Tech City Research Articles

MobFedLS: A framework to provide federated learning for mobile nodes in V2X environments

Federated Learning (FL) is a promising approach for parameter normalisation in Machine Learning (ML) models, especially when data privacy and computing distribution are crucial. However, there are significant constraints in FL solutions, particularly concerning the handling of the mobility of participating nodes in the parameter aggregation processes, with a substantial impact on Vehicle to Everything (V2X) scenarios within the scope of smart cities. To address this challenge, we propose Mobile Federated Learning System (MobFedLS), a lightweight microservices-based framework capable of operating on various types of devices (mobile and non-mobile). MobFedLS features an interface to integrate ML models to cooperate in the FL process without intrusion between the parties. MobFedLS manages the entire federation process, from instantiating services on mobile nodes to the final parameter updates in the involved ML models and the release of resources used in all participating nodes. Additionally, MobFedLS handles node mobility and ensures the proper execution of federated processes, even with nodes entering and leaving at any stage of the aggregation process. To demonstrate the capabilities of MobFedLS, we use data collected through the city-scale infrastructure of Aveiro Tech City Living Lab (ATCLL), specifically the position of vehicles during their movement through the city. In the tests, we evaluate all phases of the aggregation process for mobile nodes. The results show that, even with intermittent connectivity to the city-infrastructure ATCLL, the MobFedLS system manages the node mobility and effectively handles node availability during the aggregation of ML model parameters.

"Detailed Study on Making Prototype of Proposed Smart and High Tech City"

Abstract: Smart and high- tech metropolises represent the zenith of civic invention, using slice- edge technologies to enhance effectiveness, sustainability, and quality of life for residers. This composition provides a comprehensive study of the crucial technologies driving the elaboration of smart metropolises, including Internet of effects ( IoT) bias, artificial intelligence( AI), big data analytics, renewable energy, and civic mobility results. Also, it explores the counter accusations of these advancements on colourful aspects of civic life, similar as transportation, energy operation, healthcare, and governance. By examining recent developments and unborn prospects, this paper aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of the openings and challenges associated with the metamorphosis towards smarter and further sustainable metropolises.

Smart city case study through urban regeneration living lab in the information technology era: Focusing on ‘Tech City’ in London, England

Smart city case study through urban regeneration living lab in the information technology era: Focusing on ‘Tech City’ in London, England

Aveiro Tech City Living Lab: A Communication, Sensing, and Computing Platform for City Environments

This article presents the deployment and experimentation architecture of the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab (ATCLL) in Aveiro, Portugal. This platform comprises a large number of Internet-of-things (IoT) devices with communication, sensing and computing capabilities. The communication infrastructure, built on fiber and Millimeter-wave (mmWave) links, integrates a communication network with radio terminals (WiFi, ITS-G5, C-V2X, 5G and LoRa(WAN)), multiprotocol, spread throughout 44 connected points of access in the city. Additionally, public transportation has also been equipped with communication and sensing units. All these points combine and interconnect a set of sensors, such as mobility (radars, light detection and rangings (LiDARs), video cameras) and environmental sensors. Combining edge computing and cloud management to deploy the services and manage the platform, and a data platform to gather and process the data, the living lab supports a wide range of services and applications: IoT, intelligent transport systems (ITSs) and assisted driving, environmental monitoring, emergency and safety, among others. This article describes the architecture, implementation and deployment to make the overall platform to work and integrate researchers and citizens. Moreover, it showcases some examples of the performance metrics achieved in the city infrastructure, the data that can be collected, visualized and used to build services and applications to the cities, and, finally, different use cases in the mobility and safety scenarios.

