Engineering conductive cotton/polyester fabrics with PANI@MWCNT-NiS for humidity-sensitive smart applications

Up to now, information and communication technology is mainly utilised at main points of urban drainage and water distribution network, while the actual system behaviour in the majority of the networks remains unknown. In this regard, the Internet of Things concept can increase the data availability significantly, as the combination of low-cost sensors and innovative wireless data communication technologies enables large-scale installations of measurement equipment even in underground and remote locations. Following, new approaches in management of urban water infrastructure (UWI) are emerging including decentralised and smart approaches (e.g., smart rainwater harvesting). However, these approaches are relatively new and unknown, therefore it is difficult for decision-makers to justify investments.In this work, the smart water campus of the university of Innsbruck is presented as an innovate testbed for smart and data-driven applications. The campus  is equipped with a large number of measurement devices and parameters are measured in high resolution (1 to 15 min) using different communication technologies for data transmission. Thereby, the quality of service strongly depends on the used communication technology and the installation places. Additionally, low power wide area networks like LoRaWAN operate in the public frequency ranges and data gaps have to be expected. The measured data (all except data from the water distribution network) are freely available under https://umwelttechnik-swc.uibk.ac.at.The high-resolution data allows for evaluation of system conditions in real- time, enabling new possibilities in operations (e.g., smart rainwater harvesting for cross-system improvements) and fault detection (e.g., leakage and stagnation). Additionally, a special focus of the smart water campus project is on informing the population about the elements of the UWI (e.g., information panel, scavenger hunts to particularly address children) to make the hidden UWI more visible.As experiences show, smart applications can improve the system performance, but also increase the requirements on the project team for a successful implementation: (1) detailed knowledge about communication technologies (and their limitations), (2) sufficient IT-knowledge for the implementation of the data flow and management, and (3) social sciences for the integration of different participants. Additionally, it requires effective measures to achieve economic (due to investment costs) and ecological (due to battery powered devices) sustainability.The smart campus shows that it requires a coordination of appropriate communication technologies for each specific application but that smart applications can improve the performance of the integrated urban water infrastructure.Oberascher, M., Kinzel, C., Kastlunger, U., Schöpf, M., Grimm, K., Plaiasu, D., Rauch, W., Sitzenfrei, R., 2022. Smart water campus – a testbed for smart water applications. Water Sci Technol. 86(11), 2834-2847. https://doi.org/10.2166/wst.2022.369.

This study aims to determine the perspective of traditional restaurateurs on smart restaurant applications and to obtain their opinions on these applications’ potential to create a change in employment. The exploratory method, one of the qualitative research methods, was used in this study. The present study employs interviews conducted with administrators of first-class restaurants and gastronomy facilities, which have the Tourism Management Certificate and operate in Türkiye. We analysed the data collected during the interviews by using the descriptive and thematic content analysis methods. We also examined the results regarding the perspective on smart restaurant applications under five different themes by using the Technology Acceptance Model. The findings achieved in this study revealed that the participants have positive perceptions towards smart restaurant applications, but it also emphasises the importance of human labour rather than technological tools in areas where customer interaction is high and the participants do not intend to use in service area.

This study addresses the public adoption of and satisfaction with UAE government e-services, emphasizing the quality of digital platforms, mainly smart applications. This quantitative research uses the technology acceptance, e-service quality, and web trust models. An online survey designed via Survey Monkey was distributed to Emirati citizens in Sharjah, Dubai, and Abu Dhabi municipalities via government Facebook and Instagram accounts in December 2022. The sample included the Ministries of Human Resources, Education, Interior, and Foreign Affairs, which provide daily individual and commercial services to citizens through digital applications. Three hundred respondents completed the form. The findings revealed that participants appreciate and trust the electronic services provided via smart applications, particularly their ease of use and quality of information. Factors motivating their use include information disclosure strategy and interactivity. The UAE's increasing use of smart digital applications necessitates training, user-friendly designs, and integration with rather than replacement of traditional direct methods.

As smart building becomes increasingly popular, it enables many interesting applications, such as smart lock, elderly monitoring and remote healthcare.This paper will introduce one sub-system in the smart building: smart power system.This smart power system consists of an Android application, a cloud server and a smart socket.In addition, human-device interaction methods in this system are studied.

To efficiently facilitate the energy transition it is essential to evaluate the potential of demand response in practice. Based on the results of a Dutch smart grid pilot, this paper assesses the potential of both manual and semi-automated demand response in residential areas. To stimulate demand response, a dynamic tariff and smart appliances were used. The participating households were informed about the tariff day-ahead through a home energy management system, connected to a display installed on the wall in their living room. The tariff was intuitively displayed: self-consumption of photovoltaic generation was stimulated by means of a low tariff, but also the generation itself played a central role on the display. Household flexibility is analyzed, focusing on: (i) the load shift of (smart) appliances, and (ii) the response of the (overall) peak load towards the dynamic tariff. To assess the latter, i.e. price responsiveness, the participants were split up in two comparable groups which were subject to a different moment of evening peak-pricing. Based on the results, it is concluded that mainly the flexibility of the white goods (i.e. the washing machine, tumble dryer and dishwasher) is used for demand response. The main part of the flexible load of these (smart) appliances is shifted from the evening to the midday, to match local generation. This load shift remained stable over a long period of time (>1year) and is not responsive to the exact moment of peak-pricing. Therefore, it is concluded that a simple and transparent design for dynamic tariffs is sufficient and most effective to stimulate (manual) residential demand response. Such a tariff should emphasize the ‘right’ moments to use electricity, intuitively linked to renewable generation.

