Smart Homes and Offices

Smart Homes and Offices (SHO) are composed of interlinked components with constant data transfer and services targeted at increasing the lifestyle of the people. This chapter describes about the smart components and how SHO are direct implementation of Internet of Things (IOT). The major paradigm in this chapter is appliances supporting smart aspects of SHO, their applications and change in technology in context of smart Homes and Offices. Here we have also discussed the standardization and personalization of gadgets and how it has been increasing our standard of living. Finally, the chapter focuses on privacy preserving mechanisms, its essence over smart cities, strong architecture related to privacy, preserving mechanism, and various approaches available that can retaliate these issues in a smart city environment.

Application of region-based video surveillance in smart cities using deep learning

Smart video surveillance helps to build more robust smart city environment. The varied angle cameras act as smart sensors and collect visual data from smart city environment and transmit it for further visual analysis. The transmitted visual data is required to be in high quality for efficient analysis which is a challenging task while transmitting videos on low capacity bandwidth communication channels. In latest smart surveillance cameras, high quality of video transmission is maintained through various video encoding techniques such as high efficiency video coding. However, these video coding techniques still provide limited capabilities and the demand of high-quality based encoding for salient regions such as pedestrians, vehicles, cyclist/motorcyclist and road in video surveillance systems is still not met. This work is a contribution towards building an efficient salient region-based surveillance framework for smart cities. The proposed framework integrates a deep learning-based video surveillance technique that extracts salient regions from a video frame without information loss, and then encodes it in reduced size. We have applied this approach in diverse case studies environments of smart city to test the applicability of the framework. The successful result in terms of bitrate 56.92%, peak signal to noise ratio 5.35 bd and SR based segmentation accuracy of 92% and 96% for two different benchmark datasets is the outcome of proposed work. Consequently, the generation of less computational region-based video data makes it adaptable to improve surveillance solution in Smart Cities.

The problem of adaptivity of the street art into social and cultural environment of the city (Ukrainian context)

The purpose of the article is to carry out cultorologic comprehension of the adaptivity of the street art into social and cultural environment of the Ukrainian city and to define the directions of the city environment humanization. The topicality of the article. The street art became the inherent part of the social and cultural environment of the city, the ground for artistic self­expression, visual ring for discussions, conflicts and a means for promotion and branding of the city. Despite the humanization of the city environment, the issue of adaptivity of the street art into social and cultural environment of the city remains still urgent and open. The methodology is based on application of the hermeneutic interpretation (to define the notion of the “street art” at the modern stage of research), comparative analysis (with the purpose to detect the peculiarities of the process of the street art integration into the cultural landscape of the city environment), structural and functional method (to clarify the prospective adaptation directions of the urban art into the urban cultural environment), axiological approach (to define the role of the street art in the cultural and artificial development of the city). The central position in the research is allotted to culturological approach allowing to clarify the specific features of the street art adaptivity into social and cultural environment of the city, to reveal the peculiarities of the multicultural city environment formation. The scientific novelty lies in theoretic comprehension of the process of the street art adaptivity into social and cultural environment of the city and detection of the priority ways of the urban art integration into the cultural matrix of the city. The results. Variability of the street art interpretation in the context of the city environment was considered. The specifics of the street art existence at the modern stage of the research was defined. The prospective directions of the urban art integration into the cultural landscape of the city was traced: differentiation at the legislative level of the notions “street art” and “vandalism”, application of the urban art in design of the city environment and creation of the city brand, application of the information and communication technologies in creation of the artistic objects, tourist guides, etc. The practical significance. The research results may be used in training the higher education applicants in the social and art fields of knowledge, for example, lecture materials of the disciplines aimed at the study of ХХІ century culture, mass culture, urban science, etc.

A panacea or unregulated density of the city?

Drawing on the case of Krasnoyarsk, the authors study the possibilities of defining the territories of integrated development (ITD), as well as possible directions of their development from the standpoint of the modern understanding of the renovation of the city environment. To assess the functioning of residential areas to be reconstructed, the method of urban morphology and the QGIS geoinformation complex based on open data were used. Some territorial parameters are analyzed and proposed for determining the ITD, in accordance with the present ideas about the modern comfort of the living environment, using the example of two city districts.

