Aitor Almeida news

Patient enrollment started for the BD4QoL clinical trial

The “Casa Sollievo della Sofferenza” hospital (S. Giovanni Rotondo, Italy) started the enrolment of the patients who participate in the prospective trial for the use of the BD4QoL platform starting from April 11th, 2022. The first 18 patients are using the BD4QoL apps to collect quality of life data and will be followed up for 24 months. Patients will report their perceived quality of life using the web-based standard questionnaires from the European Organization for the Research on Cancer (EORTC) at the enrolment and every six months as part of their follow-up visits. Two thirds of the study participants will also collect data on their physical and social activities, sleep, and emotional status by using the BD4QoL mobile apps.

Three innovations by MORElab members in the BD4QoL project included in the Innovation Radar platform of the European Commission

The Innovation Radar of the European Commission has selected three innovations in which MORElab members Aitor Almeida and Aritz Bilbao participated in the BD4QoL project funded by Horizon 2020. The selected innovations are:

Innovation Title: BD4QoL mobile app modules for unobtrusive collection of data for assessment of Quality of Life in Head and Neck Cancer survivors;
- Market Maturity of the Innovation: Business Ready
- Market Creation Potential of the innovation: High
- In collaboration with IBM IRELAND LIMITED and DOTSOFT

Innovation Title: AI-based models, for the prediction of QoL trajectories in HNC survivors;
- Market Maturity of the Innovation: Exploring
- Market Creation Potential of the innovation: High
- In collaboration with UNIVERSITETET I OSLO and FONDAZIONE IRCCS ISTITUTO NAZIONALE DEI TUMORI

Innovation Title: BD4QoL Ontology for Head and Neck Cancer survivorship domain modelling;
- Market Maturity of the Innovation: Business Ready
- Market Creation Potential of the innovation: Minor
- In collaboration with UNIVERSIDAD POLITECNICA DE MADRID and DOTSOFT

The EU-funded BD4QoL project aims to improve HNC survivors’ quality of life by developing a person-centred monitoring and follow-up plan. It will use artificial intelligence and Big Data collected from mobile devices, in combination with multi-source clinical and socioeconomic data and patients’ reported outcomes. Analysis of the quality of life indicators collected over time will facilitate early detection of risks, prevent long-term effects of treatment, and inform patients and caregivers for personalised interventions.

BD4QoL project mentioned as flagship initiative by the European Commission Sub-group on Cancer

BD4QoL project mentioned as flagship initiative by the European Commission Sub-group on Cancer under the Steering Group on Health Promotion, Disease Prevention and Management of Non-Communicable Diseases on 12 November 2021.

How does BD4QoL work?

The project consortium has created a new video explaining how the BD4QoL project helps survivors of health and neck cancer: https://youtu.be/90YmWxtytn0

NET4Age-Friendly recognised by the United Nations as a good practice

SHAFE / NET4Age-Friendly recognised by the United Nations as a good practice

The United Nations launched an Open call for good practices, success stories and lessons learned by all stakeholders in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the 2030 Agenda.

More than 700 submissions were reviewed by a team of experts from United Nations entities and “SHAFE implemented through NET4Age-Friendly” was one of the recognized good practices from all over the world.

SHAFE and NET4Age-Friendly are international networks that engage all levels of society with the intrinsic aim of promoting the development of local, regional or national inclusive ecosystems (composed of a quadruple helix of citizens, public authorities, companies, and researchers) which interact and coordinate at the international level. This strategy allows them to literally become viral, by exponentially increasing the networking, the dissemination and knowledge exchange among scientists, business, public, local administrations, policy makers, professionals, and citizens. This brings an inspiring and fruitful new way of cooperation that fosters knowledge and promote grassroot implementation at a broader scale, combining top-down and bottom-up perspectives.