Consumer privacy and consumption confidentiality and integrity are the main security concerns for smart grid connection with the residential electricity consumers. This paper proposes a lightweight privacy-preserving electricity consumption aggregation scheme that exploits lightweight lattice-based homomorphic cryptosystem. In the proposed scheme, smart household appliances aggregate their readings without involving the smart meter. Although smart meters or the intermediate base station cannot decrypt this aggregated consumption, they can validate the message’s authenticity. The proposed scheme also investigates the impact of different types of smart appliances on the home area network’s overhead. The total communication and computation load for the proposed scheme is trivial and tolerable by different parties in the connection, i.e., smart appliances, smart meters, and the base station. In addition, the deployed cryptosystem, which depends on simple arithmetic operations, can further reduce the computation duty for smart appliances. Simulation results and security analysis show that our proposed scheme guarantees consumers privacy, and messages authenticity and integrity, with lightweight communication and computation complexity.

Many emerging smart applications use sensor data, which are integrated by using various Big Data platforms. Such smart applications must address several requirements including high Quality of Service, privacy and security. Emerging fog computing technologies may provide some new possibilities to address these requirements through the design of multi-tier, container-based applications. In this work, we present the design of a smart application for the domain of civil engineering, which is currently undergoing testing and evaluation.

Information Technology plays a dynamic role in business media and in commercial computing. In the current technological setting, people show grace on smart mobile phones, Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) and other smart mobile devices. Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) services are recent trend in commercial processes including, online shopping, transactions, billings, recharge and so forth. Mobile applications (apps) are considered as a current fashion in M-Commerce. Globally, many of the commercial websites are being replaced with mobile apps. The business mobile application has power to grab maximum customers in national level and also can attract the global customers that results big hike in their business income along with the popularity. The current literature study neatly reports the lack of mobile applications available for customers in Oman. Therefore, we analyze and present the challenges, failures in creating mobile apps by commercial firms or companies in the first phase of the research. The second phase of the research explores the necessity of smart mobile devices, applications and technologies in effectual business process. A maximum number of public in Sultanate of Oman are engaged with mobile devices and smart applications. The core idea of this research study shows the methodologies and possible ways to use those smart mobile applications for Oman national development. Random sampling surveys are also carried out and the resulting effects are also discussed

Purpose – The objective of this study is to find out to what extend the hotel establishments in Eskisehir use smart hotel applications and the opinions and suggestions of hotel managers on the subject. Design/methodology/approach – The sample of the study consists of hotel establishments in Eskisehir. The hotel establishments were selected by purposive sampling method and the data were obtained by structured interview technique. Sound recordings obtained during interviews were transferred to computer and a descriptive analysis was performed considering the notes of the researcher. Findings – Hotel managers expressed in general that cost of transition to smart hotel applications is high, and consequently, hotels in Eskisehir do not use smart hotel applications. Discussion – Although hotel managers are aware of the future advantages of smart hotel applications, they have argued that cost-benefit analysis should be made carefully. However, smart hotel applications will provide advantage to hotel establishments in terms of competitiveness, efficiency and customer satisfaction in addition to cost advantages with the newly arrived generation Y and Z.

IoT is enabling several smart applications that automate processes, causing substantial improvements in real time monitoring and control, better quality of life, and also resulting in substantial cost savings. Presently, there is a natural convergence of IoT with Cloud Computing and Artificial Intelligence to create smart real-world applications in areas such as healthcare, agriculture and high-risk industries. However, these systems have become vulnerable to numerous attacks by hackers and ransom riggers. This paper starts by explaining the architecture of the IoT Cloud integrated applications and components involved in the environment. Further, the popular disruptions witnessed in IoT applications are briefly captured. The disruptions are analyzed to understand the vulnerabilities in various components of the IoT Cloud smart applications. The paper will be useful for researchers to understand various attack scenarios in the modern smart applications and think of novel solutions.

In smart applications, edge nodes are deployed to perform faster computations. Due to the limited computational capability of edge nodes, collaborative computing is used in which multiple edge nodes collaborate for request processing. For faster processing, these edge nodes are used in many applications namely, smart homes, smart farming, healthcare and so forth. In this paper, we have discussed the use of edge nodes in smart home applications. The smart home application contains different types of sensors and these sensors generate various types of data. Edge nodes are used in these applications for the immediate processing of data. A data classifier is used to classify the data and to reduce delay in data processing. However, the data classifier is more susceptible to DDoS attacks. Hence, an efficient attack detection mechanism is required to detect DDoS attacks. We have used a Feature Selection SVM (FSSVM) algorithm to select optimal parameters for attack recognition. In this algorithm, the information gain ratio is used for optimal parameter selection, and SVM is used for classification. The FSSVM algorithm has been compared with KPCA‐SVM, SVM, and Naive Bayes. Simulation results show that the FSSVM algorithm provides better accuracy compared to KPCA‐SVM, SVM, and Naive Bayes algorithms.

