ICT Platform Research Articles

Version [2.0.0]-[ENTIRETY—sEmanNTIc pRovisioning and govErning ioT devices in smart energY domain]

ENTIRETY 1 is a web application for governing and provisioning IoT devices. Due to the rapid evolution and digitization of energy systems, energy domain ontology is required to manage the data in a structured way. This paper presents the ontology-based web application ENTIRETY 2, which is the updated version of ENTIRETY 1. This updated version provides an interface for data collection and transmission. The data collected by the IoT device are provided to the ICT platform according to the ontology. ENTIRETY 2 overcomes the challenges of the mapping between the different network protocols and automates the generation of JSON-LD based on ontology files. Therefore, the ENTIRETY 2 can be easily extended to support other ontologies.

Extent of Adoption of Agro Advisories Disseminated Through Annapurna Krishi Prasar Seva (AKPS) at Krishi Vigyan Kendra, Palem in Telangana State, India

Agriculture is the most sector in developing countries like India, the majority of them depending on it, to upliftment of their economic status. Most farmers have adopted traditional agricultural practices for farming in the last several years. In this context, the extension system depends on the ICT platform, and it plays a greater role in uplifting the livelihoods of rural people by effectively providing need-based and location-specific information. ICT’s today serving many purposes in agriculture, business, and social development activities, etc., especially in agriculture from crop production technologies to marketing, facilitating forward & backward linkages to the farm produce. In this study impact of agro advisories disseminated through AKPS inferred that 42.50 per cent of the respondents were grouped under the medium category of adoption followed by high (40.00%), low (10.83%) and very low (06.67%) respective categories. Most of the respondents irrespective of the crop had a high level of knowledge about modern technologies. It was also found that the knowledge level of the farmers changed with what they had been growing seasonal crops.

Monitoring climate related risk and opportunities for the wine sector: The MED-GOLD pilot service

MED-GOLD was a 54-months research and innovation project, whose main aim was to co-develop climate services for three staples of the Mediterranean food system, namely grapes, olives and durum wheat. This paper describes the methodology adopted for the co-development of the pilot climate service for the wine sector, focusing on the Douro Wine Region in northern Portugal.In the first step, the MED-GOLD industrial partner SOGRAPE identified key decisions and users’ needs for the wine sector in the Douro region by involving managers from their own vineyards in that region. From this information, the relevant bioclimatic indicators (and associated essential climate variables) were selected. Afterwards, two compound risk indices, the Sanitary and Heat Risk indices, were introduced as a combination of some of the aforementioned bioclimatic indicators. This methodological work was validated against the empirical climate characterization for the region of interest, of several ‘bad’ and ‘good’ years chosen by users according to their recollections of grape and wine production outcomes, namely quality and yields. In this paper, the overall strategy for selection of these years is presented. The components of the service based on historical climate, seasonal predictions and longer-term climate projections are described along with the visual interface developed: the MED-GOLD Dashboard, an interactive tool that displays detailed historical climate data, seasonal predictions and climate projections. The Dashboard consists of an ICT platform with a map-based user-focused front end to aid easy access to and manipulation of the data. The Dashboard was iteratively co-designed with the users to ensure their needs were met.

An overview of approaches and methodologies for supporting smallholders: ICT tools, blockchain, business models, sustainability indicators, simulation models

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted all the weaknesses of manufacturing systems and supply chains. In this challenging context, smallholders have faced several crises mainly related to the difficulty of finding manpower for harvesting activities and the impossibility of distributing food, due to the forced closure of many distribution channels. The main consequences were lost sales and wasted food. With the aim of increasing the responsiveness of smallholders in the face of COVID-like crises, this paper provides an overview of methodologies and approaches currently available in the literature in terms of: ICT tools, blockchain-based solutions, business models, sustainability-oriented frameworks, simulation models. The analysis of the literature provides two main outputs: (1) a list of challenges to be faced in the coming years to improve the working conditions of smallholders, (2) the definition of future research developments, which mainly concern the design of an ICT platform, which integrates multiple technological aspects.

