
given all the possible patches in all the
possible images, which patches are both
geographically informative and occur
frequently? To address these issues, we
proposed a discriminative clustering
approach which took into account the
weak geographic supervision. We show
that geographically representative
image elements can be discovered automatically from Google Street View
imagery in a discriminative manner. We
applied the algorithm on image datasets
from 12 cities (Paris, London, Prague,
Barcelona, Milan, New York, Boston,
Philadelphia, San Francisco, San Paulo,
Mexico City and Tokyo), with each
dataset featuring approximately 10,000
images. An example of the results was
discussed above (and illustrated in
Figure 1). This example demonstrates
that these learnt elements are visually
interpretable and perceptually geoinformative. We further demonstrate
that the identification of these elements
can support a variety of urban-scale
quantitative visual analysis tasks, such
as mapping architectural correspondences and influences within and across
cities, or finding representative elements at different geo-spatial scales [1].

Link:
CityLab@Inria Project Lab on Smart
Cities: http://citylab.inria.fr
References:
[1] C. Doersch, S. Singh, A. Gupta, J.
Sivic, and A. Efros. What makes Paris
look like Paris? ACM Transactions on
Graphics (SIGGRAPH 2012)
[2] J.B. Michel et al. Quantitative
analysis of culture using millions of
digitized books. Science,
331(6014):176182, 2011
[3] C.A. Vanegas et al. Modelling the
appearance and behaviour of urban
spaces. Computer Graphics Forum,
29(1):25-42, 2010.
Please contact:
Josef Sivic
Inria and Ecole Normale Suprieure,
France
E-mail: [email protected]
Alexei A. Efros
UC Berkeley, USA
E-mail: [email protected]

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Mobile Augmented Reality Applications

for Smart Cities
by Mathieu Razafimahazo, Nabil Layada, Pierre Genevs and Thibaud Michel
The TyReX research team at the Inria Grenoble - Rhne-Alpes Research Centre, France is working on
the design of a high-accuracy localization system. This key technology allows for a smooth
integration of vision-based techniques in augmented reality applications [1].
Since 2007, the widespread use of
mobile devices (e.g., phones, tablets)
and emergence of a new generation of
devices which are equipped with more
precise sensors and cameras has placed
augmented and virtual-reality technologies within reach. Such applications are
very resource-demanding and critically
interdependent on the quality of userlocation information and environment
tracking (e.g., buildings, monuments).
Several mobile services based on augmented-reality technologies have
already been developed. These can aid
navigation, offer context-aware access
to a wealth of geo-tagged content related
to cultural heritage, provide information
on city events and assist with urban
planning issues. However, these services
still lack enhanced and robust tracking
techniques that are sufficiently effective
enough to make the applications reliable
and widely deployed.
Today, one of the main challenges in
mobile augmented reality applications
design is understanding how our perception of reality can be profitably augmented and how this augmentation can
be made to fit seamlessly with the users
interaction with the world. The
European VENTURI project which
began in 2011 is aiming to develop the

first generation of ubiquitous augmented reality (AR) tools that meet real
user needs and fit within the context
they operate in. To illustrate the potential impacts such technologies might
have in our everyday lives, a demonstration will be conducted in front of a
large audience in late 2014. This
demonstration will be a cultural-heritage visit of Grenoble (France) presented on smartphones (Figure 1). The
application features an augmented tour
of Grenobles antique neighbourhood as
far as the 19th century fort (476m elevation). Along the route, the application
behaves like an audio AR guide, delivering walking directions and historical
information. It also includes a set of
immersive virtual history galleries.
Overall, it exposes the user to
Grenobles past and present by combining 3D-reconstructed monuments
and old geo-positioned pictures. For
example, the citys old roman fortifications are overlaid on a live camera view
using visual-recognition techniques.
Finally, to further enhance user immersion, the application provides different
3D soundscapes synchronized with the
visual rendering.
This demonstration addresses a wide
spectrum of the technological chal-

lenges a project faces including audiovisual scene analysis to understand the

users context, the collection, creation,
fusion and delivery of AR content, 3D
audio rendering, mobile humanmachine interactions and finally the
provision of a high-accuracy localization system. To this end, the VENTURI
project consortium brings together different ERCIM members such as Inria,
Fraunhofer, FBK, mobile device manufacturers SONY and ST Microeletronic
and software companies like Metaio
GmbH and EDIAM Sistemas. The
common goal of all these partners is to
design a hardware and software platform dedicated to such applications.
Of these technologies, the high-accuracy localization is central to allowing
for smooth integration with visionbased techniques. The TyReX research
team, located in the Inria Grenoble Rhne-Alpes Research Centre, France
has been working since 2010 on the
design of such a localization system,
commonly known as Pedestrian DeadReckoning (PDR). This system is based
on the traditional micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS) used in
smartphones. The on-board accelerometer and compass are used to provide an
estimation of the users relative position

Figure 1: Examples of
user interfaces seen as
part of the culturalheritage visitor
application developed for
Grenoble which uses
augmented reality tools.

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

45

Special theme: Smart Cities

and orientation in urban canyon environments (defined as areas with poor

GPS-signal strength such as indoors).
Combined with geographical data, this
component can also be used to identify
user-activity patterns (e.g., walking, running or being in an elevator). The interpretation of sensor values, coupled with
different walking models, allows us to
ensure continuity in determing the users
location when they are both indoors and
outdoors. However, dead recknoning is
subject to cumulative errors that are
driven by multiple factors (e.g., sensor
drift, missed steps or poor estimation of
stride length). These errors can be
reduced by fusing various external sig-

nals from sources such as GPS and WiFi or by relying on the analysis of a
users trajectories with the help of a
structured map of the environment.
PDR has played a key role in the VENTURI application since the delivery of
its AR content is mainly based on the
user's estimated location. PDR and the
other technologies mentioned in this
article aim to provide available information in a user-centric way as
opposed to a device-centric. The 2014
demonstration in Grenoble, which combines advanced AR, indoor and outdoor
PDR and 3D vision tracking will be this
project s final deliverable.