Smart appliances and sensors have become widely available. We are deploying them in our homes to manage the level of comfort, energy consumption or security. While such smart appliances are becoming an integral part of modern home automation systems, their integration into non-residential buildings is problematic. Indeed, smart appliance vendors rely on the assumption that the Local Area Network (LAN) guarantees locality and a single unit of use/administration. This assumption is not met in non-residential buildings, where the LAN infrastructure might cover one or several buildings, and where several organizations or functional units are co-located. Worse, directly coupling smart appliances to the Internet opens up a range of security issues as device owners have very little control over the way their smart appliances interact with external services. In order to address these problems, we propose a solution that couples the use and management of smart appliances with physical locality. Put differently, we propose that smart appliances can be accessed via smartphones, but only from the room they are located in. Our solution combines opportunistic connectivity through local Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) with an ultrasound-based method for room level isolation. We describe and evaluate a prototype system, deployed in 25 offices and 2 common spaces of an office building. This work opens up intriguing avenues for new research focused on the representation and utilization of physical locality for decentralized building management.

Parkinson’s disease is a chronically developing neurodegenerative disease showing typical motor symptoms of the following triad: resting tremor, freezing of gait, and bradykinesia-hypokinesia. In the present study, we investigated the effects of a communal exercise program, using the visual and auditory feedback provided by a smart application, to assess gait ability, fear of falling, and fall efficacy in Parkinson’s disease patients. Subjects consisted of 29 Parkinson’s disease patients who were non-demented individuals. The subjects were randomly divided into three groups: the control group (n= 9, CG), the communal exercise group using the smart application (n= 10, CCEG), and the individual exercise group using the smart application (n= 10, ICEG). The communal exercise program consisted of a warm up (10 min) followed by communal exercise using the smart application (40 min), and a cool down (10 min) for 3 days per week over 10 weeks. The results presented here show that velocity and cadence were significantly increased among groups. Step and stride length were significantly increased among times. Fear of falling and fall efficacy were significantly different among groups and times. In particular, fear of falling was lower and fall efficacy was higher in the CCEG than in the ICEG and CG. These findings indicate that 10 weeks of the communal exercise program using the smart application can be effective in improving gait ability, fear of falling, and fall efficacy in Parkinson’s disease patients.

Introduction Decarbonization of future electricity systems requires a significant proportion of electricity consumption to be supplied from nuclear, carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant and renewable sources. Since nuclear and CCS plant are less flexible than, for instance, natural gas-fired combined cycle plants, and renewable sources such as wind, solar and tidal are intermittent, this creates serious challenges to the way the current system is operated. In order to ensure that the system is capable of maintaining a supply and demand balance, the reduction in generation flexibility as a result of incorporating more low-carbon generation technologies has to be balanced with an increase in flexibility from demand. Consequently demand-side flexibility needs to be developed and smart domestic appliances can play an important role (IEA, 2008). In order to gain insight and understanding of the role and value of smart appliances, comprehensive studies of its economic value are required. Such analysis needs to consider relevant parameters such as consumers' behaviour and acceptance, appliance technology and future scenarios of power-system development regarding flexibility of generation and network capacity. This chapter presents a framework to assess the value of smart appliances, as flexible demand, to increase system flexibility and to provide new sources of ancillary services. The increased flexibility will improve system efficiency, reduce operating costs and carbon emissions, and increase utilization of renewable sources; from these benefits the value of smart appliances will be derived. However, any decrease in the value of energy services received as a result of, for instance, inconvenience caused by curtailment or rescheduling of consumption should, in theory, be deducted from such benefits. At the core of the framework is a model that simulates annual system operation, scheduling simultaneously generation and smart appliances, in order to minimize system operating costs. This takes into account system security and operational constraints. In addition, the role of smart appliances to support network operation is studied. Realistic appliance data and results from consumer behaviour studies, as well as wind and demand historical data, are used.

In order to save the electricity in domestic and commercial building, the smart energy controller with Internet of Things (IOT) is essential for the consumer. In proposed research, novel algorithms are applied to control and monitor the Residential Air Conditioner (RAC). The smart appliances are essential of Smart Grid (SG) that enables the residential customers to execute demand response programs autonomously. The consumption of power by RAC is maximum compared to other smart home appliances. The power and energy consumption can be reduced by two algorithm viz. first (i) controlling of thermostat by room temperature sensing with IOT and second (ii) controlling of thermostat by real time price (RTP) with cloud server. In the present paper, a hardware prototype is designed for smart energy controller. The proposed algorithms are applied to smart energy controller to investigate the impact for power and energy consumption with consumer’s comfort.