The meaning and notion of SHAFE as a holistic approach that promotes the alignment of policies and strategies is a unique roadmap for the implementation in and across Europe. When we acknowledge the serious challenges, especially those related to demographic change and the COVID-19 pandemic, it is not possible anymore to still work in silos or to keep positions for individual interest. Before any other role, we all are citizens and we have a duty as to work together in a bid for a better world. COVID has not directly impacted the implementation of SHAFE, au contraire, the inclusive environments proposed by NET4Age-Friendly would be adequate solutions to minimise the effects of the pandemic and relieve the pressure on health and care systems.

Adrian Núñez-Marcos, new doctor in MORElab

On December 18th, 2020, MORElab's member Adrian Núñez-Marcos has been honored with the PhD recognition. His dissertation, entitled "Contributions to Human Action Recognition using Deep Learning: Applications in Egocentric Vision” was advised by Dr. Gorka Azkune and Dr. Diego López de Ipiña

The VIVA panel was formed by:

Basilio Sierra (President, Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea)
Jan Kybic (Czech Technical University in Prague)
Aitor Almeida (Universidad de Deusto)

Participation on the AI4Good Digital Workshop

As part of the events organized by the SHAPE-ID project, MORElab members Aitor Almeida and Aritz Bilbao took part in the AI4Good Digital Workshop. They presented the AI contributions that are being done by the BD4QoL project in order to improve the prediction and modelling of health-related quality of life in head and neck cancer survivors.

The following discussion with both stakeholders (clinicans and patients) and researchers helped us to better understand the need of interdisciplinary cooperation between the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences (AHSS) and STEM (Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and other disciplines.

Special Issue: "Emerging IoT Technologies for Smart Environments Ⅱ" Sensors, IF: 3.275

The next generation of the Internet is expected to interconnect and to make heterogeneous and smart objects interoperable in order to realize the Internet of Things (IoT). It aims to diffuse smart and pervasive environments able to offer innovative services in heterogeneous applicative scenarios, such as environmental monitoring, building automation, healthcare, smart cities, smart grids, logistics, and tourism. The combination among emerging wireless communication technologies, cloud-based software architecture, embedded systems, and artificial intelligence systems based on machine learning or deep learning, promises to carry out the digital transformation anywhere.

This Special Issue invites authors to submit original research or review articles mainly focused on the Internet of Things and smart environments. Potential interesting topics for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to the following:

IoT-aware systems based on wireless and wearable devices;
Embedded systems in IoT-aware system architectures;
Protocols performance analysis in IoT architectures;
Smart environments based on IoT Technologies;
Mobile applications and rapid prototyping in the IoT;
Middleware, semantic web, and ontology in the IoT;
Fog computing in the IoT;
Innovative AAL systems;
Microservices architectures;
Innovative solutions for industrial Internet of Things;
Big data and data analytics;
Intelligent transport systems;
Localization systems;
Safety and emergency systems based on IoT technologies;
Artificial intelligence systems based on machine learning or deep learning;
Case studies, field trials, and industrial applications.

Dr. Luigi Patrono
Dr. Cosimo Distante
Dr. Luigi Atzori
Dr. Aitor Almeida
Guest Editors

A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Internet of Things". Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2021.

Aritz Bilbao, new doctor in MORElab

On June 23rd, 2020, MORElab's member Aritz Bilbao Jayo has been honored with the PhD recognition. His dissertation, entitled "From Political Manifestos to Social Networks: the automation of Political Discourse Analysis using Contextual Information" was advised by Dr. Aitor Almeida.

The VIVA panel was formed by:

Sara Tonelli (President, FBK/University of Trento)
Arkaitz Zubiaga (Queen Mary University of London)
Diego López de Ipiña (Universidad de Deusto)

Kick-off meeting of the BD4QoL project

Aitor Almeida and Aritz Bilbao assisted to the kick-off meeting of the Big Data Models and Intelligent tools for Quality of Life monitoring and participatory empowerment of head and neck cancer survivors (BD4QoL) project in Milan the 30th and 31st of January. The University of Deusto is one of the 13 partners of the project.