Links:
TYREX team: http://tyrex.inria.fr
VENTURI project: http://venturi.fbk.eu
Reference:
[1] J. Lemordant, T. Michel, M.
Razafinahazo: Mixed Reality
Browsers and Pedestrian Navigation in
Augmented Cities in proc. of the
Graphical Web Conference, Oct 2013,
San Francisco, USA,
http://hal.inria.fr/hal-00872721/en
Please contact:
Nabil Layada
Inria Rhne-Alpes, France
E-mail: [email protected]

Monitoring Peoples Behaviour using Video

Analysis and trajectory Clustering
by Francois Bremond, Vania Bogorny, Luis Patino, Serhan Cosar, Guido Pusiol and Giuseppe Donatiello
Activity discovery within transportation systems (for example subways and roads) or home care monitoring
based on cognitive vision and data-mining technologies, are the core activities of a project at Inria.
It is well known that video cameras provide one of the richest and most promising sources of information about
peoples movements. New technologies
which combine video understanding and
data-mining can analyse peoples behaviour in an efficient way by extracting
their trajectories and identifying the
main movement flows within a scene
equipped with video cameras. For
instance, we are designing an activity
recognition framework which can monitor peoples behaviour in an unsupervised manner. For each observed person,
the framework extracts a set of spacetime trajectory features describing
his/her global position within the monitored scene and the motion of his/her
body parts. Based on trajectory clustering, human information is gathered in
a new feature that we call Perceptual
Feature Chunks (PFC). The set of PFC is
used to automatically learn the particular
regions of a given scene where important activities occur. We call this set of
learned scene regions the topology.
Based on a k-means algorithm, a clustering procedure over the PFCs is performed in order to construct three
topology layers, organized from coarsest
to finest. Using topologies and PFCs, we
are able to break the video into a set of
small events or primitive events (PE),
each of which has a semantic meaning.
46

The sequences of PE and the three

layers of topology, are used to construct
a hierarchical model with three granularity levels of activity.
The proposed approach has been experimented in collaboration with Nice
Hospital within the FP7 European
project DEM@CARE collecting
datasets to supervise patients suffering

map. The mono-camera dataset consists of 41 videos and the RGBD dataset
contains 27 videos. For each person, the
video lasts approximately 15 minutes.
For the monocular camera, person
detection is performed using an extension of the Gaussian Mixture Model
algorithm for background subtraction.
For the RGBD camera, we used a
person detection algorithm that detects

Figure 1: Extracted trajectories of a person at home during the preparation and eating of a
meal (left )and people in a metro station while buying tickets (right).

from dementia. These datasets contain

older adults performing everyday activities in a hospital room, equipped with a
monocular and RGBD cameras (resolution: 640x480 pixels). The activities
considered include watching TV,
preparing tea, answering phone,
reading newspaper/magazine,
watering plant, organizing the prescribed drugs, writing a check at the
desk and checking bus routes on a

peoples heads and shoulders.

Trajectories of people in the scene are
obtained using a multi-feature algorithm that uses features such as 2D-size,
3D-displacement, colour histogram,
dominant colour and covariance
descriptors.
Experimentations on both datasets
show that the framework achieves a
high rate of True Positives and a low
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

rate of False Negatives. In total, 99% of

the performed activities (in real-life) are
recognized by the framework [1].
Furthermore, the duration of the recognized activities is matched with more
than 80% accuracy to the ground
truthed activities, which means that not
only can the system count the amount of
activity instances but also pretty accurately detect their durations. Although
a few activities were missed because of
failure to detect finer motions, the
experimental results show that this
framework is a successful system that
can be used to automatically discover,
learn and recognize Activities of Daily
Livings (ADLs). In addition, it can be
observed that the framework is useful in
medical applications for supporting the
early diagnosis of Alzheimer or
dementia in older adults. The framework can successfully distinguish
people suffering from Alzheimer from
those with Mild Cognitive Disorder or
Normal Controls.
This framework can also be used in
many other fields, such as the video surveillance of metros and roads. We have
applied a variant of this framework in
two scenarios within the FP7 European
project VANAHEIM. The first scenario
relates to the monitoring of activities in
different locations (e.g., the entrance

concourse) of Paris and Turin metro stations. The results obtained show which
zones have the most intense activities
(called Heat Map). In the scene under
observation, rare or uncommon behaviours such as jumping above the barrier, fainting and loitering or frequent behaviours such as buying
tickets were identified. In the second
scenario, a road lane reserved for buses
was surveyed. Again, we were able to
learn the topology of the scene and
reveal which were normal activities
(i.e., the passage of a bus into the zone)
and abnormal activities (i.e., the passage of other vehicles into the reserved
lane). When the results were groundtruthed, a high level of recall and an
acceptable degree of precision were
obtained [2, 3].
A variety of domains can benefit from
smart video analysis. For instance, in
the near future, more than 2 billion
people will be over 65 years old, and
video analysis has the potential to help
aging adults in their daily life through
the use of smart home environments
and to help providing doctors with
activity observations that can be used to
detect possible anomalies for disease
prevention. Movement analysis in
crowded areas, such as metro stations,
can detect and alert anomalous behav-

iours, identifying simple issues such as

a broken ticket machine to more complex events like a robbery or terrorism
act. In supermarkets, the analysis of
customer movements can provide
information on how to enhance the
shopping experience. However, this
analysis still has many remaining challenges, such as the accuracy of activity
recognition within huge amounts of
noisy metadata.

References:
[1]. G. Pusiol, F. Bremond and M.
Thonnat: Unsupervised Discovery,
Modeling and Analysis of long term
Activities, in proc. of ICVS 2011,
Sophia Antipolis, France, 2011.
[2] L. Patino, F. Bremond, M.
Thonnat: Online learning of activities
from video, in proc. of AVSS 12,
Beijing 2012.
[3] L. Patino, H. Benhadda, F.
Bremond: Data Mining in a Video
Database, in Intelligent Video
Surveillance Systems, Wiley, Online
Library, 2013,
DOI:10.1002/9781118577851.ch14
Please contact:
Franois Bremond
Inria, France
E-mail: [email protected]

trusted Cells: Ensuring Privacy for the Citizens

of Smart Cities
by Nicolas Anciaux, Philippe Bonnet, Luc Bouganim and Philippe Pucheral
The Smart City concept is founded on the collection, sharing and analysis of data that is either
about citizens or produced by them, with the view to enhancing efficiencies and the social
sustainability of cities. The current Web model which is fully centralised is not appropriate for
managing such data as it raises potential privacy abuse and misuse issues. In the Trusted Cell
project, we propose the addition of a personal dimension to the Web model: each citizen would
possess their own personal data server which would provide tangible privacy and security
guarantees and help individuals to share and disseminate their data properly.
In smart cities, the convergence of
mobile communication, sensors and
online social networks technologies has
lead to an exponential increase in the
creation and consumption of data which
can be linked to individuals (i.e., personal data). These data are considered
by the World Economic Forum as the
new oil, creating an unprecedented
potential for new applications and business. However, there are privacy conERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

cerns linked to the Web model currently

in use and its underlying businesses.
Frequent breaches of users' privacy are
thwarting enthusiasm for the use of this
data.
In smart cities, privacy is a fundamental
value, upheld by social sustainability.
The personal data given back to citizens
can potentially describe all of the activities undertaken in day-to-day lives. To

exploit the data, a new sharing and

usage model which is more user-centric
and prioritises privacy must be
invented. Our vision [1] is to launch a
sea change in the way data and applications are managed, enabling users to
exercise control over how their data is
used by introducing trusted cells in the
architecture. Trusted cells are units of
hardware and software, owned by citizens, which are able to perform data
47