OpΕnergy: An Intelligent System for Monitoring EU Energy Strategy Using EU Open Data

In this paper, the basic structure of an ICT platform of energy indicators, Openergy, is analytically presented, leveraging energy open data to help address the energy crisis more democratically. More specifically, its applicability as a dynamic tool for the management of climate, environmental, and socioeconomic information is described, and its efficiency in helping uncover insights for optimal data-driven decisions is depicted. Openergy uses data from the official portal for European data and the Eurostat site. Its database consists of data related to six energy categories, EU 2020 energy targets, energy balance, electricity production, transport fuels, heat production, and gas emissions, and each one includes its own indicators for EU countries. The platform includes visualizations of these data as well as time series modeling and forecasting, and the results are depicted at Openergy platform. The time series modeling provides forecasts with confidence intervals of each indicator until 2020 in each energy category. Empirical validation, RMSE, and MAE values showed that in almost all cases and estimations, the predicted values are in very good agreement with the observed values.

An ICT platform based on a multi-objective control systemic approach for reducing energy use in public buildings

Towards a goal of efficiency through energy use reduction, the paper analyses the perspectives of promoting the concept of integrated energy management in public buildings through implementation of technical energy efficiency measures and solutions supported by the implementation of ICT technologies, useful both for optimisation based on a multi-objective control systemic approach and for contributing to changing users’ behaviours and to motivate their support taking advantage of ICT (e.g. personalised data driven applications, gaming and social networking). The use of the platform has been tested in two educational buildings. The perspective of reducing energy consumption up to 15% has been appreciated

Young Citizens’ Perceptions of Informal Green Space - A Study of Japanese High School Student's Place Attachment and Desire to Live in Rural Areas

One of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted at the UN Summit in September 2015 includes the greening movement, in which ordinary citizens can actively participate. Goals 3, 11, 13, and 15 of SDGs contribute to health and well-being, sustainable cities and communities, measures against climate change, and protection of life on land, respectively. In this context, studies of urban green spaces have been conducted on greening movements. Most studies have focused on formally recognized green spaces such as parks, gardens, and forests. “Informal green spaces” refer to small plots of land covered with greenery such as grassy areas on roadsides, vacant lots, and vegetation beside railroad tracks and waterways; however, they are considered separate from formal green spaces. A previous survey of informal green space usage in Ichikawa City, Chiba Prefecture, showed that residents were aware of informal green spaces in their neighborhoods and viewed them as potential auxiliary green spaces. However, the study mainly focused on the elderly, and no studies have focused on youth from junior high or high school as the primary research target. Therefore, this study aimed to clarify whether the results from previous studies were relevant to younger generations and a broader range of cities.This study focuses on the cities near Ichikawa, located in the metropolitan area of Japan, urbanized with residential condominiums and other buildings. There are several formal green spaces, and interest in greenery is relatively high. We first surveyed the actual conditions of various informal green spaces in Chiba and recorded their location information and types. Based on the data obtained, a questionnaire on the use and evaluation of informal green spaces was designed, and the responses were collected using “Classi,” an ICT platform for students and teachers, from Ichikawa Gakuen’s students (junior high school to senior high school) and teachers.Green spaces can help to build a sustainable society by improving physical and mental health through exposure to nature, developing cities where people can continue to live, and reducing heat islands. The importance of formal and informal green spaces in cities has been highlighted in this study, which indicated that informal green spaces not only enrich people’s lives but also have the potential for new usage. This study emphasizes that in urban areas with many restrictions, informal green spaces play a complementary role to formal green spaces.