The number of treatment options available for head and neck cancer (HNC) has increased in the last decade thanks to advanced technologies. While current post-treatment care plans focus on functional and health conditions, there are socioeconomic determinants of quality of life that also need to be addressed. The EU-funded BD4QoL project aims to improve HNC survivors’ quality of life by developing a person-centred monitoring and follow-up plan. It will use artificial intelligence and Big Data collected from mobile devices, in combination with multi-source clinical and socioeconomic data and patients’ reported outcomes. Analysis of the quality of life indicators collected over time will facilitate early detection of risks, prevent long-term effects of treatment, and inform patients and caregivers for personalised interventions.

Participation in the "Human Right to Health and New technologies: Challenges and opportunities" workshop

In the framework of the EMA/#GCEurope, Aitor Almeida presented the MORElab experiences regarding the use of Big Data in the Health domain. He presented the work done in the City4Age and BD4QoL project and the challenges mantaining the users' privacy

DeustoTech received the Basque Goverment Grant for the Acquisition of Scientific Equipment

DeustoTech has received the Basque Goverment Grant for the acquisition of scientific equipment. This grant will allow us to improve our computing center by adding a GPU server for the training of deep learning models. This new server will let us improve our scientific production, being able to train more complex models.

Kick-off meeting of the EU-SHAFE project

Members of the MoreLab assisted to the kick-off meeting of the Europe Enabling Smart Healthy Age-friendly environments (EU-SHAFE) project, during the AAL Forum. The project is funded by INTERREG Europe and is coordinated by the Provincial Council of Bizkaia. The University of Deusto is one of the 10 partners of the project.

The EU-SHAFE project will improve policies and practices in 7 European regions by developing a comprehensive approach to Smart Healthy Age-Friendly Environments (SHAFE). Through a 'learning by sharing' methodology, this robust multi-disciplinary and intersectoral consortium will build a four-helix European community to exchange experiences and practices to improve multilevel policy instruments.The project will create a cooperative, inclusive ecosystem between public authorities, European networks and user’s associations, embedding their experience and skills with research & design knowledge from academia and SMEs for the growth of community-based services and “ageing at home” around Europe.

Special Issue "Emerging IoT Technologies for Smart Environments" (JCR IF: 2.475)

https://www.mdpi.com/journal/sensors/special_issue...

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2019

With this Special Issue, we invite authors to submit original research or review articles mainly focused on the Internet of Things and smart environments. Potential interesting topics for this Special Issue include, but are not limited to:

IoT-aware systems based on wireless and wearable devices;
Embedded systems in IoT-aware system architectures;
Protocols performance analysis in IoT architectures;
Smart environments based on IoT Technologies;
Mobile applications and rapid prototyping in the IoT;
Middleware, semantic web, and ontology in the IoT;
Fog computing in the IoT;
Innovative AAL systems;
Microservices architectures;
Innovative solutions for industrial Internet of Things;
Big data and data analytics;
Intelligent transport systems;
Localization systems;
Safety and emergency systems based on IoT technologies;
Artificial intelligence systems based on machine learning or deep learning;
Case studies, field trials, and industrial applications.

Guest Editors

Dr. Luigi Patrono
Dr. Luigi Atzori
Dr. Aitor Almeida
Dr. Cosimo Distante

Special Issue: Cross-layer innovations in Internet of Things (JCR IF: 1.61)

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/21613915

Aims and Scope
Internet of Things (IoT) became the design language for all smart and pervasive environments able to offer innovative services, such as environmental monitoring, building automation, healthcare, smart cities, smart grid, logistics, cyber physical systems, etc. In near future, the industry supporting it is expected to grow, while by 2020, 40% of all world data will come from IoT objects such as sensors and wearable devices. What is forming IoT is concentrated about the development of micro-controllers (MCUs), dedicated systems-on-chip (SoC), intelligent sensors, sensor networks and supporting software architectures.