Embedded Federated Learning for VANET Environments

In the scope of smart cities, the sensors scattered throughout the city generate information that supplies intelligence mechanisms to learn the city’s mobility patterns. These patterns are used in machine learning (ML) applications, such as traffic estimation, that allow for improvement in the quality of experience in the city. Owing to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) evolution, the city’s monitoring points are always growing, and the transmission of the mass of data generated from edge devices to the cloud, required by centralized ML solutions, brings great challenges in terms of communication, thus negatively impacting the response time and, consequently, compromising the reaction in improving the flow of vehicles. In addition, when moving between the edge and the cloud, data are exposed, compromising privacy. Federated learning (FL) has emerged as an option for these challenges: (1) It has lower latency and communication overhead when performing most of the processing on the edge devices; (2) it improves privacy, as data do not travel over the network; and (3) it facilitates the handling of heterogeneous data sources and expands scalability. To assess how FL can effectively contribute to smart city scenarios, we present an FL framework, for which we built a testbed that integrated the components of the city infrastructure, where edge devices such as NVIDIA Jetson were connected to a cloud server. We deployed our lightweight container-based FL framework in this testbed, and we evaluated the performance of devices, the effectiveness of ML and aggregation algorithms, the impact on the communication between the edge and the server, and the consumption of resources. To carry out the evaluation, we opted for a scenario in which we estimated vehicle mobility inside and outside the city, using real data collected by the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab communication and sensing infrastructure in the city of Aveiro, Portugal.

Steam city kits

This paper presents a comprehensive description of the STEAM City Kit project, an exploratory project developed according to a Framework for Innovation process model, as part of the Aveiro Tech City project, and designed for primary school students and teachers. The kit, which consists of 2 children’s stories with hands-on activities, an Arduino, and a wide range of sensors, was developed by a transdisciplinary team from the University of Aveiro and distributed to over 30 schools in the municipality of Aveiro, Portugal.

A scalable approach for smart city data platform: Support of real-time processing and data sharing

The concept of a smart city comes with the need to support a data platform that can gather, process and export the data of millions of sensors, coming from different sources, with information in different formats, in a scalable approach for real-time and historical data visualization, processing, and actuation in the city.This paper proposes a Data Platform for the Aveiro Tech City Living Lab, to gather, process, visualize and actuate on mobility, environmental and network data. The architecture of the platform provides a real open platform that is accessible for third-parties to collect data and to experiment their own solutions, through a secure and open data platform at their disposal. The platform was also designed to be scaled and modified when necessary, being composed by distributed solutions across the existent modules. The results with respect to the amount of data gathered, the ingestion and query performance comparison between the persistence solutions considered, and examples of data, show how this platform can be used to efficiently develop new applications and use both real-time and historical data for future predictions and actuations in a smart city.

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.

Does light touch cluster policy work? Evaluating the tech city programme

Despite academic scepticism, cluster policies remain popular with policymakers. This paper evaluates the causal impact of a flagship UK technology cluster programme. I build a simple framework and identify effects using difference-in-differences and synthetic controls on rich microdata. I further test for timing, cross-space variation, scaling and churn channels. The policy grew and densified the cluster, but has had more mixed effects on tech firm productivity. I also find most policy ‘effects’ began before rollout, raising questions about the programme’s added value.

Responsiveness of E-Waste in the Society

Information technology bring has brought enormous change the way we organize our life, economies, industries and institutions but simultaneously, these have led to manifold problems including the problem of hazardous e-waste. Indian is developing country with huge population of 130 core population. Electrical & Electronics Equipments (EEE) users are increasing with rapid speed hence E-waste is also increasing. We don’t have strong management to deal with e waste. Responsiveness is missing at consumer’s end which is creating e waste hazardous. This paper discusses about responsiveness among EEE user’s regarding systematic disposal of e-waste keeping in view the harmful effect of hazardous components on human health. Delhi is High tech city and Delhiites always excites to use latest EEE. This paper discusses about harmful practices adopts by users while dealing with e waste. This paper reunion the gap between EEE user’s and harmful practices adopted by them while handling e-waste; and also creating responsive towards e waste.

Gender and Technology Culture: Points of Contact in Tech Cities

This article considers several features of tech cities and masculine technology culture and their impact on the conditions of work and interactions of professionals working within them. It uses interdisciplinary perspectives of gender, technology culture, and professional identity and status to understand work in tech cities. Using focus groups involving 60 women and men across different professional backgrounds at three tech city sites in the UK and USA, the article examines the extent of change in work roles and status norms in a highly male-dominated sector and physical space. Professional life in tech cities is shaped by ‘points of contact’, characterised by heightened knowledge and awareness of masculine culture that restricts women’s progression. Three such points of contact are identified. As increased scholarly and policy attention is paid to the lack of diversity in tech, this study contributes to a much-needed shift in tech culture. Attitudes and professional identities built around work and social networking in tech cities reveal the importance of professional communities and networks in supporting women to manage rejection and career barriers.

