IVC 2013 - 2nd Workshop on Intelligent Video-to-video Communications in Modern Smart Cities

The Digital Agenda for Europe intends to sustain fast and ultrafast Internet access as well as the development and operation of several “open platforms” capable of providing new and innovative products and related services in the framework of 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 (GA No.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.
The essential aim of the 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 (v2v) over the Internet. LiveCity proposes v2v applications for a range of user communities in five European cities. The capabilities of modern wireline and 4G wireless networks like IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) and LTE networks, issues related to inelastic traffic forwarding, QoS mechanisms, intelligent agents and architectures for optimal service delivery are “key issues” to be investigated. The intended priority is to be given around structuring several essential well defined scenarios and/or use-cases, as below:
City Emergency (hospital emergency, pilot activity using live high-quality video-to-video between ambulance and hospital and study of key performance indicators)
City eHealth (patient monitoring and/or treatment for pre- and/or post-surgical control video-to-video between patients and medical centre(s), in order to remotely support the safe tele-monitoring activities.
Municipal Services (video-to-video for public administration and public information services, carbon footprint).
City Education (video-to-video networks between city schools in order to enhance education and to support real interactivity).
City Experiences (tourism, cultural and city marketing information, usage of video-to-video between museums and/or involved cultural institutes).
Topics of interest :
The Workshop has been established to disseminate research results as well as original technical reports/deliverables from building the aforementioned pilots of video-to-video communications and intelligent telecom applications. It encourages papers from industry and academia covering the following general areas:
- E-government, strategies and business models, application scenarios in the areas of Emergency Services, eHealth and City Experiences, service evaluation and delivery ? Regulatory Issues
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA), infrastructure and middleware, service requirement validation; service business models and e-government diffusion; service design, service deployment and service delivery; service lifecycle; model-driven service engineering; knowledge-intensive services; risk management in services management; service testing and validation; service bundling; ubiquitous and pervasive services; business aspects and related market practices; regulatory issues and applied policies.
- AI applications and agents in telecommunications ? Cloud computing and virtualization
Service-oriented agent-based architectures, protocols and deployment environments; cloud computing M2M (machine-to-machine) interaction/SDNs and cloud telematics; home area networks, smart home, personal area networks.
- Video-to-video communications, IPv6 and mobile networks
IPv6 protocol and next generation networks; HEVC (High-Efficiency Video Coding) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC; mobile TV, multimedia delivery and LTE/Long Term Evolution; Rate-distortion control in heterogeneous networks, scalable internet streaming; Multipoint-to-Multipoint delivery; interactive advertisement; IPTV and IMS; 3D internet and 3D TV; immersive multimedia; enhanced and augmented reality; virtualization; content delivery; distributed environments.
- Over-The-Top (OTT) Models, SLAs (Service Level Agreements), QoS (Quality of Service) mechanisms and QoE (Quality of Experience) in modern telecommunication networks
Privacy, security, performance, reliability, fault tolerance in modern telecommunication networks; service consumption and delivery outcome; quality of service impact; service audit metrics; service personalization; lifecycle management.
Workshop Chairs
Dr. Ioannis P. Chochliouros, Research Programs Section, Hellenic Telecommunications Organizations (OTE) S.A, Greece
Tel.: +30 210 6114651
e-mail: ichochliouros-AT-oteresearch.gr
Dr.Latif Ladid, President, IPv6 Forum & Senior Researcher, SnT, University of Luxemburg, Luxemburg
e-mail: latif-AT-ladid.lu
Prof. Vishanth Weerakkody
Brunel University, UK
e-mail: vishanth.weerakkody-AT-brunel.ac.uk
Dr. Ioannis M. Stephanakis, Hellenic Telecommunications Organizations (OTE) S.A, Greece
Tel.: +30 210 6115798
e-mail: stephan-AT-ote.gr
Academic Program Committee
Prof. Nancy Alonistioti, National & Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece
Prof. Edmundo Monteiro, Centre for Informatics and Systems of the University of Coimbra, Portugal
Mr. Donal Morris, CEO, RedZinc Services Ltd., Dublin, Ireland
Prof. Anastasios Dagiuklas, Hellenic Open University, Greece
Dr. Rod McCall, Université du Luxembourg, Luxembourg
Ms. Jeanne Caffrey, QuartzSpark Ltd., Ireland
Mr. Evangelos Sfakianakis, Research Programs Section OTE, Greece
Mrs. Kelly Georgiadou, Research Programs Section OTE, Greece
Mr. Luis Cordeiro, OneSource, Consultoria Informatica, LDA, Portugal