However, to make it all feasible, with tremendous evolution in data acquisition and transfer it is needed to consider efficient hardware and innovative software architectures that still need to be developed to make it a reality. This mostly introduces distributed intelligence for a reliable and effective processing of the information about the physical world that should provide a complete knowledge to the top running applications. These are related to the efficient usage of radio technologies usual referred as in outdoor, indoor, urban, rural environments, its ranges and battery/battery-less usage. In addition, communication protocols should handle IoT requirements for multiple device, low-power, real-time operations or satisfying timely consumer needs. Some further challenges involve efficient device discovery schemes, sleep-mode management, application requirements, or other power constraints.
To address these needs, IoT technologies such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), or other outdoor technologies such as LoRa/LoRaWAN, Sigfox, NB-IoT appear to provide a cellular system for IoT devices while transmitting small amounts of data, while going to mmWave in 5G is considered to provide higher bandwidths/throughputs. All of these radio technologies are advancing with aim to satisfy future requirements, there is still the vast space for improvements which require attention from academia, practitioners and industry, standardization organizations, and governments to address these challenges.

With this special issue, we invite authors to submit original research or review articles mainly focused on cross-layer technological, architectural, and practical innovations in the field of smart technologies and architectures enabling the Internet of Things. Potential topics aiming at solving particular issues that have cross-layer impact include, but are not limited to:

Modelling/simulation/performance analysis of short, medium and long range radio access technologies
Proof of concepts and experimental work on long range low power wireless technologies
IoT-aware systems based on wireless and wearable devices
Embedded systems in IoT-aware system architectures
Protocols performance analysis in IoT-aware architectures
Smart environments based on IoT Technologies
Near-zero energy and renewable energy radios for IoT and PHY/MAC layer techniques for long range low power IoT
Mobile applications and rapid prototyping in the IoT
Middleware, Semantic Web and Ontology in the IoT
IoT design based on social networks
Fog Computing in the IoT
Intelligent Transport Systems
Localization systems
Safety and emergency systems based on IoT technologies
Case studies, field trials, and industrial Applications

Besides Open Call papers, a part of this special issue could be dedicated to extended versions of the best papers published in SpliTech 2019 (2019.splitech.org) in the IoT track.

Important Dates:
Submission Deadline: November 15, 2019
Author Notification: January 15, 2020
Final Manuscript: February 15, 2020
Publication: 2020

Guest Editors
Petar Solic, University of Split, FESB, Croatia; psolic@fesb.hr
Luigi Patrono, Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy;
luigi.patrono@unisalento.it
Chunsheng Zhu, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada;
chunsheng.tom.zhu@gmail.com
Chao Tong, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Beihang University, China;
tongchao@buaa.edu.cn
Aitor Almeida, DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Bilbao, Spain;
aitor.almeida@deusto.es

Aritz Bilbao Jayo participated in the "The 15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2018)".

Aritz Bilbao Jayo participated in the "The 15th IEEE International Conference on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Computing (UIC 2018)" held in Guangzhou(China) from October 8th to 12th, 2018.

He presented the paper "Embedding-level attention and multi-scale convolutional neural networks for behaviour modelling " authored by Aitor Almeida, Gorka Azkune and himself.

City4Age has been highlighted in the European Commission Digital Single Market Newsletter as a successful project story

The City4Age project has been highlighted in the European Commission Digital Single Market Newsletter as a successful project story. The European funded City4Age project aims to make cities more age-friendly. It will create innovative ICT tools and services for early detection of risks related to frailty and of Mild Cognitive Impairments (MCI). The services will be tested in several European cities, as well as in Singapore.

Aritz Bilbao Jayo participated in the "56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics"

Aritz Bilbao Jayo participated in the "56th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics" (ACL2018) held in Melbourne(Australia) from July 15th to 20th, 2018.

He presented the paper "Political discourse classification in social networks using context sensitive convolutional neural networks" authored by himself and Aitor Almeida.

