IIVC 2012 - 1st Intelligent Innovative Ways for Video-to-video Communication in Modern Smart Cities (IIVC 2012)

Ioannis P. Chochliouros
Hellenic Telecommunications Organizations (OTE) S.A, Greece
ichochliouros-AT-oteresearch.gr
Ioannis M. Stephanakis
Hellenic Telecommunications Organizations (OTE) S.A, Greece
stephan-AT-ote.gr
Vishanth Weerakkody
Brunel University, UK
vishanth.weerakkody-AT-brunel.ac.uk
Nancy Alonistioti
National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
nancy-AT-di.uoa.gr
Workshop Program Committee (not complete)
Mr. Donal Morris, CEO, RedZinc Services Ltd., Dublin, Ireland
Mr. Evangelos Sfakianakis, Research Programs Section OTE, Greece
Dr. Rod McCall, Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Ms. Jeanne Caffrey, QuartzSpark Ltd., Ireland
Dr. Nectarios Kozyris, National Technical University of Greece
Dr. Kyriakos Sgarbas, University of Patras, Greece
Dr. Kostas Karpouzis, National Technical University of Greece
Dr. George Anastassopoulos, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
Workshop Aim
The Digital Agenda for Europe intends to sustain fast and ultrafast Internet access as well as the development and operation of several "open platforms" able to provide new and innovative products and related services, especially in the framework of the Future Internet (FI). In the present context, both citizens and legal entities (organizations, enterprises-companies, (state) authorities, etc.) in urban environment are facing with a multiplicity of challenges that appropriate investments -or properly selective initiatives- in pioneering ICT-based solutions can help "to address and to promote innovative responses", especially those based on user-driven initiatives. Of particular importance become various activities aiming to develop modern solutions or facilities/services of higher quality in communications that should make a beneficial and really effective use of the wider context of the Internet of the Future.
Until today, user-driven open innovation methodologies have proven that they can drastically improve the efficiency of the innovation process by bridging between R&D and market entry supporting better and faster take-up of R&D results. In this scope, they are very rapidly becoming the new mainstream method of innovating. Living Labs are specific examples of such open innovation environments in real-life settings, in which user-driven innovation is fully integrated within the co-creation process of new services, products and societal infrastructures.
Cities (or urban areas) are continuously faced with major challenges that require investment in innovative solutions (particularly the ICT-based ones) to improve the quality and efficiency of their infrastructures and services offered. Some anticipate and are "leaders" in adopting smarter development models and may perform a kind of pioneering role in engaging the user in the expected innovation process. Building upon existing user-driven innovation initiatives in Europe, the critical aim is to ensure a wider implementation of open platforms for the provision of Internet-enabled services in cities and thus to include an active involvement of citizens. These platforms should be able to develop "innovation ecosystems" accelerating the move towards "smart" cities" and providing a wide range of opportunities for new, higher quality, and sustainable services for citizens and businesses as well. In fact, this also delimits the essential framework that is actually taken into account the LiveCity PSP-ICT Project (Ref.297291) effort aiming, among other issues, to the development and the operation of suitable applied initiatives (through pilot actions) with the aim of accelerating the uptake of innovative Internet-based technologies and services in cities. These apply user-driven open innovation methodologies across networks of smart cities and may combine: (i) User-driven open innovation, (ii) Connected smart cities, and (iii) Internet-based services. In this scope it should be a matter of particular importance for the LiveCity Project to "identify" channels and or other means for potential interaction with related innovative and extended ecosystems, such as Living Labs, intending to "bridge" the gap between the development of Internet-based technologies and their rapid uptake in new services.
Digital Agenda Europe looks to the future for Europe and recommends that, as a consequence of global competition and demographic ageing, citizens of Europe will have to at least work harder, longer - and with the help of ICT - work smarter in order to increase standards of living. The agenda charts a course to maximize social and economic potential by employing ICT for doing business, working, playing communicating and especially for expressing ourselves freely with the Internet as a "key ingredient". In particular, in the context of the Digital Agenda the Policy Support Programme (PSP), Objective 5.1 seeks pilot projects for open innovation of Internet-enabled service in smart cities. In this scope, the LiveCity PSP-ICT Project (Ref.297291) proposes one significant forthcoming Internet-based service, that is video-to-video (v2v), and apply it in a number of applications, with diverse user communities in different European cities in order to validate the ingredients which comprise the service, evaluate the stakeholder experience and prepare for a mass market deployment, also implying a multiplicity of explicitly identified benefits-advantages for all involved actors-partners.
The current public Internet provides today a globally reachable "best effort" network. It is envisaged that the Future Internet of tomorrow includes a Right of Way for a user’s traffic without interference from unwanted traffic. Such Right of Ways are already implemented in virtual private networks by using various QoS mechanisms; however, a right of way without interference from unwanted traffic is not available to the broad spectrum of users in the mass European market. In order to provide maximum utility for all potential users, the right of way needs to be globally reachable and supported on all -or on most- Internet environments and at low -or at least affordable- cost. Today’s Internet provides strong support for elastic traffic. However, inelastic traffic sources such as high definition (HD) video-to-video are not well supported on the current Internet. It would be unacceptable for the live HD images to be buffered and visible to the user, later. Consequently, live video applications require a right of way without interference from unwanted traffic in order that the inelastic traffic can get to the user and support the live experience, in a wide variety of applications covering business and educational-entertainment aspects.