P10-03 Developing online health community platform for enhancing physical activity in the community

Virtual communities are emerging in many aspects of health activities and widespread in health management. Online health communities offer a virtual system where people with common interest, specific health needs can exchange information and experiences with other people with the same condition as well as getting support from peer and professionals. The objective of this study is to develop an ICT platform enhancing community resident participation involving in the chronic disease prevention and physical activities. The aim of this platform is to promote physical activity of community residents for health promotion and disease prevention goal attainment. Health promotion goals for enhancing physical activity were set by health care professionals based on scientific evidence. Instead of individual plan to set the goal by themselves, the platform offered them tailored goal with their conditions and then suggested them to participate in group shared their physical activity goals. The platform encouraged the active participation of community residents though adherence physical activity of health communities in which they were members.The ICT platform provides a place where community residents with chronic conditions or even healthy people who want to promote their health be able to find an appropriate group for together prevent disease and enhancing physical activity. The platform in the study allowed community residents to develop their own communities and invite other members to participate with them. This online community intended to empower community residents to increase their involvement in their self-management and pushing the active participation in phycial activities. Function such as reminder of activity participating was added. Future study will be conducted to evaluate changes in health promotion self-efficacy, health goal fulfillment, health-related quality of life, and shared decision-making after using the Health Community Platform among community residents. Extensive research initiatives are needed to determine the impact of virtual health communities on patient outcome, the overall process as well as quality and access of care.

취업한 발달장애인의 경제특성과 건강특성이 생활만족도에 미치는 영향

Developmental disabilities collectively refer to intellectual disabilities and autistic disorders, and unlike other types of disabilities, the prevalence of disability is very high among young people. Individual Act to Support Developmental Disabilities In 2014, 「Act on Guarantee of Rights and Welfare Support for Persons with Developmental Disabilities」 was enacted. However, interest in the life satisfaction of people with developmental disabilities in daily life is increasing only recently, when the individualism of persons with disabilities has taken root due to the spread of the independent living and social integration paradigm. This study verified the mediating effect of self-esteem in the path that economic and health characteristics of employed people with developmental disabilities affect life satisfaction.
 The research data was analyzed by extracting data from those with developmental disabilities who were employed from among the results of the second wave of the second wave of the 2020 Employment Panel Survey for Persons with Disabilities(PSED) as a sample. Factor analysis was performed using SPSS V26, and correlation, normality analysis, and descriptive statistics for major variables were performed to verify normality necessary for hypothesis verification. Based on this, causal relations and mediating effects were analyzed by hierarchical regression analysis. The validation of the significance of mediating effects was conducted in SPSS Process Macro Ver. 4.1.
 As a result of the analysis, first, it was found that the economic characteristics and health characteristics of the employed people with developmental disabilities had an effect on life satisfaction. Second, among the economic characteristics of persons with developmental disabilities, self-esteem showed a fully mediated effect in whether they were a recipient or not in the path of life satisfaction. Third, in the path that the health characteristics of the developmentally disabled, such as health status and need for help from others, had a positive effect on life satisfaction, self-esteem had a partial mediating effect.
 Based on this, a practical strategy to utilize self-esteem and health status was proposed to improve the life satisfaction of employed people with developmental disabilities. First, paying attention to the fact that the health characteristics of people with developmental disabilities have a stronger effect on life satisfaction than economic characteristics, we proposed a strategy to expand participation in social activities of people with developmental disabilities and a plan to use the ICT platform adopting the 4th industrial revolution technology. In addition, in order to improve the self-esteem of people with developmental disabilities, a method of linking a company employing the disabled and a welfare center for the disabled, and a method of organizing a working group in a form that allows for peer counseling were suggested. In addition, a systematic proposal was made to adjust the activity support training curriculum so that active volunteers who provide activity support services for the severely disabled can be used as a support system for people with developmental disabilities.