Human-Centered Applications in Sustainable Smart City Development: A Qualitative Survey

Corporate Industries apply new technologies for manufacturing and production applications. This makes the process depend upon multiple computers, robotic applications, and varying specifications, which reduces efficiency and speed. These technological challenges are incredibly diverse since an extensive range of processing technologies is available. When it comes to human-centered automation, it’s all about the scientific knowledge and data encapsulation for robots to interact within this field. Robots must operate in various ecosystems and interact closely with non-professional customers. Current technology is not well adapted to this scenario, requiring sustainable management separated from available technology. In this article, the human-centered Industrial Robot using Artificial Intelligence (AI-HCIR) is suggested as a tool to resolve such issues. Several manufacturing protocols are presented to efficiently produce products that simplify human work and involve different needs. The HCIR scrutinizes it for time allocation and manufacturing time allocation. For this, a suitable processing environment and a detailed simulation is conducted. The proposed AI-HCIR achieves a 33.68% error rate, 24% throughput, and 18.7% efficiency in the smart city environment. In contrast with conventional methods, the proposed method obtains a better result efficiently.

Development of water supply services for the formation of eco-friendly city environment

The study of possibilities of the improvement of services of water supply of the services on the basis of the principles of resource-saving is the objective of this research. The authors analyzed the general trends, features and problems of providing the population with drinking water in the cities. The authors consider it expedient to use the classification of the water, used in the fleet, but also to correct it for houses. Some actions for management of the decrease in volumes of water consumption by the population were offered on the basis of this classification. The possibility of implementation of systems of water reuse in the course of rendering services of water supply to the population were technically and are economically proved. The perspective directions of the development of services of water supply of the city population were proved economically. The results and offers which are contained in this article can be useful for the authorities when developing city-planning projects, for employees of housing-and-municipal services, services responsible for ecological wellbeing in the cities, and for other specialists.

Festive and Daily Interaction between Neighbours in Contemporary Lithuania and Bulgaria

The article is based on data from ethnographic field research that was conducted in Vilnius and the Vilnius are in 2017–2020 and in Sofia in 2019. To meet the aims of this research comparing interactions between neighbours in the cities of Sofia and Vilnius respectively, I analysed two types of neighbourhood: the formal, which is determined by territorial proximity and the necessity of mutual assistance; and the informal, which is based on friendly feelings and the desire to spend leisure time and celebrate together. However, the specific features of field research in these cities highlighted another aspect of the neighbourhood, namely, how it functions in public and private spaces. A majority of respondents associated friendship with visiting one another at home, while birthdays were the most common celebration for spending time together. Older respondents, mostly those who were from villages, remember how neighbours would interact in the village environment and how they brought this concept of neighbourhood to the city, naturally comparing it with the situation there and pointing out generational differences. However, in the opinion of the majority, the city environment changed the nature of interactions between neighbours and created a unique concept of neighbourhood that was based on close social links, which sometimes developed into friendship.

Design and Implementation of an Electric Skibus Line in North Italy

To enhance the current Public Transport (PT) service in the northern Italian region of Lombardy, this work tries to plan fully a new electric Skibus line connecting the cities of Santa Caterina and Livigno. As a first try outside the city environment, the electrification study is set on a limited mountain zone hence featured by steep grades and cold temperatures. In the first part of the paper, the energy consumed by an electric bus working in such a context is assessed, and from the learned outcomes, proper charging infrastructure is proposed. From the found results, the introduction of a new electric bus line in the chosen region seems feasible. Finally, in the last part of the work the performances of an electric bus fleet are compared with that of a diesel one, in terms of fuel costs and Well-to-Wheel (WTW) emissions. The results prove that an electric fleet would be more convenient for both the economic and the environmental aspects.