Special theme: Smart Cities

Figure 1: Personal data management

in Smart Cities using trusted cells.
Alice (A) and Bob (B), citizens of a
Smart City, are equipped with trusted
cells, which acquire data from several
sources. For example, their home is
equipped with smart meters generating
hundreds of measurements per hour.
Companies provide them with energy
management services based on smart
meter data disaggregation (i.e.,
machine learning algorithms detecting
appliance signatures and deriving their
use in time). These data are managed
into trusted cells which act as trusted
gateways that enforce a usage control
model, in connection with an untrusted
cloud infrastructure.

management tasks in a privacy-preserving manner. Our goal is (i) to provide data management and access control techniques embedded into trusted
cells which limits the personal data
exposed to the services and applications
to a minimum subset; and (ii) to rely on
trusted cells to implement a usage control model which protects the personal
data used by applications against unexpected disclosures once they have left
the security sphere of a trusted cell.
Our approach is based on the vision that
privacy-preserving trusted cells, i.e.,
trusted gateways deployed at home
(fixed) or in users' hands (portable), can
enforce a usage control model in connection with an untrusted cloud infrastructure. From a technical point of
view, the challenges associated with
this approach are:
Developing trusted cells which provide strong security guarantees: in a
Smart City, many devices can be considered as potential trusted cells
including microcontroller based
tokens (e.g., SIM cards or sensors) or
mobilephones endowed with an
ARM Trustzone processor. Preliminary proposals start addressing the
support of relational operations like
selection, projection and join within
secure microcontrollers [2].
Designing usage control models, as
well as the mechanisms needed to
enforce them. We are currently
exploring a solution which relies on

two building blocks that enforce

access and usage control models
when the data is transmitted outside
the trusted cell to perform a computation. We designed and implemented a
set of rich operations within the trusted cell that can be combined to
reduce the computations to be performed outside the trusted cells. Then
we investigated solutions based on
the definition of sandboxed computation containers, that are able to connect to the trusted cell and extract the
raw data whilst guaranteeing that
unexpected data disclosures will not
occur. We expect that these efforts
will give rise to a new paradigm for
the design of privacy preserving,
user-centric applications.
Global and anonymous computations.
To compute results at a populationlevel, a large number of trusted cells
may be required. The aim is to only
reveal the results, but organize the
computation so that the raw data and
their owners identities remain hidden. Large sets of trusted cells with
limited resources and potentially, low
connectivity, may be involved. The
feasibility of this approach has been
illustrated in previous work [3] which
addressed the problem of PrivacyPreserving Data Publication in this
context. Computing regular queries,
e.g., aggregations to discover overcrowded roads or conduct public surveys, is still an open issue.

CityLab@Inria Project Lab on Smart

Cities: http://citylab.inria.fr
References:
[1] N. Anciaux et al: Trusted Cells: A
Sea Change for Personal Data
Services, in CIDR, 2013.
[2] N. Anciaux et al: MILo-DB: a
personal, secure and portable database
machine, in Distributed and Parallel
Databases 32(1), 2014.
[3] T. Allard, B. Nguyen, P. Pucheral:
METAP: revisiting PrivacyPreserving Data Publishing using
secure devices, in Distributed and
Parallel Databases 32(2), 2014.
Please contact:
Nicolas Anciaux
Inria and University of Versailles,
France
E-mail: [email protected]

Link:
48

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Smart City Operation Center: A Platform

to Optimize Urban Service Rendering
by Filippos Gouidis, Theodore Patkos and Giorgos Flouris
The delivery of Public Services to citizens is becoming a challenging task, as urban populations
increase and the related networks are becoming more complex and entangled. In this article, we
present a platform designed for the optimal coordination of a city's public agencies and emergency
response teams. Such coordination is particularly relevant in emergency situations when the
infrastructures are pushed to their limits.
In a typical modern city, many different
agencies are activated, in order to provide citizens with the services that
underpin the seamless operation of the
urban centres, such as the fire brigade,
police department and health care services providers. The management of the
actions necessary for this objective is in
principle carried out by each organization independently, since a continuous
coordination is considered too costly
and arduous. A notable exception is the
handling of emergency incidents due to
their critical nature.
Over the last few years, many Smart
City projects have been launched with
the purpose of augmenting the capabilities of the relevant agencies in carrying
out their tasks. For example, in
Amsterdam, the Smart Traffic
Management Project is used to administer traffic flow and the European

Union (EU) is preparing to launch the

new emerging trend of Connected Cars
which aims at substantially improving
ambulance response times. However,
the approach underlying these applications is specialized rather than holistic,
as is also the case with the various
public agencies involved.
Nonetheless, constantly maintaining a
coordinated and synergistic plan can be
significantly optimized for a number of
reasons. First, this approach translates
to a substantial cost reduction in terms
of human resources and infrastructure.
In addition, the activities of two or more
servicing organizations are often interdependent: properly regulated traffic
congestion by the traffic police can
facilitate enormously ambulances to
reach their destination on time. Hence, a
unified approach could better serve the
interests of the stakeholders and ulti-

mately the citizens of a city.

Furthermore, the experience and
expertise gained by exercising this type
of administration, might prove to be
crucial in the event of a large-scale
emergency incident, such as an earthquake or extreme weather event.
The ISL laboratory of FORTH-ICS is
developing the Smart City Operation
Center (SCOC), a platform for the central coordination of the various urban
services (Figure 1 shows the main
window of the platform). The system
receives requests from different locations in the city for servicing tasks and
organizes the routes of the different
service providing units (e.g. police
trucks or ambulances). This is accomplished in such a way that the aforementioned demands are satisfied in the least
amount of time possible. Figure 2 presents a toy example of agents cooper-

Figure 1: The main window of the SMOC application. In the left sub-window, the current service requests are displayed and in the right, the
optimal agent allocation required to fulfil them.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

49

Special theme: Smart Cities

ating, in order to minimize the time of

service. The development of the application begun in December 2013 and in
its current version it can support the
coordination of small scale emergency
scenarios. The plan for the next stage of
the development includes the extension
of the platform so that it can cope with
larger scale emergency events, such as
those that occur in mid-sized cities. The
long-term objectives are to address the
daily administrative requirements associated with all servicing organizations
operating in a medium to large city.
The efficient operation of SCOC relies
on the optimal coordination, cooperation and communication between a
large number of different agents, each
of which has certain capacities and,
often, oriented towards separate goals.
For this reason, we opted for a synthesis
of formal methods adopted from the
field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and
Knowledge Representation and
Reasoning. Therefore, this work can be
regarded as an amalgam of features
stemming from solutions of problems
like the multiple Traveling Salesperson
Problem, graph traversal, planning with
temporal and causal constraints and
temporal reasoning. The efficient combination of these techniques, however,
is far from trivial. The interdependencies between the agents, the partial
observability of the environment, the
non-deterministic nature of certain
actions, the unpredictability of many
factors, the appropriate management of
vast amounts of information data and
other issues related to imperfect communication are some of the challenging
complications that have to be considered.
On the technical side, our implementation utilizes two eminent AI paradigms:
Action Languages (ALs) and Answer
Set Programming (ASP). The former is
a family of logical formalisms that is
suitable for representing actions and
reasoning about their effects. Due to
their efficiency in dealing with properties of dynamically-chaning worlds,
ALs hold a pivotal role in providing
solutions, like model checking and
planning, for a multitude of dynamic
domains. In our case, they formally represent the dynamic aspects of problem
and allow for the formal validation and
verification of the solutions generated
by the system.