Regulation of platform market access by the United States and China: Neo‐mercantilism in digital services

AbstractChina and the United States host the world's largest digital platforms. Platforms are multisided markets that facilitate value‐creating exchanges among users, such as social media, e‐commerce, software QJ;application downloads, search, email, and cloud services. Internet access and the purely digital nature of many of the products and services make digital platforms potentially global in scope. This means that the rules and restrictions governing the flow of capital and information services among national markets strongly influence the economic and social potential of digital platforms. The paper conducts a sequential analysis of the rise of barriers to the United States–China trade in ICT and digital platform markets from 2000 to 2021. We find that China's thriving platform economy was relatively open, competitive and market‐driven in its early stages, and benefited from U.S. capital and the entry of U.S. firms. Since 2009, both countries have progressively restricted access to each other's domestic information services markets. In both cases, the primary stated rationale involved national security claims rather than trade policy concerns. Drawing on International Political Economy theory, we label the United States–China interaction pattern digital neo‐mercantilism. Digital neo‐mercantilism fuses the power and security of the national state with economic development in the digital economy. Policymakers represent information flows and digital technologies in domestic policy discourse as critical to the security and relative power of the state, and pursue various forms of industrial policy, data localization, trade protectionism, or exclusion of foreigners as a result. Both the United States and China are following this policy.

Alternative voting methods applied through ICT to enhance political participation in the Czech Republic

Voting is an integral element of representative democracy, serving as a mechanism for citizens’ political participation. However, there are signs of political disengagement globally, including in the Czech Republic. This article discusses an online political game called Prezident 21 (P21) which applied an alternative voting method called D21 through an ICT platform. The game ran simultaneously with the 2018 Czech Presidential elections. The broad popularity of P21 and the variation of its results from the actual presidential election outcomes suggests that an approach of utilizing ICT to apply alternative voting methods may help to revive political participation in democratic contexts.

Integration and Verification of PLUG-N-HARVEST ICT Platform for Intelligent Management of Buildings

THe energy-efficient operation of microgrids—a localized grouping of consuming loads (domestic appliances, EVs, etc.) with distributed energy sources such as solar photovoltaic panels—suggests the deployment of Energy Management Systems (EMSs) that enable the actuation of controllable microgrid loads coupled with Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools. Such tools are capable of optimizing the aggregated performance of the microgrid in an automated manner, based on an extensive network of Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). Modular adaptable/dynamic building envelope (ADBE) solutions have been proven an effective solution—exploiting free façade areas instead of roof areas—for extending the thermal inertia and energy harvesting capacity in existing buildings of different nature (residential, commercial, industrial, etc.). This study presents the PLUG-N-HARVEST holistic workflow towards the delivery of an automatically controllable microgrid integrating active ADBE technologies (e.g., PVs, HVACs). The digital platform comprises cloud AI services and functionalities for energy-efficient management, data healing/cleansing, flexibility forecasting, and the security-by-design IoT to efficiently optimize the overall performance in near-zero energy buildings and microgrids. The current study presents the effective design and necessary digital integration steps towards the PLUG-N-HARVEST ICT platform alongside real-life verification test results, validating the performance of the platform.

Families_Share: digital and social innovation for work–life balance

PurposeThe European H2020 Families_Share project aims at offering a grass-root approach and a co-designed platform supporting families for sharing time and tasks related to childcare, parenting, after-school and leisure activities and other household tasks. To achieve this objective, the Families_Share project has been built on current practices which are already leveraging on mutual help and support among families, such as Time Banks, Social Streets and self-organizing networks of parents active at the neighbourhood level and seek to harness the potential of ICT networks and mobile technologies to increase the effectiveness of participatory innovation. The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the Families_Share methodology and platform, as well as the results obtained by several partecipating communities in different European countries.Design/methodology/approachThis paper discusses how the Families Share approach (CAPS project, Horizon 2020) is bringing the sharing economy to childcare. Families Share developed a co-caring approach and a co-designed digital welfare platform to support parents with sharing time and tasks related to childcare, after-school and leisure activities. Families Share conducted two iterative pilot experiments and related socio-economic evaluations in six European cities. More than 3,000 citizens were engaged in the co-design process through their local community organizations and more than 1,700 parents and children actively experimented with the approach by organizing collaborative childcare activities. The authors discuss the challenges and solutions of co-designing a socio-technical approach aimed at facilitating socially innovative childcare models, and how the Families Share approach, based on technology-supported co-production of childcare, may provide a new sustainable welfare model for municipalities and companies with respect to life––work balance.FindingsThe authors discuss the challenges and solutions of co-designing a technological tool aimed at facilitating socially innovative childcare models, and how the Families Share approach may provide a new sustainable welfare model for municipalities and companies with respect to work–life balance.Originality/valueAs a main difference with state-of-the-art proposals, Families_Share is aimed to provide support to networks of parents in the organization of self-managed activities, this way being orthogonal with respect either to social-network functionalities or to supply and demand services. Furthermore, Families_Share has been based on a participative approach for both the ICT platform and the overall structure.