Within this identified market- and technology-related "state" which really implicates the necessity for the promotion and the development of innovative methods and ways of communication, by using existing e-communications facilities, the vision of LiveCity Project is to conduct video-to-video pilots for a range of user communities in five European cities (i.e.: Athens, Dublin, Tübingen, Luxembourg and Valladolid) for a range of diverse applications and to support the network infrastructure with a right of way without interference from unwanted traffic on city networks. By using a common network infrastructure platform for building the right of way in these five target cities, costs can be significantly reduced and interoperability can be further enhanced. For example, if each city network operator used a different technology approach to building the right of way, then barriers to use would be high, reachability would be confined to a given network footprint, take-up would be low and costs would be still high enough. On the contrary, by seeking a common interoperable standard, costs can be low, reachable and the related solution(s) can be widely adopted.
A "Living Lab" is considered as: An open innovation environment in which user-driven innovation is supported by the availability of established, consolidated services and ICT infrastructure for creating, prototyping and using new products and services in real-life environments. There are various Living Labs in different domains, spanning from eHealth to energy optimisation, efficiency and from intelligent mobility to inclusion of the elderly and disadvantaged people.
Workshop Topics
The essential aim of LiveCity Project effort is to empower the citizens of a city to interact with each other in a more productive, efficient and socially useful way, by using high quality video-to-video over the Internet. Video-to-video can be used for an immense diversity of potential applications such as for saving patients lives, for improving city administration, for reducing fuel costs, for reducing carbon footprint, for enhancing education and for improving city experiences for tourists and cultural consumers - just to mention a few. We can imagine a world where live HD interactive video-to-video is as easily available on any display device on any city street as the air we breathe; a world where a video call with HD quality is as globally reachable to any city as a plain old telephony call; a world where, remotely, communications can be realized between users in any city, live and in high definition, instantaneously; a world where any video screen coupled with a video camera in any city can connect a high definition full screen video call at an attractive cost with seamless, utterly simple usability. This is the world of LiveCity!
To this target, the total project effort intends to build a wireline and 4G wireless network of cities and includes a right of way without interference from unwanted traffic so that each user in any of the involved cities can experience live interactive HD video-to-video. Therefore, LiveCity becomes a technology integration trial which aims to offer advanced services to over 3,000 users in five European cities. This unifying approach underpins an exploitable platform which can later be rolled out to other cities and communities as well, on a mass market basis. In particular, the project proposes to pilot a number of video-to-video services for a diverse range of applications in the areas of Emergency Services, eHealth and City Experiences. The complete effort will pilot these live high-quality video-to-video applications, in order to evaluate social utility and demonstrate value to be offered to the city citizens as well as to all other involved actors (technology providers, academic partners, public services providers, public internet service provider and network operators). In particular, the intended priority is to be given around the structuring of several essential well defined scenarios and/or use-cases, as below:
City Emergency: A city hospital emergency department team who has reduced effectiveness because they cannot see and optimally treat the patient remotely during the "golden hour" before the patient gets to hospital in the ambulance. The corresponding pilot activity will use live high-quality video-to-video between ambulance and hospital and study how to enhance patient outcomes.
City eHealth: A patient who needs monitoring and/or treatment for pre- and post-surgical control, relevant to medical cases. The corresponding pilot will use video-to-video between patients and medical centre(s) in order to remotely support the safe tele-monitoring activities.
Municipal Services. Using video-to-video for public administration and public information services will reduce fuel costs and green house emissions by reducing travel. In addition, video-to-video will enhance efficiency and utility of the offered services.
City Education: As ICT becomes more and more prevalent within schools, a related pilot action would be about developing a scenario where a video-to-video network is established between city schools to enhance education and to support real interactivity.
City Experiences: In order to enhance tourism, cultural and city marketing information, a corresponding pilot action is also proposed upon the basis of the usage of video-to-video between museums and/or involved cultural institutes. Local city administrations can also be involved in choosing the figure and further promoting it.
Stakeholder evaluation and key performance indicators will also be measured, analyzed and disseminated, appropriately. The essential hypothesis is that these indicators, once properly identified can then be significantly enhanced with the usage of video-to-video communication. For example, in the emergency services use case important indicators are time to delivery of clot busting drugs and patient survival rate. Other indicators will be collected and evaluated for the different pilots and a feasible business case for the rollout of the services to major European cities is also to be taken into account.
Submission:
All papers should be submitted by email to the Program Chair. Papers should be submitted either in a doc or in a pdf form and they should be peer reviewed by at least 2 academic referees. Papers should not exceed 10 pages formatted according to the LNCS Springer style.
Publication:
Accepted papers will be presented orally in the conference for 20 minutes and they will be published in the Proceedings of the main event. They will be also considered for potential selection for publication in the Special Issues that will be edited.