The Internet of Things (IoT) is rapidly gaining ground as can be witnessed by the pervasive presence of the many things or objects around us that turn our surroundings into intelligent environments. These objects interact on a large scale in wired and wireless sensor and actuator networks using advanced communication protocols. Hence, IoT is an open ended and highly dynamic ecosystem with heter...

Over the past few decades, a multi-disciplinary research community has documented the goods and services provided by ecosystems in specific sites scattered across the world. This research community has now begun to focus on creating methods and tools for mapping and valuing the ecosystem services produced on any landscape in the world. We describe some of these methods and tools and how they ca...

Sustainability is a key challenge for humanity in the 21st century. Ecosystem services-the benefits that people derive from nature and natural capital-is a concept often used to help explain human reliance on nature and frame the decisions we make in terms of the ongoing value of nature to human wellbeing. Yet ecosystem service science has not always lived up to the promise of its potential. De...

While smart metering is a key technology for reaching a sustainable consumption of resources, smart buildings are on their way to provide ubiquitous home automation. These technologies combine to frame a smart metering ecosystem with corresponding services and business models introducing new security challenges including privacy protection. This paper outlines a novel approach to provide custom...

Location-aware application s need not only rapid location-related query, but also proactive spatial event service, both of which the traditional database system does not excel at. Aiming at the deficiencies of database system, we present a light-weighted proactive spatial service model for Smart Classroom: ASMod. This model adopts such new technologies as combined spatial index, refreshing-up &...

Ubiquitous computing requires new paradigms to assist users organizing and performing daily tasks. Supporting autonomy and providing secured execution environments are two among a lot of challenging issues. Next generation smart cards, so-called smart devices, are regarded as personal devices providing a secured execution and storage environment for application tasks and sensitive privacy infor...

This paper addresses the topic of providing contextaware services in smart environments. We review recent work in smart environments, and further define and debate essential aspects concerning context-aware service supply. Future challenges for the research in context-aware smart environments are mentioned and discussed.

This paper studies an emerging technology in network service market: smart routing technology. We focus on the economics issues related to the adoption of this new technology, such as contracting, bandwidth allocation and cost-benefit analysis. This study shows the advantage of deploying smart routers assuming efficient contract and usage, and quantifies the extra benefit they can generate. Int...