50

Figure 2: An example of a planned coordination generated by

the system. In order for the ambulance to reach its destination
in the least possible time (node e), a police car is dispatched in
an intermediate location (node c).

ASP, on the other hand, is a logic-based

paradigm that is well suited for performing commonsense reasoning, for
modelling an agents belief sets and for
handling defeasible inferences, preferences and priorities. Some of ASP's
main advantages include its efficiency
in dealing with incomplete information
and the usage of a very expressive, yet,
non-complex modelling language. In
addition, ASP solvers are rapidly
improving, rendering this declarative
paradigm to be considered a prominent
candidate for addressing large-scale
problems. For instance, recently ASP
was applied with great success to the
highly demanding task of team building
in the Gioia-Tauro seaport [1].
However, despite their merits, each of
the paradigms has its own drawbacks
and one of the biggest challenge is to
combine them in a way that harnesses
the best of both worlds without assimilating the corresponding pitfalls.

Link:
http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl/
Reference:
[1] Grasso, Giovanni, et al. "An ASPbased system for team-building in the
Gioia-Tauro seaport." Practical Aspects
of Declarative Languages. Springer
Berlin Heidelberg, 2010. 40-42
Please contact:
Filippos Gouidis, Theodore Patkos and
Giorgos Flouris
FORTH-ICS, Greece
Tel:+30-2810-391632
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]; [email protected]

In conclusion, we believe that this work

offers practical benefits and will contribute to the more profound comprehension of the theoretical foundations
behind related challenging problems.
Moreover, it could serve as a guide for
the development of other Smart City
applications revolving around the
emerging field of Multi-Agent Systems.

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Building Smarter Cities

through ICt-driven Co-Innovation
by Christophe Ponsard, Robert Viseur and Jean-Christophe Deprez
The Smart City concept is actively being discussed in many places across Europe. However, turning this ideal vision into a
practical roadmap is challenging because it requires effective coordination and cooperation between the range of
organizations involved in the city operations. In this article, we discuss the use of co-innovation techniques in a number of
Belgian cities which gather people with complementary skills for collaborative projects, thus enabling a range of potential
projects to be considered. In these projects, information and communication technologies (ICT) would play a key role.

Many European cities are currently

aiming to become Smart Cities, with
more than 1000 having already joined
the European Smart Cities Stakeholder
Platform. However, many face problems
in defining a high-level inclusive
vision that is not just driven by a few
decision key makers. Using such a topdown process is risky, not only because
of the risk that it might address the
wrong priorities, but because it doesnt
accurately reflect the complex web of
interactions between multiple people
and organizations that cities are built on.
A key factor of success is to actively
involve stakeholders and empower them
as actor in the process of change. Over
the last decade, a number of new concepts have emerged to support this preferred collaborative approach including
co-creation, user innovation and open
(source) innovation [1]. They involve
specific instruments such as Living Labs
[2], multidisciplinary incubators, coworking spaces and creative hubs.
It is widely recognized that ICT plays a
key role in supporting the development
of Smart Cities. Automating and optimizing the management of transportation, energy and water requires the efficient monitoring and processing of data,
making use of concepts such as sensor
networks, Internet-of-Things (IoT), big
data and open data. It is essential that
ICT experts are involved in the co-creation process of a Smart City.
Here, we share some lessons learnt from
two co-innovation stories that feature a
strong ICT component, currently taking
place under the eGov Wallonia initiative
with which our research center is deeply
involved. The co-innovation process is
organized at the regional level because
multiple cities share similar concerns
and many have common public transportation systems, power management
systems and water distribution networks.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Story 1: How open public

transportation data can be enabled
The Walloon public bus transport
system is operated by the public TEC
company which has its own website
offering a few services (e.g., timetables)
but leaves a number of needs unanswered. These include questions around
mobile access and multi-modal schedules. This gap led to some independent
actors developing their own mobile apps
using web-scrapping techniques. The
TEC responded aggressively to this
move, a common reaction in these situations. The company put pressure on the
web application developer, accusing
developers of data theft. Subsequently,
the company realized that the transport
data belonged to the public and learnt
about the open data movement. They
then joined the eGov hackathon initiative, providing open access to their data
at a hackathon specifically dedicated to
enhancing mobility organization in the
co-working space of Wallonias capital
city, Namur. This move resulted in a
TEC Real Time project which is currently exploring how best to exploit
(anonymous) data from registered users
and the bus GPS information. This scenario illustrates how important it is to
first establish trust and then explore new
possibilities together, many of which are
made possibly by ICT.
Story 2: How communities can be
mobilized efficiently to improve the
accessibility of public infrastructures
This issue is particularly important for
people with reduced mobility. Changing
public infrastructure is a long-term
process, however, it is possible to
improve information flows regarding
accessibility issues, thus making shortterm adaptations possible. Associations
all over Europe are currently fighting for
this. In Wallonia, CETIC is helping the
local association, CAWAB, to use ICT
tools to achieve a balance between
mobilizing communities (using many

non-expert volunteers) and relying on

just a few experts (who are unable to
cope with massive workloads) [3]. This
resulted in the deployment of two community websites. The first, Access-i, is
mainly dedicated to informing people
about accessibility with a possible return
channel. The second, CENA, is a
Moodle-based open collaborative platform for accessibility experts, enabling
new comers to learn from the established experts.
The stories showcased in this article
illustrate the smart use of tools like
hackathons, co-working spaces and
community platforms can yield benefits
which make a concrete contribution
towards developing Smart Cities. Our
next step is to optimally use the Living
Labs that are currently being deployed
(or will be deployed are as part of the
next FEDER program 2014-2020).
Links:
http://eu-smartcities.eu
http://hackathonegovwallonia.net
http://www.access-i.be
http://cena.accessible-it.org
References:
[1] A. Kambil, G.B. Friesen, A.
Sundaram: Co-creation: A new source
of value, Outlook Magazine, 1999
[2] B. Bergvall-Kareborn, M. Host, A.
Stahlbrost: Concept design with a
living lab approach, in proc. of 42nd
Hawaii International IEEE Conference
on System Sciences, 2009
[3] C. Ponsard, V. Snoeck: Unlocking
Physical World Accessibility through
ICT: a SWOT Analysis, ICCHP14,
2014.
Please contact:
Christophe Ponsard
CETIC, Belgium
E-mail: [email protected]

