Franco Zambonelli and Mirko Viroli
Emerging pervasive computing scenarios require open service frameworks promoting situated and self‐adaptive behaviors, and supporting diversity in services and long‐term…
Abstract
Purpose
Emerging pervasive computing scenarios require open service frameworks promoting situated and self‐adaptive behaviors, and supporting diversity in services and long‐term evolvability. This suggests adopting a nature‐inspired approach, where pervasive services are modeled and deployed as autonomous individuals in an ecosystem of other services, data sources, and pervasive devices. However, there are many possibly nature‐inspired metaphors that can be adopted, and choosing one may require a careful analysis of the pros and cons of the different metaphors. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the key requirements and desiderata for next generation pervasive computing services and associated infrastructures.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper, the authors introduce and critically analyze a number of natural metaphors that can be adopted to realize these concepts and survey relevant proposals in the area.
Findings
The key result of this survey is that a uniform reference architecture can be a useful guide when framing the challenges involved in the design and implementation of future self‐adaptive pervasive service ecosystems.
Originality/value
The survey in this paper, along with the proposed reference architecture, can be effective starting points towards the definition and implementation of general‐purpose nature‐inspired pervasive service ecosystems.
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Alberto Rosi, Alessandro Codeluppi and Franco Zambonelli
Starting from the premise that digital screens are pervading our everyday urban and social environments to serve a variety of purposes, the purpose of this paper is to show how…
Abstract
Purpose
Starting from the premise that digital screens are pervading our everyday urban and social environments to serve a variety of purposes, the purpose of this paper is to show how screens can be made aware of what is happening around them and – based on specific strategies – adapt accordingly the advertisement flow to supply to users more engaging contents.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper presents an overview of future pervasive advertisement scenarios, and sketches the architecture and implementation of a system for adaptive context‐aware pervasive advertisement. Subsequently, with the help of a simulation environment, the paper evaluates the performances of several adaptive context‐aware advertisement strategies, and compares them against non‐adaptive ones.
Findings
The paper demonstrates that, in a wide range of conditions, an advertisement system based on adaptive context‐aware strategies leads to a gain in terms of commercial value with respect to traditional non‐adaptive strategies for advertisement broadcasting.
Practical implications
A system for pervasive advertisement could be easily brought to life, leading advertisement companies to a much more targeted exploitation of the screen resource and, eventually, to higher revenues.
Originality/value
Adaptive advertisement systems can offer notable commercial advantages over traditional advertisement systems even when visitors demonstrate poor collaboration towards the system.
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Alberto Rosi, Marco Mamei and Franco Zambonelli
The key purpose of this paper is to overview the many issues related to the integration of social sensing and pervasive sensing in the support of adaptive context-aware services…
Abstract
Purpose
The key purpose of this paper is to overview the many issues related to the integration of social sensing and pervasive sensing in the support of adaptive context-aware services.
Design/methodology/approach
From the analysis of existing proposals and prototypes, the authors found out that the process of integrating social and pervasive sensing can follow a limited number of approaches, which enables the authors to properly frame the proposals existing in the literature (and/or available as prototype infrastructures) according to a simple taxonomy, which is very useful to make the survey much more effective than a simple list of systems and proposals.
Findings
The taxonomy shows that, when integrating social sensing with pervasive sensing, it is possible, at one extreme, to exploit social network as a mere source of information and have such information flow towards the infrastructure supporting the execution of pervasive computing services. At the other extreme, it is possible exploiting a social network as an infrastructure for the integration, by having data from pervasive devices flow towards social networks. In between the extremes, different means can consider to have social networks and pervasive infrastructures converge towards each other to enable the integration of social and pervasive sensing.
Originality/value
Besides introducing the main concepts related to social sensing and framing the key approaches that can be undertaken to pursue the integration with traditional pervasive sensing, the authors go further discussing open issues and key research challenges behind their seamless integration.
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Andrea Omicini and Franco Zambonelli
The increasing need to access and elaborate dynamic and heterogeneous information sources distributed over the Internet calls for new models and paradigms for application design…
Abstract
The increasing need to access and elaborate dynamic and heterogeneous information sources distributed over the Internet calls for new models and paradigms for application design and development. The mobile agent paradigm promotes the design of applications where agents roam through Internet sites to locally access and elaborate information and resources, possibly co‐operating with each other. Focuses on mobile agent co‐ordination, and presents the TuCSoN co‐ordination model for Internet applications based on mobile information agents. TuCSoN exploits a notion of local tuple‐based interaction space, called a tuple centre. A tuple centre is a tuple space enhanced with the capability of programming its behaviour in response to communication events. This enables properties to be embedded into the interaction space, and a mobile agent to be designed independently of the peculiarities of the information sources. Several issues critical to Internet applications can then be charged on tuple centres transparently to agents. The effectiveness of the TuCSoN model is first shown by means of an application example in the area of Internet information retrieval, then discussed in the context of workflow management and electronic commerce.
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Romeo Bandinelli, Diletta Acuti, Virginia Fani, Bianca Bindi and Gaetano Aiello
The present research expands the debate on environmental sustainability in the wine industry. Since the literature on sustainability and wine is relatively recent, current results…
Abstract
Purpose
The present research expands the debate on environmental sustainability in the wine industry. Since the literature on sustainability and wine is relatively recent, current results do not cover all the practices that can be implemented along the wine supply chain. Thus, the paper presents a classification of environmental practices specific for the wine industry, according to the increased attention that has been paid to this topic in recent years. Moreover, it investigates the adoption level of these practices with reference to Italian wine producers.
Design/methodology/approach
The research presents a systematic literature review including papers published in academic journals during the past 30 years and in Italian specialised magazines. This methodology is useful to provide a clear overview of sustainable practices that can be adopted along the wine supply chain. Therefore, an empirical study based on the results of an online survey shows how wineries approach environmental sustainability.
Findings
The literature review provides a definition and classification of environmental practices in the wine industry, as well as identification of those that require further attention in the literature, suggesting future research paths. The results of the online survey give an overview of the adoption level of environmental practices and highlight widespread attention to all the listed environmental practices, including those not adopted.
Originality/value
From a theoretical point of view, this paper fills a literature gap in terms of the definition and classification of environmental practices that cover all wine supply chain processes, also providing a useful instrument for wine companies' managers. Moreover, the results of the empirical research give an overview of the adoption level of environmental practices in one of the most relevant countries in terms of wine production and highlight widespread attention to all the listed environmental practices, including those not adopted.