October 16th, 2013
Antonio Puliafito
Sensor Cloud: Issues and perspectives
Abstract
Cloud computing has emerged as a popular solution to provide cheap and easy access to elastic computing and storage resources. However, a key drawback of current Cloud models is that they do not allow interaction with the physical world. New research directions intend to contribute to the creation of a pervasive infrastructure where new generation services interact with the surrounding environment, collecting data and applying management strategies. By adding sensors and actuators into the mix, new opportunities arise for contextualization and geo-awareness. This scenario is highly dynamic, also involving mobile devices that randomly join and leave, an issue that can be adequately addressed resorting to volunteer contribution paradigms. The main objectives of this talk are: i. abstracting and virtualizing sensing devices to be offered as Cloud-enabled infrastructure ii. enabling a volunteer-based approach for sensing Clouds, exposing devices provided by both mobiles and sensor networks ii. developing mechanisms and tools for customization of resources with the aim of supporting value-added sensing applications and new generation services development and deployment. Enabling technologies towards the envisaged goals are: abstraction and virtualization of sensors and actuators; volunteer techniques for enrolment, autonomous management and distributed coordination; Cloud-like, service oriented interfaces and fruition; software engineering techniques, methodologies and APIs. This talk aims to unlock innovative and value-added services by seamlessly bridging sensor networks and ubiquitous nodes such as mobiles. Sensing and actuation resources are to be abstracted and virtualized in order to be provided under the guise of services, thus enabling a Sensing and Actuation as a Service (SAaaS) paradigm. Given such background, this talk intends to present a comprehensive framework implementing tools for smart devices integration, configuration and management in a Cloud-like fashion and service development. Two case studies will be specifically addressed: one related to Crowd Flow Control (CFC) and the other to Smart Energy Management (SEM).
Bio
Antonio Puliafito is a full professor of computer engineering at the University of Messina, Italy. His interests include parallel and distributed systems, networking, wireless, GRID and Cloud computing. He is involved in research on advanced analytical modelling techniques. He is the coordinator of the Ph.D. course in Advanced Technologies for Information Engineering and the responsible for the course of study in computers engineering. He has been a referee for the European Community since 1999. He has contributed to the development of the software tools WebSPN and ArgoPerformance, which are being used both at national and international level. Dr. Puliafito is co-author of the text entitled "Performance and Reliability Analysis of Computer Systems: An Example-Based Approach Using the SHARPE Software Package", edited by Kluwer Academic Publishers. He is currently the director of the RFIDLab, a joint research lab with Oracle and Intel on RFID and wireless. He acted as the director of the Centre on Information Technologies Development and Their Applications (CIA) till 2009. From 2006 to 2008 he acted as the technical director of the Project 901, aiming at creating a wireless/wired communication infrastructure inside the University of Messina to support new value added services (winner of the CISCO innovation award). He is also the responsible of two big Grid Projects (TriGrid VL and PI2S2) funded by the Sicilian Regional Government and by the MIUR, respectively. He is currently a member of the general assembly of the Reservoir and Vision, IP projects funded from the EU to explore the deployment and management of IT services and data across different administrative domains. He is also the main investigator of the Italian PRIN2008 project “Cloud@Home”, trying to combine cloud and volunteer computing. He is the scientific leader of the PON01 SIGMA project, that intends to develop cloud solutions to manage environmental multi-risk critical situations. He is the scientific director of Inquadro s.r.l., a spin-off company whose main business is RFID and its application both in public and private sectors.
October 17th, 2013
Xavi Masip
Director of the Advanced Networks Architectures Lab, UPC
Internet of things, data, and I….what do we do?
Abstrat:
Nowadays, humanity is happily adopting novel "facilities" stemmed from a multi-connected world that has quickly and unstoppably evolved to a scenario where citizens may get "easily" connected to "everything",through “anything”,from "anywhere"and at “anytime”. This novel scenario is building a new life paradigm positively tuning various aspects of daily activities in relation to not only individuals but also companies, governments, etc. However, though expected and appreciated, this new scenario is posing relevant challenges on the research community that must be suitably addressed to guarantee a successful and profitable worldwide deployment. From a wide perspective the problem to be solved is mainly oriented to find out how available information (data access) and connectivity (user access) may collaborate the best. In fact, the new scenario depicted above can be also formulated as the interaction between IoT(Internet of Things) and data worlds, being aware that IoTmay serve as either a data producer or consumer (prosumer), and that this data is not only large but also unstructured and varied. Indeed, the interaction among both worlds is the reason not only permitting, but alsofuellingand promoting,an emerging collaborative scenario, where data along with the technologies to obtain and smartly handle this data,profit fromboth new tools aiming at increasing the most the benefits citizens may obtain from this scenario and novel automatic, autonomous, faster and betterdecision-making processes.
Bio
Xavi Masip got MSc and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunications engineering both from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC). Involved in research for almost 20 years, he is now the Director of the Advanced Networks Architectures Lab (CRAAX, https://www.craax.upc.edu) that he founded at UPC in 2008. His research includes participation in several national and European projects as well as contracts with the private sector. Co-author or more than one hundred references in journals and conferences, he is serving in the editorial board of OSN and WCMC. He has also chaired some conferences (ONDM2008, WWIC2011 and NOC2012), technically co-chaired symposiums at Globecom, ICCCN and ICC conferences, as well as served as TPC co-chair in several well-positioned conferences. His research focuses on the areas of broadband communications, cloud networking, SDN, programmable networks, QoS management and provision, traffic engineering and multilayer networks, smart cities, smart vehicles, social innovation, IoT and open, adaptable user-customizable network architectures.