51

Supporting the Design

Process of Networked
Control Systems
by Alexander Hanzlik and Erwin Kristen

European
Research and
Innovation

The increasing complexity of electronic control systems

requires new methods for design, analysis and test of
such systems. The DTFSim Data Time Flow Simulator
developed at the Austrian Institute of Technology is a
discrete-event simulation environment for model-based
design, analysis and test of networked control systems
for automotive applications.
Automotive Networked Control Systems
An automotive control system consists of a set of devices
that control one or more functions of the vehicle, such as an
electronic brake. Modern automotive control systems are
networked control systems (NCS). A typical NCS contains
the following components:
Sensors to acquire information from the physical environment
Controllers to provide decision and commands
Actuators to perform the control commands
Communication network for information interchange
between sensors, controllers and actuators

Figure 1: Networked control systems containing sensors, controllers,

actuators and a communication network.
Source: http://www.hycon2.eu/

In an NCS, control and feedback signals are exchanged

among the different system components in the form of information packages through the communication network.
Principle of Operation
The DTFSim is based on the idea that a NCS can be built by
repetitive use of the following parts:
Component part: Components are typically a piece of hardware, such as an ECU, a sensor or an actuator. Each component executes one or more functions. Components are spatially separated and connected via direct links (wire) or a
communication network.
Network part: The network part is responsible for communication between components that are not directly linked. This
part comprises the network architecture and the network protocol, such as an Ethernet bus.

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 2: The DTFSim

Data Time Flow
Simulator workflow
comprising the steps
configuration, drive
cycle, simulation, and
postprocessing and
visualization.

Function part: The function part contains the implementation of the component functions, for instance, a brake torque
calculation algorithm.
Timing part: The timing part contains the timing properties
of the system, such as the worst-case execution times of
component functions.
The system architecture, consisting of the component part
and the network part, is built using elements from a modular
assembly system provided by the DTFSim. These elements
are grouped together to from more complex structures, such
as an ECU or an Ethernet bus. Typical elements are sensors,
processors and actuators. Component functions (function
part) are added to the different elements to be able to perform
specific control tasks. Finally, each element has a propagation delay (timing part).
DTFSim models consist of event chains, where an event
chain is a directed path from a sensor to an actuator, with an
arbitrary number of elements in between. The simulation
aims to determine essential system characteristics, such as
the bus load (the load of the communication network) and the
control signal latencies (the propagation times of control signals from sensors to actuators). This is achieved by stimulating the system at the model inputs (sensors) and by
observing the event and data flow along event chains over
time to the actuators.
DTFSim Workflow
A typical workflow comprises the following steps:
Configuration: The first step is the generation of the system configuration, which consists of the system architecture (component and network part) and the system behaviour (function and timing part).
Drive Cycle: A drive cycle consists of a set of input events
for each sensor of the system, e.g., the different positions
of the vehicle brake pedal during simulation. The sum of
all input events is an event list used for stimulation of the
system.

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Simulation: Based on the configuration and the drive

cycle, the simulation is executed until all events have been
processed. Each event that occurred during simulation is
stored in the simulation results log file.
Post-Processing and Visualization: The last step is the
post-processing of the simulation results. In this step, data
of interest is extracted from the simulation results log file.
This data is then used to produce visualizations of system
characteristics of interest, such as the bus load over simulation time or the propagation time distributions of dedicated control signals.
Current Applications and Future Work
The DTFSim has been developed in the course of the EU
ARTEMIS project POLLUX, which was related to the
design of electronic control systems for the next generation
of electric vehicles. Currently, the DTFSim is deployed in
two EU ARTEMIS projects: In MBAT (Combined Modelbased Analysis and Testing of Embedded Systems), the
DTFSim is deployed in an automotive used case where the
performance of an electronic braking system is analyzed by
means of a simulation model. In CRYSTAL (Critical System
Engineering Acceleration), the DTFSim is also deployed in
an automotive use case where it is used for timing analysis of
an automatic speed limitation application.
Future work relates to the integration of the DTFSim into an
automated verification and validation process for embedded
control systems.
Links:
http://www.mbat-artemis.eu/home/
http://www.crystal-artemis.eu/
Reference:
[1] A. Hanzlik, E. Kristen: A Methodology for Design,
Validation and Performance Analysis of Vehicle Electronic
Control Systems, in proc. of AMAA 2013, Berlin
Please contact:
Alexander Hanzlik, Erwin Kristen, AIT / AARIT, Austria
E-mail: [email protected],
[email protected]
53

Research and Innovation

How to Detect Suspect

Behaviour at Sea
by Anders Holst
A new model to detect and visualize ships behaving in a
strange or suspicious manner can help authorities to
prevent or mitigate accidents and detect illegal
activities at sea.
The three-year SADV project, which finished in 2013, has
been a collaboration between SICS Swedish ICT, Saab AB,
the Swedish Coast Guard, the Swedish Customs Service, the
Swedish Armed Forces and the Swedish Space Corporation.
The aim of the project has been to support the maritime surveillance operators by providing them with an increased situation awareness. This is done using automatic tools which
detect vessels bahaving suspiciously or uncharacteristically.
Increasing volumes of maritime traffic, combined with
threats from criminal activities and environmental issues,
just to name a few, there is a high demand for tools that can
support the real-time analysis of the huge amounts of maritime situation data that are produced.
Three approaches for anomaly detection
There are essentially three different approaches to detect
anomalies and the framework developed in this study supports all three:
1. statistical anomaly detection, where a statistical model is
built on normal situations and situations that are very
unlikely to come from that model are considered anomalies;
2. rule based anomaly detection, where rules are designed to
detect situations of interest; and
3. model based (or simulator based) anomaly detection,
where real observations are compared to simulated results
(i.e., what would have happened in a normal situation). A
difference indicates an anomaly.
While it is easily seen that approaches two and three require
extensive expert involvement to design the rules and simulator, approach one would appear to require no expert
involvement. However, this approach still requires extensive
domain knowledge, first to determine what kind of anomalies would be interesting to detect and secondly, to ensure
that the model considers the features that are relevant for
detecting those anomalies. Typically, the data requires some
processing as these features are not directly represented in
the raw data.
Uncharacteristic behaviours considered
A number of uncharacteristic vessel behaviours have been
considered in this study. They are:
unusual speeds and directions (e.g., going the wrong
direction in a route),
unusual movement patterns (e.g., too many stops or turns
at-sea),
making a rendezvous at sea.
unusual route choices (as compared with other ships), and
data inconsistencies (e.g., a ship changing identity or
using the same identity as another ship).
54

Figure 1: The risk of grounding was detected (yellow ring) three

minutes before it actually occurred (purple square).

Figure 2: A small fishing boat (red) repeatedly stopped in the middle

of the shipping route. It was almost hit by a large freight ship (purple).