City4Age receives the Deusto Research Social Impact Label

The City4Age project has received the Deusto Research Social Impact Label. The Deusto Research Social Impact Label recognizes research projects that demonstrate a potential social impact through:

its transformative action and potential social impact for people, entities, the environment or society in general;
its involvement, at different levels, with non-academic agents;
its contribution, from the scientific or study scope, and / or the application linked to themes of transformation, welfare, development and social justice.

Congratulations to the City4Age team.

Final general assembly of the City4Age Project in Lecce

From 14th to 15th of May of 2018 the City4Age partners met in Lecce (Italy) for the final general assembly of the project. The meeting was organized by the municipality of Lecce and the Università del Salento. During the meeting the partners discussed the ongoing pilots and the obtained results and presented them to one of the reviewers.

Special Issue on Smart Technologies and Architectures enabling the Internet of Things

Call for papers

The future Internet is expected to interconnect and to make interoperable heterogeneous and smart objects in order to realize the vision of the Internet of Things (IoT). This will allow for implementing pervasive and living environments for the benefit of several applications, such as environmental monitoring, building automation, healthcare, smart cities, smart grid, logistics. There are key emerging hardware technologies and innovative software architectures and functionalities that still need to be developed to make it a reality, which should mostly introduce distributed intelligence for a reliable and effective processing of the information about the physical world that should provide a complete knowledge to the top running applications. With this special issue, we invite authors to submit original research and review articles mainly focused on technological, architectural and practical innovations in the field of smart technologies and architectures enabling the Internet of Things.

Important dates

Manuscript Due September 1st, 2018
First Round of Reviews March 1st, 2019
Publication Date June 2019

Guest Editors

Luigi Patrono, Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy
Luigi Atzori, Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica e Elettronica, University of Cagliari, Italy
Marina Mongiello, Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Bari, Italy
Petar Solic, FESB, University of Split, Croatia
Aitor Almeida, DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology, Bilbao, Spain

Symposium on Embedded Systems & Internet of Things

Symposium on “Embedded Systems & Internet of Things” in the frame of the 3rd International Conference on Smart and Sustainable Technologies (SpliTech2018), technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc), will be held in Split on June 26-29, 2018.

The main goal of this symposium is to present and discuss recent advances in the area of the Internet of Things and Embedded systems that are becoming research topics more and more interesting for both academia and industry. This symposium will provide an opportunity for scientists, engineers and researchers to discuss new applications, design problems, ideas, solutions, research and development results, experiences and work-in-progress activities in this important technological area.

Accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings and submitted to IEEE Xplore as well as other Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) databases. Authors of selected best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their manuscripts for publication in a special issue of some international and indexed journals such as IEEE ACCESS, JCOMSS.

We cordially invite speakers who wish to present original papers on the following subjects, but not limited to these, associated with the following topics:

Software and Hardware Architectures for Embedded Systems
Mobile and Pervasive/Ubiquitous Computing
Real-time and Reconfigurable Embedded Systems
Rapid prototyping
Ubiquitous sensing and actuation
Mobile applications for monitoring and assisting
IoT architectures, protocols, and algorithms in smart cities
Innovative AAL systems
Cloud Computing in Embedded System Development
Solution and services supported by consumer devices
People-IoT Interactions
Cloud-based People-centric IoT Applications and Environments
Middleware and Architecture for the IoT
Smart devices and intelligent products
Localization technologies
Wearable technologies
Microservices Architectures
Security and Privacy in IoT
Industry 4.0
ModBus and ETSI M2M
Big Data and Data Analytics
Semantics and Ontologies in IoT
Social Internet of Things
Smart environments and Internet of Things
Case studies, field trials, and industrial Applications

More information about the Symposium submission deadline (March 20, 2018), procedure and authors kit is available on the website: http://2018.splitech.org/

Special issue on Smart Cities, Journal of Communications Software and Systems (JCOMSS)

http://jcomss.fesb.unist.hr/doc/CfP_JCOMSS_SI_P_So...

