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Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities

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A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 29512

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. David Gil

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Guest Editor

Department of Computing Technology and Data Processing, University of Alicante, 03690 Alicante, Spain
Interests: artificial intelligence applications (such as artificial neural networks, support vector machines, decision trees, and so on); data mining applications; big data; internet of things; diagnosis and decision support system in medical and cognitive sciences
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Jesús Peral

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Guest Editor

Department of Software and Computing Systems, University of Alicante, Spain
Interests: multidimensional databases, business intelligence, data mining and information integration; natural language processing (NLP), specifically in syntactic analysis and solving linguistic phenomena (i.e., ellipsis and anaphora)
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Prof. Dr. Mohan Tanniru

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Guest Editor

Professor of Practice in the College of Public Health (University of Arizona, USA) and Emeritus Professor of Information Systems (Oakland University, Michigan, USA)
Interests: His main research topics include digital transformation and leadership, knowledge base/expert systems, decision support and business analytics, and health care service innovations.

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Internet of things (IoT) has made it possible for many devices (sensors, RFID, GPS, and many other types of smart devices) to acquire data on product use in context so as to provide insight and help organizations act to create value. While advanced technologies like big data analytics and machine learning techniques can help gain insight, there are still ways that are needed in order to assist organizations to take actions from these insights. Organizations who can sustain value creation over time are those who can move from analysis to insight to action by evaluating and implementing viable solutions quickly to meet customer needs.

This Special Issue seeks to explore how IoT advances are used by cities for sustainability along multiple dimensions. Some examples include water resource management, efficient energy use, and air quality assurance, as well as improving citizen interactions in support of public policy formulation on health, transport, education, and economic development. Specifically, we are looking for innovative tools and techniques used for data analysis, models, and architectures used to gain insights, simulate performance, and coordinate action, as well as leadership models to implement actions.

Prof. Dr. David Gil
Prof. Dr. Jesús Peral
Prof. Dr. Mohan Tanniru
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Internet of things
Data mining with big data
Machine learning techniques for big data analysis
Data visualization and integration
Modeling and simulation
Public administration policies
Digital transformation and leadership
Economic, social, and environmental sustainability
Sustainability in smart cities
Blockchain, new approaches, and their applications

Published Papers (6 papers)

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Research

23 pages, 3443 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Lightweight Authentication and Authorization Framework for Blockchain-Enabled IoT Network in Health-Informatics

by Muhammad Tahir, Muhammad Sardaraz, Shakoor Muhammad and Muhammad Saud Khan

Sustainability 2020, 12(17), 6960; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176960 - 26 Aug 2020

Cited by 72 | Viewed by 5746

Abstract

Blockchain and IoT are being deployed at a large scale in various fields including healthcare for applications such as secure storage, transactions, and process automation. IoT devices are resource-constrained, have no capability of security and self-protection, and can easily be hacked or compromised. Furthermore, Blockchain is an emerging technology with immutability features which provide secure management, authentication, and guaranteed access control to IoT devices. IoT is a cloud-based internet service in which processing and collection of user’s data are accomplished remotely. Smart healthcare also requires the facility to provide the diagnosis of patients located remotely. The smart health framework faces critical issues such as data security, costs, memory, scalability, trust, and transparency between different platforms. Therefore, it is important to handle data integrity and privacy as the user’s authenticity is in question due to an open internet environment. Several techniques are available that primarily focus on resolving security issues i.e., forgery, timing, denial of service and stolen smartcard attacks, etc. Blockchain technology follows the rules of absolute privacy to identify the users associated with transactions. The motivation behind the use of Blockchain in health informatics is the removal of the centralized third party, immutability, improved data sharing, enhanced security, and reduced overhead costs in distributed applications. Healthcare informatics has some specific requirements associated with the security and privacy along with the additional legal requirements. This paper presents a novel authentication and authorization framework for Blockchain-enabled IoT networks using a probabilistic model. The proposed framework makes use of random numbers in the authentication process which is further connected through joint conditional probability. Hence, it establishes a secure connection among IoT devices for further data acquisition. The proposed model is validated and evaluated through extensive simulations using the AVISPA tool and the Cooja simulator, respectively. Experimental results analyses show that the proposed framework provides robust mutual authenticity, enhanced access control, and lowers both the communication and computational overhead cost as compared to others. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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20 pages, 8437 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Using Visualization to Build Transparency in a Healthcare Blockchain Application

by Jesús Peral, Eduardo Gallego, David Gil, Mohan Tanniru and Prashant Khambekar

Sustainability 2020, 12(17), 6768; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12176768 - 20 Aug 2020