Each of these behaviours requires different anomaly detectors which consider different features calculated from different parts of the data, often on different time scales. Some
are suitably handled with statistical methods, others with rule
based approaches and yet others with a combination. Most
statistical anomaly detection approaches used in this study
were based on the Incremental Stream Clustering framework
[1] developed by SICS, and most of the rule based detection
is based in the Situation Detector platform [2] developed by
Saab.
Results
The methods developed in this study were evaluated on real
maritime data collected from the Baltic sea. The success of
this approach in detecting interesting situations is illustrated
by the following examples:
A risk of running ashore - Saab has combined a rule based
detection of ships approaching shallow waters with a statistical anomaly detector for ships that deviate from the
usual routes in the area. The detector detected actual
groundings up to three minutes prior to such an event
occurring (see Figure 1).
Dangerous behaviour - the SICSs movement pattern
behaviour analysis detected a small fishing boat that was
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Figure 3: The architecture of the anomaly detection module

repeatedly stopping in the middle of a shipping route and

moving irregularly in the wrong direction (apparently fishing). It is almost hit by a large freight ship that managed to
veer at the last minute (Figure 2).
Several ships using the same identity - the SICSs inconsistency detector identified several ships using the wrong
identity number. These are mostly genuine mistakes; however, there are examples of ships in other parts of the
world intentionally changing their identity numbers to circumvent trading embargoes.
Meetings between ships at sea - most meetings, unless
they are between certain ship types (i.e., coast guard, rescue vessels, etc.), may potentially indicate illegal activities
such as smuggling or possibly trawling in prohibited
areas.
How the model works
The task of combining all three different types of anomaly
detection in one framework was not trivial, but we have managed to design a general architecture that fits with several
existing maritime surveillance platforms and is also able to
handle several anomaly detectors of different kinds. The
architecture of the anomaly detection module is schematically shown in Figure 3.
The key to this architecture is identifying information flows
that are common across all the surveillance platforms and for
all kinds of anomaly detectors. All detectors need situation
data from the platform, and they need to provide anomaly
indications back, based on that data. They also need to support user configuration and inspection.
The next step is to identify similarities between the different
kinds of anomaly detectors. They all need to extract the relevant features from the provided data, use their respective
methods to determine whether those features represent an
anomaly, and then finally transform that judgement into an
indication which is complete with details of what, when
and why.
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

If the indications from one anomaly detector can be used as

an input feature to another anomaly detector, it is possible to
combine the rule based and statistical detectors in a more
advanced ways, as opposed to just having them run in parallel in the same system [3]; statistical detections can be
referred to in a rule, or the number of times that a rule
matches can be considered in a statistical detector.
Conclusion
The SADV project has significantly extended previous
methods used for anomaly detection within the maritime surveillance sphere and shown that these methods can detect
interesting and relevant situations.
Link:
http://www.sics.se/projects/sadv-statistical-anomaly-detection-and-visualization-for-maritime-domain-awareness
References:
[1] A. Holst and J. Ekman: Incremental stream clustering
for anomaly detection and classification, in Eleventh
Scandinavian Conference on Artificial Intelligence, SCAI
2011
[2] J. Edlund, M. Grnkvist, A. Lingvall and E. Sviestins:
Rule-based situation assessment for sea surveillance, in
proc. of SPIE Defence and Security Symposium 2006
[3] A. Holst et al.: A Joint Statistical and Symbolic Anomaly Detection System: Increasing performance in maritime
surveillance, in FUSION 2012.
Please contact:
Anders Holst
SICS Swedish ICT
Tel: +46 (0)8 633 1593
E-mail: [email protected]

55

Research and Innovation

A Breakthrough
for Balanced Graph
Partitioning
by Fatemeh Rahimian
Researchers at SICS have invented a new way to
partition graphs into a given number of clusters, such
that the related information belongs to the same cluster
and the number of connections between clusters are
minimized. Graph partitioning, a well known NPComplete problem, has been already thoroughly
investigated for small and medium sized graphs, but
this distributed algorithm works on very large graphs.
Our world is increasingly connected, and this is changing our
lives in ways that we still do not fully understand. New tools
and technologies have given us the unprecedented potential
to make sense of the huge inter-connected datasets that exist
in various fields of science, from social networks to biological networks. Relations can be mathematically described as
graphs; for example, a network of friends on Facebook can
be described by a graph, which shows a users closest friends
and who they are related to. The increasing size of datasets
means that graph sizes are also increasing: this means that
they must be partitioned into smaller clusters so they can be
more easily managed on multiple machines in a distributed
fashion.
The new solution for this is a distributed heuristic based
algorithm that can efficiently partition big graphs into a
given number of clusters of equal size or any given size. The
key point in this approach is that no global knowledge is
required, and simultaneous access to the entire graph is not
assumed.
The algorithm used to solve the problem is very intuitive. It
starts by randomly assigning vertices to partitions. Over the
course of the algorithm, vertices from different partitions
iteratively negotiate with each other and exchange their partition assignments, if that exchange results in a better partitioning [1]. When this iterative optimization converges,
neighboring vertices of the graph will mostly end up in the
same partition, while there will be very few edges that cross
different partitions (See Figure 1). The algorithm is inherently a local search optimization enhanced using a simulated
annealing technique. A variant of this work has been specifically designed for graphs with power-law degree distribution, where vertex-cut partitioning has proved more efficient
than edge-cut partitioning [2]. Both solutions are kept as
simple as possible, so that the algorithm can be easily
adopted by various real world applications.

Figure 1: 4elt sparse graph, partitioned into 4 balanced components

that are indicated by colors. Very few links are on the border of
regions with different colors. For her achievement [1] Fatemeh
Rahimian received the Best Paper Award at the 7th IEEE
International Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing
Systems in Philadelphia in September 2013. Moreover, in May 2014
she obtained a doctoral degree that was partly based on this work.

Link:
http://e2e-clouds.org/
References:
[1] Rahimian, Fatemeh, Amir H. Payberah, Sarunas Girdzijauskas, Mark Jelasity, and Seif Haridi. "Ja-be-ja: A distributed algorithm for balanced graph partitioning." In the 7th
IEEE Conference on Self-Adaptive and Self-Organizing
Systems (SASO), 2013.
[2] Rahimian, Fatemeh, Amir H. Payberah, Sarunas Girdzijauskas, and Seif Haridi. "Distributed vertex-cut partitioning." In the 14th IFIP International conference on Distributed Applications and Interoperable Systems (DAIS), 2014.
Please contact:
Fatemeh Rahimian
SICS Swedish ICT
E-mail: [email protected]

With the recent advances in graph database technologies, it is

anticipated that leading companies in this field will soon
move to make use of graph partitioning for scaling up.
Successful partitioning is an important ingredient in efficient
big data analysis and that is why this solution has attracted a
lot of attention in the community.
56

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Events

Call for Participation

Call for Participation

fMICS14 - 19th
International
Workshop on formal
Methods for Industrial
Critical Systems

7th International
Conference of the
ERCIM Working Group
on Computational
and Methodological
Statistics