Women’s leadership and gendered experiences in tech cities

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the findings from longitudinal study conducted with women leaders in tech cities to understand the cultural and discursive burden affecting their professional experiences and the dominant cultural boundaries they regularly have to cross to legitimise their knowledge and expertise.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on research from the Gender in Tech City project that included serial interviews with 50 senior women leaders over three years at three different tech city sites.FindingsThe paper illustrates the differing spatialities that women continue to face within tech culture and how terms such as “women in tech” are problematic.Research limitations/implicationsThis study adds to the conceptualisation of tech culture and gendered constructions within a spatial context; there is a need to strengthen this path of investigation beyond gender as a lone issue.Originality/valueThe study contributes to the literature on spatial context, examining a new micro-context within tech culture that amplifies hidden biases and restricts the movement of women professionals.

Tech City: Myths of Silicon Valley and Globalization

La baie de San Francisco, qui englobe la Silicon Valley, constitue le premier centre mondial des technologies numériques et de l’information, à l’ère d’internet et des réseaux sociaux. Cette région urbaine est un exemple majeur de la dialectique de mondialisation/démondialisation, à travers ses réseaux de grandes villes et de clusters industriels. Sa croissance et son enrichissement prodigieux sont marqués par une innovation rapide, de nouvelles start-up, et le capital-risque. Tout ceci a contribué à construire une mythologie de « l’innovation pure », portée par des techniciens virtuoses, des entrepreneurs héroïques et des preneurs de risques. La réalité est tout autre. En fait, le succès de la région repose sur une base solide d’investissements en capital, de grandes entreprises, des économies d’agglomération, du développement technologique et du travail humain, tant qualifié que non qualifié.

Spatial Imaginaries and Tech Cities: Place-branding East London’s digital economy

We explore place branding as an economic development strategy for technology clusters, using London’s ‘Tech City’ initiative as a case study. We site place branding in a larger family of policies that develop spatial imaginaries and specify affordances and constraints on place brands and brand-led strategies. Using mixed methods over a long timeframe, we analyse Tech City’s emergence and the overlapping, competing narratives that preceded and succeeded it, highlighting day-to-day challenges and more basic tensions. While a strong brand has developed, we cast doubt on claims that policy has had a catalytic effect, at least in the ways originally intended.

School Selections Among Silicon Valley Asian Ethnics in the Cupertino Union School District

ABSTRACTSchool quality and school choice are increasingly important. Most research has focused on selection of schools by parents, emphasizing consumption patterns. This study explores parental choices of schools by an understudied population: highly skilled, highly educated Asians residing in a district that earned a number-one ranking from the State of California. This research also stresses the production side of education in this district, which created four alternate schools that were not based on traditional neighborhood elementary school boundaries. These four elementary schools have distinctly different philosophies of education. Opportunity for admission is based on parent applications and on a lottery system. This educational policy permits wide access and offers true parental preference and choice based on a philosophy of education. This study examines a place characterized as a “tech city” with a minority-majority Asian population, not unusual in Silicon Valley's suburbs. It offers a window on parental preferences and choices among a targeted population unrestricted by traditional geographic space. The study uses Asian key informants and ethnic enrollment trends that have been published by the State of California. Also, the direct observation of classrooms supports the dominant trend of a single Asian ethnic group in an elementary school.

The impact of agility on the market performance of born-global firms: An exploratory study of the ‘Tech City’ innovation cluster

Although there is some recognition that agility is advantageous for a born-global firm, the concept of agility is underexplored in the management and marketing literature. Little is known about the ability of born-globals to become agile and under what conditions agility can lead to better market performance. In this investigation the exploratory qualitative research was conducted using the data of fifteen in-depth interviews with managers and experts in Tech City in London, UK. Firstly, the findings show that creativity and informal planning are the main decision-making drivers of agility in born-global firms. Secondly, the study reveals that agility is more likely to be positively related to international market performance when key decision-makers have certain skills, including knowledge of the market, international experience, learning orientation and ambiguity tolerance.