Analysis of blood pressure and blood pressure variability pattern among older patients in long-term care hospitals: an observational study analysing the Health-RESPECT (integrated caRE Systems for elderly PatiEnts using iCT) dataset.

There are limited data regarding blood pressure (BP) variability among older adults living in long-term care hospitals (LTCHs). We aimed to collect data from LTCH and analyse BP characteristics and its variability among these patients using a novel platform. The Health-RESPECT (integrated caRE Systems for elderly PatiEnts using iCT) platform was used to construct a daily BP dataset using data of 394 older patients from 6 LTCHs. BP variability was expressed as coefficient of variation (CV = standard deviation/mean of BP × 100). Physical frailty and cognitive function were evaluated using the K-FRAIL questionnaire and the Cognitive Performance Scale of the interRAI Long-Term Care Facilities tool, respectively. From September 2019 to September 2020, 151,092 BP measurements, 346.5 (IQR 290.8-486.3) measurements per patient, were included. The mean BP was 123.4 ± 10.8/71.3 ± 6.5mmHg. BP was significantly lower in frail patients (122.2 ± 11.3/70.4 ± 6.8mmHg) than in pre-frail/robust patients (124.4 ± 10.4/72.1 ± 6.1mmHg, P < 0.05). However, CV of systolic (10.7 ± 2.3% versus 11.3 ± 2.3%, P = 0.005) and diastolic (11.6 ± 2.3% versus 12.4 ± 2.4%, P < 0.001) BP was higher in frail patients. The mean BP was lower, but BP variability was higher in patients with cognitive impairment. The mean BP, but not BP variability, was higher in treated hypertensive patients, as the number of antihypertensive medications increased. Older patients with physical or cognitive frailty had lower BP but higher BP variability. Relationship among frailty, increased BP variability and adverse clinical outcomes should be investigated.

Analysing the importance of e-government in times of disruption: The case of public education in Rwanda during Covid-19 lockdown

The world has been in the grip of the Covid-19 pandemic since 2019. The Rwandan Government failed to establish e-government infrastructure to provide e-education during the lockdown (a.k.a Guma mu Rugo or Stay home), resulting in all children having to repeat the academic level they were in when the lockdown started in March 2020. The problems in Rwanda’s education during Covid-19 are partly attributed to the government’s ICT (a.k.a ikorana buhanga in Kinyarwanda) platform which does not prioritise e-education services, government’s inability to provide infrastructures for e-government, and the lack of ICT equipment and skills. Research on the aspects of e-government and e-education in Rwanda is limited. Knowledge is scarce about what happened to public education in Rwanda during the lockdown. This study aimed to explore the effects of the lockdown on Rwanda’s public education and how e-education could have helped provide public education. A desktop research method, involving collecting data from existing sources on e-government and the state of public education in Rwanda during Covid-19, was conducted. The results show that the lockdown has negatively affected public education because the country failed to provide e-education services. To address the impact of the Covid-19 lockdown and possible future lockdowns, the Government of Rwanda must establish an e-government infrastructure that provides e-education. It will also need to establish affordable infrastructure in rural areas where it does not exist.