Growing global needs are creating more comfortable urban spaces, moreover as global population is expected to double by 2050. To achieve the concept of the smart city, there are still amount of efforts to be done, all opening significant opportunities related to the economic growth, health, wellness, energy efficiency, and transportation, all with aim to promote sustanable development of cities. Fundamental research is needed to achieve effective integration for computing systems, physical systems, data sources, and infrastructure which have a major impact on the quality of life.

The aim of this special issue (SI) is focused on technological, architectural and practical innovations in the multidisciplinary field of the Smart Cities. Authors wishing to submit papers for this SI should register and submit the article (PDF format) in the corresponding SI track by using the OJS system http://jcomss.fesb.unist.hr.

Editors:

Petar Šolić, University of Split, Split, Croatia, Italy, solic@fesb.hr
Luigi Patrono, University of Salento, Lecce, Italy, luigi.patrono@unisalento.it
Toni Perković, University of Split, Split, Croatia, toni.perkovic@unist.hr
Aitor Almeida, DeustoTech – Deusto Institute of Technology, Bilbao, Spain, aitor.almeida@deusto.es

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline December 15,, 2017
Notification of acceptance January 31,, 2017
Final manuscript due February 20,, 2017
Published March 2017

City4Age: Second project review

MORElab member Aitor Almeida attended the first review for the City4Age project, which took place in Montepellier. In the review we presented the work done in the second period of the project.

Assistance to the Deep Learn summer school

Last week (17-21 of July), Bilbao had the pleasure of being host for theInternational Deep Learning Summer School. Five researchers of the group attended this event - Aitor Almeida, Gorka Azkune, Aritz Bilbao, Adrián Núñez and David Buján- and were able to meet with well known researchers in the Deep Learning field such as Li Deng, Michael Mozer and Marc’Aurelio Ranzato.

Oihane Gómez-Carmona participated in the “2nd International Multidisciplinary Conference on Computer and Energy Science”

Oihane Gómez Carmona participated in the “2nd International Multidisciplinary Conference on Computer and Energy Science” (Splitech 2017) held in Split (Croatia) from July 12th to 14th, 2017.

The main focus of the Splitech 2017 conference was Smart Cities, E-Health and IoT, including a Symposium on RFID & EMBEDDED SYSTEMS FOR INTERNET OF THINGS.

She presented three MORElab member's articles:

1."SmiWork: An Interactive Smart Mirror Platform for Workplace Health Promotion" authored by herself and Diego Casado-Mansilla.

2."An AAL system based on IoT Technologies and Linked Open Data for elderly monitoring in Smart Cities” authored by Aitor Almeida, Ruben Mulero, Gorka Azkune et al.

3."Improving Trilateration for Indoors Localization Using BLE Beacons" authored by Aitor de Blas and Diego López-de-Ipiña.

Special Collection on the Future of Data Analysis in Smart Cities (IF: 0.906)

http://journals.sagepub.com/page/dsn/collections/special-issues/future-data-analysis-smart-cities

To have your paper included, submit by November 2, 2017

Click here to submit your article

Smart Cities are shifting the focus on intelligent environments from self-contained smart homes to a city-wide holistic approach, where the whole city is a sensorized and computationally capable smart environment. This change of focus provides new research opportunities and challenges. City-wide data analysis systems should combine not only the users home sensor data, but also data recovered from municipal sensors and other relevant public datasets. Moreover, the dataspace of the Smart Cities is not only limited to physical sensors, but also to citizens’ online activity, how they interact in social networks and how this information can be exploited to provide better services. The cities of the future should provide a holistic approach to the problems of their citizens using all of the heterogeneous Big Data collected. Ensuring the privacy of the users’ data is also an important topic which needs specific attention in this upcoming field. The purpose of this special collection is to collect innovative and high-quality research contributions regarding both the data analysis applied to Smart Cities and the management of large quantities of city wide data. This special collection also aims to explore already deployed applications and case studies.