Start-up urbanism: New York, Rio de Janeiro and the global urbanization of technology-based economies

This article investigates the variegated urbanization of technology-based economies through the lenses of a comparative analysis looking at New York City and Rio de Janeiro. Over the last decade, the former has gained a reputation as a ‘model tech city’ at the global level, while the latter is an example of emerging ‘start-up city’. Using a Marxist-Foucauldian approach, the article argues that, while technopoles in the 1980s and the 1990s arose from the late Keynesian state, the globally hegemonic phenomenon of start-up urbanism is illustrative of an increasingly decentralized neoliberal project of self-governing ‘enterprise society’, mobilizing ideas of community, cooperation and horizontality within a context of cognitive-communicative capitalism in which urban environments acquire renewed centrality. In doing so, the article underlines start-up urbanism’s key contribution to the reinvention of the culture of global capitalism in times of perceived economic shrinkage worldwide and the central role played by major metropolitan centres in this respect.

TECH CITY UK

The article draws the main lessons from the evolution of Tech City, the IT-business cluster in the UK, and from government policy towards its support. The authors focus on the evolution of Tech City UK from small IT-business cluster in the East London to national success story of supporting IT-business growth across the whole territory of UK. The evolution of Tech City UK has gone through three distinctive stages, from Tech City 1.0 when East London housed small number of IT companies to Tech City 3.0 when it became a development institution working with all British cities. All significant tools applied in Tech City in order to support IT-business startups are observed and summarized. It is demonstrated that government has increased its support to the Tech City UK but its success is based first of all on natural advantages created in East London’s IT cluster. Then it developed due to favorable economic conditions as a whole. In order to apply these observations to Russia’s modernization agenda Tech City UK is compared to two leading Russian projects – “Innopolis” (Tatarstan) and “Skolkovo” (Moscow). The benchmarking has shown that “Innopolis” and “Skolkovo” are more “green field” projects than Tech City UK. This means that Russian innovation centers have much weaker historic background. “Innopolis” is being developed independently though relies on regional and federal authorities. “Skolkovo”, based closely to the Russian largest Moscow IT cluster, is benefiting from competences originated in thousands of local IT companies in Moscow and around. Lessons of Tech City UK allow to conclude that “Skolkovo” would benefit in case of more targeted support of IT industry while “Innopolis” faces a more difficult task of entering the international market.

Displacement in new economy labor markets: Post-displacement wage loss in high tech versus low tech cities

While scholars and politicians tout education as the salve to employment disruptions, we argue that the geography of the new economy, and the social closure mechanisms that geography creates, may be just as important as individuals’ characteristics for predicting post-displacement wage loss (or gain). We use data from the 2012 Displaced Workers ement of the Current Population Survey and from the 2010 United States Census to test hypotheses linking local labor markets in different industrial contexts to post-displacement wage loss. Our results point to age as a closure mechanism, and to the partially protective effect of education in high-tech versus low-tech economic sectors. This study is the first to use national level data to examine how employment in high-tech cities influences post-displacement wages. These findings are relevant both for theorizing about the new economy and for public policy.

Cidade de microutopia

Seventeenth-century plans of the city of London show us a mineral place of timeless dimension. It is a city that unites its destiny with a utopia that transcends the individual that inhabits it. Time seems to stand still; it does not come about, perhaps because its destiny—that of its utopias—transcends time itself. This city of London is followed by a new place, the city of machines and movement. It is a city that reunites individuals in moving rooms and by the time of itinerancy. Then the notion of time in dwelling emerges together with distance, as derived from the idea of velocity. In this city of movement and increasingly accelerated time, this place today has been transformed into a pop-up place. These places are places that we select as virtual points and whose emergence from a virtual reality we encourage. They are places that we link to a personal and imagined city. They are virtual places that we inhabit in an almost disjointed way and places that take us to other places, to other homes, to other times where we fulfil our small dreams and eventually our own micro-utopias. Keywords: Eden, pop-up place, high-low tech city, micro-utopia.