CoCross: An ICT Platform Enabling Monitoring Recording and Fusion of Clinical Information Chest Sounds and Imaging of COVID-19 ICU Patients.

Monitoring and treatment of severely ill COVID-19 patients in the ICU poses many challenges. The effort to understand the pathophysiology and progress of the disease requires high-quality annotated multi-parameter databases. We present CoCross, a platform that enables the monitoring and fusion of clinical information from in-ICU COVID-19 patients into an annotated database. CoCross consists of three components: (1) The CoCross4Pros native android application, a modular application, managing the interaction with portable medical devices, (2) the cloud-based data management services built-upon HL7 FHIR and ontologies, (3) the web-based application for intensivists, providing real-time review and analytics of the acquired measurements and auscultations. The platform has been successfully deployed since June 2020 in two ICUs in Greece resulting in a dynamic unified annotated database integrating clinical information with chest sounds and diagnostic imaging. Until today multisource data from 176 ICU patients were acquired and imported in the CoCross database, corresponding to a five-day average monitoring period including a dataset with 3477 distinct auscultations. The platform is well accepted and positively rated by the users regarding the overall experience.

Cost-effectiveness of Cardiac Telerehabilitation With Relapse Prevention for the Treatment of Patients With Coronary Artery Disease in the Netherlands

Cardiac telerehabilitation (CTR) has been found to be a safe and beneficial alternative to traditional center-based cardiac rehabilitation (CR) and might be associated with higher participation rates by reducing barriers to CR use. However, implementation of CTR interventions remains low, which may be owing to a lack of cost-effectiveness analyses of data from large-scale randomized clinical trials. To assess the cost-effectiveness of CTR with relapse prevention compared with center-based CR among patients with coronary artery disease. This economic evaluation performed a cost-utility analysis of data from the SmartCare-CAD (Effects of Cardiac Telerehabilitation in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease Using a Personalized Patient-Centred ICT Platform) randomized clinical trial. The cost-effectiveness and utility of 3 months of cardiac telerehabilitation followed by 9 months of relapse prevention were compared with the cost-effectiveness of traditional center-based cardiac rehabilitation. The analysis included 300 patients with stable coronary artery disease who received care at a CR center serving 2 general hospitals in the Netherlands between May 23, 2016, and July 26, 2018. All patients were entering phase 2 of outpatient CR and were followed up for 1 year (until August 14, 2019). Data were analyzed from September 21, 2020, to September 24, 2021. After baseline measurements were obtained, participants were randomly assigned on a 1:1 ratio to receive CTR (intervention group) or center-based CR (control group) using computerized block randomization. After 6 supervised center-based training sessions, patients in the intervention group continued training at home using a heart rate monitor and accelerometer. Patients uploaded heart rate and physical activity data and discussed their progress during a weekly video consultation with their physical therapist. After 3 months, weekly coaching was concluded, and on-demand coaching was initiated for relapse prevention; patients were instructed to continue using their wearable sensors and were contacted in cases of nonadherence to the intervention or reduced exercise or physical activity volumes. Quality-adjusted life-years were assessed using the EuroQol 5-Dimension 5-Level survey (EQ-5D-5L) and the EuroQol Visual Analogue Scale (EQ-VAS), and cardiac-associated health care costs and non-health care costs were measured by health care consumption, productivity, and informal care questionnaires (the Medical Consumption Questionnaire, the Productivity Cost Questionnaire, and the Valuation of Informal Care Questionnaire) designed by the Institute for Medical Technology Assessment. Costs were converted to 2020 price levels (in euros) using the Dutch consumer price index (to convert to US dollars, euro values were multiplied by 1.142, which was the mean exchange rate in 2020). Among 300 patients (266 men [88.7%]), the mean (SD) age was 60.7 (9.5) years. The quality of life among patients receiving CTR vs center-based CR was comparable during the study according to the results of both utility measures (mean difference on EQ-5D-5L: -0.004; P = .82; mean difference on EQ-VAS: -0.001; P = .92). Intervention costs were significantly higher for CTR (mean [SE], €224 [€4] [$256 ($4)]) compared with center-based CR (mean [SE], €156 [€5] [$178 ($6)]; P < .001); however, no difference in overall cardiac health care costs was observed between CTR (mean [SE], €4787 [€503] [$5467 ($574)] and center-based CR (mean [SE], €5507 [€659] [$6289 ($753)]; P = .36). From a societal perspective, CTR was associated with lower costs compared with center-based CR (mean [SE], €20 495 [€ 2751] [$23 405 ($3142)] vs €24 381 [€3613] [$27 843 ($4126)], respectively), although this difference was not statistically significant (-€3887 [-$4439]; P = .34). In this economic evaluation, a CTR intervention with relapse prevention was likely to be cost-effective compared with center-based CR, suggesting that CTR maybe used as an alternative intervention for the treatment of patients with coronary artery disease. These results add to the evidence base in favor of CTR and may increase the implementation of CTR interventions in clinical practice.