Florence, Italy ,11-12 September 2014

The aim of the FMICS workshop series
is to provide a forum for researchers who
are interested in the development and
application of formal methods in
industry. In particular, FMICS brings
together scientists and engineers that are
active in the area of formal methods and
interested in exchanging their experiences in the industrial usage of these
methods.
Topics of interest include (but are not
limited to):
design, specification, code generation
and testing based on formal methods
methods, techniques and tools to support automated analysis, certification,
debugging, learning, optimization and
transformation of complex, distributed, real-time systems and embedded
systems
verification and validation methods
that address shortcomings of existing
methods with respect to their industrial applicability (e.g., scalability and
usability issues)
tools for the development of formal
design descriptions
case studies and experience reports on
industrial applications of formal
methods, focusing on lessons learned
or identification of new research
directions
impact of the adoption of formal
methods on the development process
and associated costs
application of formal methods in standardization and industrial forums.
FMICS14 is co-located with QEST
2014, SAFECOMP 2014, EPEW 2014,
and FORMATS 2014 in the frame of
FLORENCE 2014 - a scientific week on
computer safety, reliability, performance, and quantitative analysis.
More information:
http://fmics2014.unifi.it/
http://www.florence2014.org/
ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

Pisa, Italy, 6-8 December 2014.

The 7th International Conference on
Computational and Methodological
Statistics (ERCIM2014) is organized by
the ERCIM Working Group on
Computational and Methodological
Statistics (CMStatistics) and the
University of Pisa. The conference is
held jointly with the 8th International
Conference on Computational and
Financial Econometrics (CFE 2014).
The conference has a high reputation of
quality presentations. The last editions
of the joint conference CFE-ERCIM
gathered over 1200 participants.
Aims and Scope
All topics within the Aims and Scope of
the
ERCIM Working
Group
CMStatistics will be considered for oral
and poster presentation.
Topics include, but are not limited to:
robust methods, statistical algorithms
and software, high-dimensional data
analysis, statistics for imprecise data,
extreme value modeling, quantile
regression and semiparametric methods,
model validation, functional data
analysis, Bayesian methods, optimization heuristics in estimation and modelling, computational econometrics, quantitative finance, statistical signal extraction and filtering, small area estimation,
latent variable and structural equation
models, mixture models, matrix computations in statistics, time series modeling
and computation, optimal design algorithms and computational statistics for
clinical research.
Sessions
The joint conference CFE-ERCIM will
have five plenary zessions. Moreover,
ERCIM 2014 will have four special
invited sessions and a significant
number of organized invited sessions
on key topics, and contributed ses-

sions that will run in parallel during the

three days of the conference.
Tutorials
Tutorials will be given on Friday 5
December 2014. The number of participants to the tutorials is limited and
restricted only to those who attend the
conference.
Publications
The journal Computational Statistics &
Data Analysis will publish selected
papers in special peer-reviewed or regular issues.
More information:
http://www.cmstatistics.org/ERCIM2014/

Call for Participation

SAfECOIM 2014 33rd International

Conference on
Computer Safety,
Reliability and
Security
Florence 10-12 September 2014
SAFECOMP is an annual event covering the state-of-the-art, experience and
new trends in the areas of safety, security and reliability of critical computer
applications. SAFECOMP provides
ample opportunity to exchange insights
and experience on emerging methods,
approaches and practical solutions. It is
a one-stream conference without parallel sessions, allowing easy networking.
SAFECOMP 2014 will be part of FLORENCE 2014, a one-week scientific
event with conferences and workshops
in the areas of formal and quantitative
analysis of systems, performance engineering, computer safety, and industrial
critical applications.
More information:
http://www.safecomp.org
http://www.ewics.org
http://www.florence2014.org

57

Events

Call for Papers

Call for Participation

International
Workshop on
Computational
Intelligence
for Multimedia
Understanding

SERENE14 6th International

Workshop on
Software Engineering
for Resilient Systems

Paris, 1-2 November 2014

Unprecedented level of complexity of

modern software and software-based
systems makes it difficult to ensure their
resilience - an ability of the system to
persistently deliver its services in a
dependable way even when facing
changes, unforeseen failures and intrusions. Yet we are observing the increasingly pervasive use of software in
evolvable and critical systems like
transportation, health care, manufacturing, and IT infrastructures. This trend
urges the research community to
develop powerful methods for assuring
resilience of software-intensive systems.

Multimedia understanding is an important part of many intelligent applications

in our social life, be it in our households,
or in commercial, industrial, service,
and scientific environments.
Analyzing raw data to provide them
with semantics is essential to exploit
their full potential and help us managing
our everyday tasks. Our purpose is to
provide an international forum to
present and discuss current trends and
future directions in computational intelligence for multimedia understanding.
The workshop, organized by the ERCIM
MUSCLE Working Group, also aims at
fostering the creation of a permanent
network of scientists and practitioners
for an easy and immediate access to
people, data and ideas.
Scope and Topics
Topics include, but are not limited to:
multimedia labeling, semantic annotation
multimodal and cross-modal data
analysis, clustering
big data, distributed digital libraries
activity and object detection and
recognition
text and speech recognition
multimodal indexing and searching in
very large data-bases
visual data processing techniques
medical image segmentation and
model-based representation
microscopic image feature extraction
and classification
Important dates
Paper Submission: 25 July, 2014
Notification: 12 September, 2014
Final Regular Paper Submission: 26
September, 2014
More information:
http://iwcim.isep.fr
58

Budapest, 15-16 October 2014

These challenges have also appeared in

the scope of the current Horizon 2020
calls that aim at developing tools and
methods for incorporating resilience
into evolving software systems; and
also in calls related to specific application areas like advanced cloud infrastructures and services, smart objects,
and robotics.

formal and semi-formal techniques

for verification and validation
experimental evaluations of resilient
systems
quantitative approaches to ensuring
resilience
resilience prediction
case studies & applications
empirical studies in the domain of
resilient systems
cloud computing and resilient service
provisioning
resilient cyber-physical systems and
infrastructures
global aspects of resilience engineering: education, training and cooperation.
The workshop is organised by the
ERCIM Working Group SERENE.
The proceedings of SERENE 2014 will
be published as a volume in Springer
Lecture Notes in Computer Science
(LNCS).
Autumn School
An autumn school will be held right
before the SERENE workshop. The
autumn school will explore the
resiliency of cyber physical systems.
More information:
http://serene.disim.univaq.it/

The SERENE 2014 workshop provides

a forum for researchers and practitioners to exchange ideas on advances
in all areas relevant to software engineering for resilient systems, including,
but not limited to:
design of resilient systems
requirements engineering & re-engineering for resilience
frameworks, patterns and software
architectures for resilience
Engineering of self-healing autonomic systems;
design of trustworthy and intrusionsafe systems
resilience at run-time (mechanisms,
reasoning and adaptation)
verification, validation and evaluation of resilience
modelling and model based analysis
of resilience properties;