Specifically, we seek original contributions on the following topics:

Theoretical foundations of Smart Cities
Information fusion and data collection frameworks for heterogeneous data in Smart Cities
Sensor networks for diffused data sensing in Smart Cities
Pattern learning, activity recognition and behavior assessment
Applications of machine learning (e.g. unsupervised approaches, deep learning, neural networks...) and exploratory data analysis (e.g. statistical analysis, multivariate/univariate methods...) techniques to Smart Cities
Context and data management in city-wide infrastructure, Big Data approaches to heterogeneous information
Exploitation of citizens' activity in social networks as an online representation of the cities
User acceptance of Smart Cities technologies
Privacy, Security and Ethics aspects of large data management in Smart Cities
Case studies and applications of data analysis in Smart Cities

Keywords: Smart Cities, activity recognition, behavior modeling, pattern learning, information fusion, data management

The submitted manuscripts for this special collection will be peer-reviewed before publication.

Please submit your paper according to the following timetable for the special collection:

Manuscript Deadline

November 2, 2017

First Round of Reviews

February 2018

First Papers Published

May 2018

Lead Guest Editor

Aitor Almeida, DeustoTech – Fundación Deusto, Spain

aitor.almeida@deusto.es

Dr. Aitor Almeida is a researcher and project manager at the MORELab Research Group, DeustoTech-INTERNET Research Unit belonging to DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology. He received a Bsc in Computer Engineering at the University of Deusto in 2004, an MSc in Software Development at the University of Deusto in 2005, and a PhD in Computer Science at the University of Deusto in 2013. During his PhD he researched the inclusion of vagueness and uncertainty in semantic context management and the distribution of the reasoning process in pervasive environments. He has taken part in several national and European projects, both as a researcher and as a team leader. His research interests include social network analysis, data mining, machine learning, pervasive computing, context-aware computing and the semantic web.

Guest Editors

Gorka Azkune, University of Deusto, Spain

gorka.azkune@deusto.es

Dr. Gorka Azkune is a researcher and lecturer in the University of Deusto, working at the MORElab Research Group at DeustoTech - Deusto Institute of Technology. He finished his studies in Computer Sciences in 2006 at the University of the Basque Country. He developed his Final Degree Project in the Max Planck Institut für Quantenoptik in the area of quantum voting protocols. In 2010, he obtained a MsC in Computer Science at the University of the Basque Country. He achieved his PhD in 2015 with a dissertation entitled "Learning for Dynamic and Personalised Knowledge-Based Activity Models" at the University of Deusto. His current research interests lie on human-centred intelligent systems and artificial intelligence. From 2006 to 2013, Gorka worked as a researcher in Tecnalia , working on national and international projects, such as Iward , Autorecon and Across . His main research areas were mobile robotics, artificial intelligence and artificial vision. He has several publications in peer-reviewed conferences and journals and he has participated in research summer schools such as ROS Fall School on cognition-enabled mobile manipulation and IFR research lectures.

Somaya Ben Allouch, Saxion University, The Netherlands

s.benallouch@saxion.nl

Somaya Ben Allouch, PhD is a senior researcher. She has lead the Technology, Health and Care research group at Saxion University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands since 2014. Her research interests are in the areas of adoption and acceptance of pervasive technologies and social robotics. She obtained her PhD in 2008 from the University of Twente where she was an assistant professor until 2014. During her PhD research she investigated the adoption and acceptance of pervasive technologies. Dr Ben Allouch was a visiting researcher at the Ambient Intelligence Research Lab of Stanford University in 2011 and 2012. Since 2013, she has been part of the editorial board of the Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments. She has been and is currently involved in both European as national funded research projects with regard to the adoption and acceptance of pervasive technologies.

