http://www.livecity-psp.eu/ - In conjunction with the 10th IFIP International Conference on Artificial Intelligence Applications and Innovations - AIAI 2014 (19th - 21st of September - Island of Rhodes, Greece) - Supported by the IEEE SPS Greek Chapter
Dr. Ioannis P. Chochliouros
Research Programs Section - Fixed, Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) S.A., Greece
Tel.: +30 210 6114651
e-mail: ichochliouros@oteresearch.gr
Prof. Vishanth Weerakkody
Business School
Brunel University, UK
e-mail: vishanth.weerakkody@brunel.ac.uk
Prof. Nancy Alonistioti
Department of Informatics & Telecommunications
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), Greece
Tel.: +30-210-7275216
e-mail: nancy@di.uoa.gr
Dr. Ioannis M. Stephanakis
Hellenic Telecommunications Organization (OTE) S.A., Greece
Tel.: +30 210 6115798
e-mail: stephan@ote.gr
Modern "Smart Cities" combine diverse technologies in order to reduce their environmental impact and offer to their citizens a better quality of life. This is not, however, simply just a matter of pure technical challenge. Organizational change in (local) governments - and indeed society at large - is just as essential. "Making a city smart" is therefore a very multidisciplinary challenge, "bringing together" city officials, innovative suppliers and technology operators/providers, national and EU policymakers, academics and civil society. This Workshop has been established to disseminate and assess research results as well as original technical reports/deliverables pertaining to "Smart City" applications and related pilots of video-to-video (v2v) communications and intelligent telecommunications applications (such as those originating from the context of the actual EU-funded LiveCity Project – Grand Agreement No.297291). The Workshop encourages papers from industry and academia, covering the following general areas:
- E-government, strategies and smart city business models, application scenarios in the areas of Emergency Services, eHealth and City Experiences, service evaluation and delivery - Regulatory Issues and Challenges – Ethical Issues
Strategic challenges and current European initiatives for research and innovation in the context of smart cities; Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA), infrastructure and middleware, service requirement validation; service business models and e-government diffusion; economics for Next-Generation-Networks; service design, service deployment and service delivery; service lifecycle; model-driven service engineering; knowledge-intensive services; risk management in services management; service testing and validation; service bundling; ubiquitous and pervasive services; business aspects and related market practices; regulatory issues and applied policies; challenges for market entry and business policies; social and ethical issues.
- AI applications and agents in telecommunications – Cloud computing and virtualization
Service-oriented agent-based architectures, protocols and deployment environments, multi-agent uses; distributed behavioral algorithms, swarm intelligence and ant colony optimization models; Artificial Neural Networks; cloud computing, Emerging Software-as-a-Service (ESaaS), Health Informatics-as-a-Service (HIaaS), Education-as-a-Service (EaaS), Big Data-as-a-Service (BDaaS); M2M (machine-to-machine) interaction/SDNs and Network Functions Virtualisation; Internet-of-Thinks/IoT, home area networks, smart home, personal area networks.
- Video-to-video and other multimedia-based communications; IPv6 and mobile networks
IPv6 protocol and next generation networks; mobile TV, Multimedia Broadcasting Multicasting Services/MBMS, multimedia delivery and LTE/Long Term Evolution; Hybrid Broadcast Broadband TV/HbbTV; IPTV and IMS; 3D internet and 3D TV; HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC; Rate-distortion control in heterogeneous networks, scalable internet streaming; Multipoint-to-Multipoint delivery; interactive advertisement; immersive multimedia; enhanced and augmented reality; virtualization; content delivery; distributed environments.
- Over-The-Top (OTT) Models, SLAs (Service Level Agreements), QoS (Quality of Service) mechanisms and QoE (Quality of Experience) in modern telecommunication networks
Privacy, security, performance, reliability, fault tolerance in modern telecommunication networks; service consumption and delivery outcome; quality of service impact; service audit metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs); service personalization; lifecycle management.
The "Digital Agenda for Europe" intends to sustain fast and ultrafast Internet access as well as the development and operation of several "open platforms" capable of providing new and innovative products and related services in the framework of Future Internet (FI). Citizens and legal entities (i.e.: organizations, enterprises-companies, (state) authorities, etc.) in urban environments are actually facing a multiplicity of challenges, usually of a "complex" nature, by involving technical, business, financial, regulatory, social, and many other features. Targeted initiatives - especially user-driven initiatives – as well as related appropriate investments in pioneering ICT-based solutions can all help "to address and to promote innovative responses", for a beneficial growth and development. To this aim, modern solutions and facilities/services of higher quality in communications –mainly in the context of Internet of the Future- are of particular importance. User-driven open innovation methodologies have proven that they can drastically improve the efficiency of the innovation process by "bridging the gap" between R&D and market entry of a service. Thus, they are rapidly becoming the new mainstream method of innovating. Living-Labs are specific examples of such open innovation environments in real-life settings, in which user-driven innovation is fully integrated within the co-creation process of new services, products and societal infrastructures.
Cities (and urban areas) are continuously faced with major challenges that require investment in innovative solutions (particularly the ICT-based ones) in order to improve the quality and the efficiency of their infrastructures and services. Some anticipate and are "leaders" in adopting smarter development models and may perform a kind of "pioneering role" by engaging users in the expected innovation process. Building upon existing user-driven innovation initiatives in Europe, the critical aim is to ensure a wider implementation of open platforms for the provision of Internet-enabled services in cities and, thus, to include an active involvement of citizens. These platforms should be able to develop "innovation ecosystems" by accelerating the move towards "smart cities" and providing a wide range of opportunities for new, and sustainable services of higher quality, for both citizens and businesses, working interactively. This, in fact, determines the essential framework that is actually taken into account in the scope of the LiveCity PSP-ICT Project (GA No.297291) effort and aims, among other issues, to develop, test and validate pilot actions of innovative Internet-based technologies and services, in cities. These apply user-driven open innovation methodologies across networks of smart cities and may combine: (i) User-driven open innovation; (ii) Connected smart cities, and; (iii) Internet-based services.
The essential aim of the LiveCity Project effort is to empower the citizens of a city to interact with each other in a more productive, efficient and socially useful way, by using high quality video-to-video (v2v) over the Internet. LiveCity proposes v2v applications for a range of user communities in five European cities (Athens, Dublin, Luxembourg (city), Valladolid and Greifswald). The capabilities of modern wireline and 4G wireless networks like IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and LTE networks, issues related to inelastic traffic forwarding, QoS mechanisms and KPIs, intelligent agents and architectures for optimal service delivery are the "key issues" to be investigated. The following well defined scenarios and/or use-cases are investigated by priority:
Papers should be submitted through the Easy Chair conference site either as a [.doc] or as a [.pdf] file (https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=iivc2014aiai2014). They will be peer reviewed by at least 2 academic referees. They should not exceed 10 pages formatted according to the well known LNCS Springer style.
Accepted papers will be presented orally in the conference for 15-20 minutes approx. and they will be published in the Proceedings of the main event.