Enabling the Industrial Internet of Things to Cloud Continuum in a Real City Environment

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is one of the most demanding IoT applications. The insertion of industries in the context of smart cities and other smart environments, allied with new communication technologies such as 5G, brings a new horizon of possibilities and new requirements. These requirements include low latency, the support of a massive quantity of devices and data, and the need to support horizontal communications between devices at the edge level. To make this feasible, it is necessary to establish an IIoT-to-cloud continuum distributing federated brokers across the infrastructure and providing scalability and interoperability. To attend this type of application, we present the Helix Multi-layered IoT platform and its operating modes. We report and discuss its real-world deployment in the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab in Aveiro, Portugal with functional and performance tests. We tested device-to-device communication across edge and core layers and also interconnected the infrastructure with one in São Paulo, Brazil, replicating the use of a global industry. The successful deployment validates the use of a Helix Multi-layered IoT platform as a suitable backend platform for IIoT applications capable of establishing the IIoT-to-cloud continuum. It also helps for the deployment of other applications in such a domain.

PEMAPARAN MANFAAT E-COMMERCE UNTUK MEMBANTU KEGIATAN USAHA PARA PELAKU UMKM DI KOTA JAMBI

The development of information technology should be able to be utilized by all parties, including SMEs in Indonesia. Especially during the current COVID-19 pandemic, where there are restrictions on community activities outside the home so that conventional buying and selling activities do not occur anymore. The government encourages community activities to be carried out entirely online. Problems arise because the community is not ready to face this change, including MSME actors who can no longer run their business as usual. However, limited information and lack of infrastructure cause less optimal use of information technology in meeting their business needs. The use of information technology should be an opportunity in order to encourage business growth. Therefore, the PKM FTI Untar team decided to help spread knowledge on the use of information technology to MSME actors in the Jambi City environment. This activity has been carried out for 2 days through the Zoom application. Activities are carried out in the form of webinars. A total of 21 MSME actors in Jambi City became participants in this service activity. The activity was carried out well and received a warm welcome from the participants. The participants also feel more confident to use the available applications in running their business. They also suggested that activities like this be added with direct counseling on the use of e-commerce applications.Perkembangan teknologi informasi seharusnya dapat dimanfaatkan oleh seluruh pihak, tak terkecuali para pelaku UMKM di Indonesia. Terlebih lagi pada masa pandemi COVID-19 saat ini, dimana adanya pembatasan kegiatan masyarakat di luar rumah sehingga membuat tidak terjadi lagi kegiatan jual beli secara konvensional. Pemerintah mendorong agar kegiatan masyarakat dilakukan sepenuhnya secara daring. Permasalahan timbul karena masyarakat tidak siap dalam menghadapi perubahan ini, termasuk juga para pelaku UMKM yang tidak dapat lagi menjalankan usaha seperti biasa. Hanya saja, keterbatasan informasi dan kurangnya infrastruktur menyebabkan kurang optimalnya pemanfaatan teknologi informasi dalam memenuhi kebutuhan usaha mereka. Penggunaan teknologi informasi seharusnya bisa menjadi peluang dalam rangka memdorong pertumbuhan usaha. Oleh karena itu, tim PKM FTI Untar memutuskan untuk membantu menyebarkan pengetahuan terhadap penggunaan teknologi informasi kepada para pelaku UMKM di lingkungan Kota Jambi. Kegiatan ini sudah terlaksana selama 2 hari melalui aplikasi Zoom. Kegiatan dilakukan dalam bentuk webinar. Sebanyak 21 orang pelaku UMKM di Kota Jambi menjadi peserta dalam kegiatan pengabdian ini. Kegiatan telah terlaksana dengan baik dan mendapatkan sambutan yang hangat dari para peserta. Para peserta pun merasa semakin yakin untuk menggunakan aplikasi-aplikasi yang tersedia dalam menjalankan usaha mereka. Mereka juga menyarankan agar kegiatan seperti ini ditambahkan lagi dengan penyuluhan penggunaan aplikasi e-commerce secara langsung.