Bessam Abdulrazak, University of Sherbrooke, Canada

Bessam.Abdulrazak@usherbrooke.ca

Dr. Abdulrazak is professor at the University of Sherbrooke (Québec - Canada), director of the research center on smart habitats, and active researcher at the Research center on Aging and the Interdisciplinary Institute for Technological Innovation. He received a PhD of computer science from Telecom SudParis (France), a MSc in Robotics from UPMC - Paris VI (France), and a BSc engineering in Electronics from USTHB (Algeria). His research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Context-Awareness, Ambient Intelligence, Ubiquitous and Pervasive Computing, Smart City, Gerontechnology and Assistive Technology. He has published more than 150 academic articles, and served on numerous conference/ journal committees related to his research interests.

Quarter Meeting of City4Age project in Montpellier, France

On the 27th and 28th of February, the Deustotech-Internet team represented by Gorka Azkune and Aitor Almeida attended the plenary meeting of the City4Age project in Montpellier, France. Special thanks for the CNRS team for hosting us.

We have published several datasets related to the political activities on social networks

We have made public several datasets related to the political activities on social networks. The liberated datasets are:

Political party and candidate tweets for the campaing period of the 2016 Spanish general election. This dataset contains the political party and candidate tweets for the campaign period (10th to 24th of June) of the 2016 Spanish general election. The dataset contains 35,624 tweets. https://github.com/aitoralmeida/spanish_general_election_2016
Political party and candidate tweets for the campaing period of the 2015 Spanish general election. This dataset contains the political party and candidate tweets for the campaign period (4th to 18th of December) of the 2015 Spanish general election. The dataset contains 45,804 tweets. https://github.com/aitoralmeida/spanish_general_election_2015
Twitter dataset for the 2014 European Parliament elections. This dataset contains the tweets for the campaign period (16th to 23th of April) of the 2014 European Parliament election. The dataset contais a total of 47,761 tweets. https://github.com/aitoralmeida/european_parliament_election_2014

Workshop on IoT in Elderly-Friendly Cities and Healthy Ageing Services

http://marjan.fesb.hr/SoftCOM/2017/files/cfp/CfP_Workshop_on_C4A_My-AHA_2017.pdf

The Workshop is organized by the high-profile MY-AHA and City4Age projects with support from the European Commission under the Horizon 2020 Programme, and will be held in conjunction with the 25th International Conference on Software, Telecommunications and Computer Networks (SoftCOM2017), technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc) (pending), in Split (Croatia) on September 21-23, 2017.

The ageing of population is a phenomenon that is affecting the majority of developed countries around the world and will soon affect developing economies too. Research and innovation in Smart Cities and ageing population is growing exponentially worldwide and represents an opportunity to enrich our societies and create major opportunities for citizens and industry. This workshop mainly focused on innovative hardware and software technologies able both to improve elderly people’s quality of life and treatment’s costs. The main goal of this workshop is to present and discuss recent advances in the area of the innovative technologies and services for supporting elderly people at home and city environments and to reduce the progression of MCI and frailty. Accepted and presented papers will be published in the conference proceedings and submitted to IEEE Xplore as well as other Abstracting and Indexing (A&I) databases. Authors of selected best papers will be invited to submit an extended version of their manuscripts for publication in a special issue of the Journal of Communications Software and Systems (JCOMSS).

We cordially invite speakers who wish to present original papers on the following subjects, but not limited to these, associated with the following topics:

Mobile applications for monitoring and assisting the elderly
Innovative solutions for capturing elderly people’s data
Analysis and behavioural interpretation of data from multiple sensors
Innovative solutions for coaching and interventions
Innovative remote assistance services for the elderly
IoT architectures for elderly healthcare services
Big Data for behaviour changes analysis
Smart environments to reduce frailty and MCI risks
Case studies, field trials, and research projects on elderly friendly smart cities
Impact evaluation of IoT-aware technologies on elderly healthcare system
New social business models and marketplace for elderly-friendly social and health services
Ethical issues in elderly personal data capturing systems
Geriatric and medical evaluation of emerging technologies

IMPORTANT DATES
Complete manuscript due June 15, 2017
Notification off acceptance July 20, 2017
Camera--ready manuscript Sept. 1, 2017