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

In Brief

International
Innovation Award
for Martin Kersten
Martin Kersten, Research Fellow at
CWI, is awarded the 2014 SIGMOD
Edgar F. Codd Innovations Award,
the most prestigious prize for researchers who have made
innovative and significant contributions to database systems
and databases. Kersten received the award on 26 June at the
annual ACM SIGMOD/PODS Conference. The Awards
Committee recognized the influential contributions of
Kersten to the big data problem, his outstanding achievements in scientific research in advanced database architectures and his pioneering work in the realization of
MonetDB.
According to Kersten, massive accumulation of data
requires fundamental research and changes in database management systems. In MonetDB he has pioneered the
columns-store technology since 1993. Nowadays it is the
most widespread open-source column-store database management system, which is worldwide used in more than 130
countries with over 300,000 downloads. Since 2011,
column-store technology as pioneered in MonetDB has
found its way into the product offerings of all major commercial database vendors in relational database systems.
More information:
http://www.cwi.nl/news/2014/international-innovationaward-big-data-research-martin-kersten

European Project
on Precision Farming
Increasingly, remote sensing data is made publicly available
by organizations like ESA and NASA. Based on these data,
and in combination with other sources, new valuable applications can be created. In the European research project
Linked Open Earth Observation Data for Precision Farming
(LEO) researchers from CWI and the University of Athens
join their forces with industry partners to develop an application for precision farming. The new application is based
on remote sensing and geospatial data. With precision
farming - advanced agriculture using GPS, satellite observations and tractors with on-board computers - the farming
process is performed as accurately and efficiently as possible. This is achieved by combining data from earth observations with other geospatial sources such as cadastral data,
data on soil quality, vegetation and protected areas. This
enables farmers to find the optimal trade-off in maximizing
yield while minimizing fertilizers and pesticides. At CWI,
the researchers will combine various data sources, transfer
them into RDF format and publish them as Linked Open
Data.

Roberto Scopigno
receives the
Eurographics
Distinguished
Career Award
2014
Roberto Scopigno is the recipient of the Eurographics
"Distinguished Career Award" 2014, an award given every
other year to a professional in computer graphics who has
made outstanding technical contributions to the field and has
shaped computer graphics in Europe.
Roberto Scopignos work has had a profound impact on the
field of visual computing. Of particular importance has been
his work on surface simplification, LOD and multiresolution
representations for surfaces and volumes. His papers on
these topics have been cited widely and stimulated considerable follow-up work. The BDAM algorithm and its 3D
extension, Tetra-Puzzles, grew over ingenious novel data
structures for hierarchical seamless space subdivision and
have inspired new multiresolution applications for the
inspection of terrain models and gigantic meshes. He is a
world-wide leader in the development of novel algorithms
and techniques for Cultural Heritage and for the acquisition,
preservation and visualization of digital copies of physical
artifacts inherited from the past.
Roberto Scopigno is a recognized scientific leader. He has
created a very successful research group at CNR Pisa, and
several of his former students have themselves become wellknown productive researchers. He has demonstrated a
strong leadership in Computer Graphics research in Europe,
and he has been a major actor in shaping Computer Graphics
in Italy. Roberto has significantly advanced the field through
his work and energy, and by setting a personal example.
More information:
The complete award citation is available at:
https://www.eg.org/index.php/component/content/article/57
-awards/distinguished-career-award-recipients/340scopigno-2014
https://www.eg.org/index.php/awards/career-award

More information: http://www.linkedeodata.eu

ERCIM NEWS 98 July 2014

59

ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics is an organisation dedicated to the advancement of European research and development, in information
technology and applied mathematics. Its member institutions aim to foster collaborative work
within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry.
ERCIM is the European Host of the World Wide Web Consortium.

Austrian Association for Research in IT

c/o sterreichische Computer Gesellschaft
Wollzeile 1-3, A-1010 Wien, Austria
http://www.aarit.at/

Portuguese ERCIM Grouping

c/o INESC Porto, Campus da FEUP,
Rua Dr. Roberto Frias, n 378,
4200-465 Porto, Portugal

Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, ISTI-CNR

Area della Ricerca CNR di Pisa,
Via G. Moruzzi 1, 56124 Pisa, Italy
http://www.isti.cnr.it/

Science and Technology Facilities Council

Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Chilton, Didcot, Oxfordshire OX11 0QX, United Kingdom
http://www.scitech.ac.uk/

Czech Research Consortium

for Informatics and Mathematics
FI MU, Botanicka 68a, CZ-602 00 Brno, Czech Republic
http://www.utia.cas.cz/CRCIM/home.html

Spanish Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics

D3301, Facultad de Informtica, Universidad Politcnica de Madrid
28660 Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain,
http://www.sparcim.es/

Centrum Wiskunde & Informatica

Science Park 123,
NL-1098 XG Amsterdam, The Netherlands
http://www.cwi.nl/

SICS Swedish ICT

Box 1263,
SE-164 29 Kista, Sweden
http://www.sics.se/

Fonds National de la Recherche

6, rue Antoine de Saint-Exupry, B.P. 1777
L-1017 Luxembourg-Kirchberg
http://www.fnr.lu/

Magyar Tudomnyos Akadmia

Szmtstechnikai s Automatizlsi Kutat Intzet
P.O. Box 63, H-1518 Budapest, Hungary
http://www.sztaki.hu/

FWO
Egmontstraat 5
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
http://www.fwo.be/

University of Cyprus
P.O. Box 20537
1678 Nicosia, Cyprus
http://www.cs.ucy.ac.cy/

F.R.S.-FNRS
rue dEgmont 5
B-1000 Brussels, Belgium
http://www.fnrs.be/

Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas

Institute of Computer Science
P.O. Box 1385, GR-71110 Heraklion, Crete, Greece
FORTH http://www.ics.forth.gr/

University of Geneva
Centre Universitaire d'Informatique
Battelle Bat. A, 7 rte de Drize, CH-1227 Carouge
http://cui.unige.ch

Fraunhofer ICT Group

Anna-Louisa-Karsch-Str. 2
10178 Berlin, Germany
http://www.iuk.fraunhofer.de/

University of Southampton
University Road
Southampton SO17 1BJ, United Kingdom
http://www.southampton.ac.uk/

Institut National de Recherche en Informatique

et en Automatique
B.P. 105, F-78153 Le Chesnay, France
http://www.inria.fr/

Universty of Warsaw
Faculty of Mathematics, Informatics and Mechanics
Banacha 2, 02-097 Warsaw, Poland
http://www.mimuw.edu.pl/

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Faculty of Information Technology, Mathematics and Electrical Engineering, N 7491 Trondheim, Norway
http://www.ntnu.no/

Universty of Wroclaw
Institute of Computer Science
Joliot-Curie 15, 50383 Wroclaw, Poland
http://www.ii.uni.wroc.pl/

I.S.I. - Industrial Systems Institute

Patras Science Park building
Platani, Patras, Greece, GR-26504
http://www.isi.gr/

Technical Research Centre of Finland

PO Box 1000
FIN-02044 VTT, Finland
http://www.vtt.fi/

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