New perspectives and results for Smart Operators in industry 4.0: A human-centered approach

Digital solutions (including Extended Reality as well as web, mobile and AI technologies), among others, are entering a broad variety of industries and modifying the capabilities of operators through (close to) real-time display of context-dependent information. However, little is known with respect to two major issues: (i) how these technologies can be seamlessly integrated for product/process and overall manufacturing system management providing of syntactic, semantic and functional interoperability and reusability among the different manufacturing systems departments; (ii) how they can be conveyed to operators also taking into account the cognitive load that is incurred by the operators.To this end, starting from a previous article (Longo et al., 2017), this article designs and proposes the KNOW4I approach and its practical implementation in an ICT platform (the KNOW4I platform) to further empower the Smart Operators concept.Two major objectives are pursued. The former is to set a standard referred to as the KNOW4I methodological approach for knowledge representation, knowledge management and digital contents management within the Smart Operator domain. The latter is the implementation of the aforementioned approach as part of the KNOW4I platform that includes a suite of Smart Utilities and Objects intelligently and interactively linked with a newly released version of the Sophos-MS digital and intelligent Assistant. Experimentations and results based on multiple KPIs are carried out to account for the effectiveness of the proposed framework.

A Digital Environment for Empowering the Main Actors of the Deep Energy Retrofitting Value Chain

The H2020 HAPPEN project has defined a new approach to tackle significant unsolved bottlenecks affecting the energy renovation markets of the residential built stock in the Mediterranean area: the MedZEB approach (Mediterranean way to nearly Zero Energy Building), which backbone is the HAPPEN ICT Platform. The paper describes firstly the MedZEB concept as a holistic, flexible and cost-optimal approach especially tailored for the Med area. It then presents the HAPPEN Platform in terms of general architecture, workflows, resources and tools aimed at fostering the spread of the MedZEB approach by integrating technical, financial, environmental and operational aspects. A critical assessment on the state-of-the-art highlights the novelty of the HAPPEN Platform as a comprehensive and effective framework for empowering the evolution of the Med renovation markets, as means for fostering the progressive uptake of deep energy retrofitting in the Med area.

Empowering NGOs in countering online hate messages

Studies on online hate speech have mostly focused on the automated detection of harmful messages. Little attention has been devoted so far to the development of effective strategies to fight hate speech, in particular through the creation of counter-messages. While existing manual scrutiny and intervention strategies are time-consuming and not scalable, advances in natural language processing have the potential to provide a systematic approach to hatred management. In this paper, we introduce a novel ICT platform that NGO operators can use to monitor and analyse social media data, along with a counter-narrative suggestion tool. Our platform aims at increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of operators’ activities against islamophobia. We test the platform with more than one hundred NGO operators in three countries through qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Results show that NGOs favour the platform solution with the suggestion tool, and that the time required to produce counter-narratives significantly decreases.