Cited by 14 | Viewed by 4247

Abstract

With patients demanding services to control their own health conditions, hospitals are looking to build agility in delivering care by extending their reach into patient and partner ecosystems and sharing relevant patient data to support care continuity. However, sharing patient data with several external stakeholders outside a hospital network calls for the development of a digital platform that is trusted by both hospitals and stakeholders, given that there is often no single entity supporting such coordination. In this paper, we propose a methodology that uses a blockchain architecture to address the technical challenge of linking disparate systems used by multiple stakeholders and the social challenge of engendering trust by using visualization to bring about transparency in the way in which data are shared. We illustrate this methodology using a pilot implementation. The paper concludes with a discussion and directions for future research and makes some concluding comments. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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17 pages, 2643 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Autonomous Sensor Network for Rural Agriculture Environments, Low Cost, and Energy Self-Charge

by Javier Rodríguez-Robles, Álvaro Martin, Sergio Martin, José A. Ruipérez-Valiente and Manuel Castro

Sustainability 2020, 12(15), 5913; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12155913 - 23 Jul 2020

Cited by 42 | Viewed by 4891

Abstract

Over the last years, existing technologies have been applied to agricultural environments, resulting in new precision agriculture systems. Some of the multiple profits of developing new agricultural technologies and applications include the cost reduction around the building and deployment of them, together with more energy-efficient consumption. Therefore, agricultural precision systems focus on developing better, easier, cheaper, and overall more efficient ways of handling agricultural monitoring and actuation. To achieve this vision, we use a set of technologies such as Wireless Sensor Networks, Sensors devices, Internet of Things, or data analysis. More specifically, in this study, we proposed a combination of all these technologies to design and develop a prototype of a precision agriculture system for medium and small agriculture plantations that highlights two major advantages: efficient energy management with self-charging capabilities and a low-cost policy. For the development of the project, several prototype nodes were built and deployed within a sensor network connected to the cloud as a self-powered system. The final target of this system is, therefore, to gather environment data, analyze it, and actuate by activating the watering installation. An analysis of the exposed agriculture monitoring system, in addition to results, is exposed in the paper. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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13 pages, 1493 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Smart City Crime Prevention Services: The Incheon Free Economic Zone Case

by Mun-su Park and Hwansoo Lee

Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5658; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145658 - 14 Jul 2020

Cited by 15 | Viewed by 4708

Abstract

This study explores ways to improve the security systems of emerging smart cities by conducting a case study of the smart crime prevention service of the Incheon Free Economic Zone (IFEZ) in South Korea. Data from the IFEZ were collected between January 2017 and December 2018 across the smart system’s four functional areas (intelligent video surveillance, suspicious vehicle surveillance, emergency alerts, and abnormal sound sources) and 10 types of situations (emergency, violence, civil complaints, intrusion, kidnapping, loitering, throwing, suspicious vehicle, collision explosion, and sudden event). Descriptive statistics were analyzed to show the limitation of the smart crime prevention service. The results revealed three significant insights into the best practices for smart crime prevention services in smart cities: first, smart crime prevention services are required to verify the accuracy and consistency of collected data; second, the government must establish a consistent process to link all crime prevention services and to secure data linkages; and third, the government must urgently foster and secure experts in specialized institutions to carry out these advised functions. Ultimately, these findings suggest that in-depth discussions of data collection and sharing are required to ensure the optimal development of smart city security services. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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17 pages, 4724 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving Sustainability of Smart Cities through Visualization Techniques for Big Data from IoT Devices

by Ana Lavalle, Miguel A. Teruel, Alejandro Maté and Juan Trujillo

Sustainability 2020, 12(14), 5595; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12145595 - 11 Jul 2020

Cited by 31 | Viewed by 5068

Abstract

Fostering sustainability is paramount for Smart Cities development. Lately, Smart Cities are benefiting from the rising of Big Data coming from IoT devices, leading to improvements on monitoring and prevention. However, monitoring and prevention processes require visualization techniques as a key component. Indeed, in order to prevent possible hazards (such as fires, leaks, etc.) and optimize their resources, Smart Cities require adequate visualizations that provide insights to decision makers. Nevertheless, visualization of Big Data has always been a challenging issue, especially when such data are originated in real-time. This problem becomes even bigger in Smart City environments since we have to deal with many different groups of users and multiple heterogeneous data sources. Without a proper visualization methodology, complex dashboards including data from different nature are difficult to understand. In order to tackle this issue, we propose a methodology based on visualization techniques for Big Data, aimed at improving the evidence-gathering process by assisting users in the decision making in the context of Smart Cities. Moreover, in order to assess the impact of our proposal, a case study based on service calls for a fire department is presented. In this sense, our findings will be applied to data coming from citizen calls. Thus, the results of this work will contribute to the optimization of resources, namely fire extinguishing battalions, helping to improve their effectiveness and, as a result, the sustainability of a Smart City, operating better with less resources. Finally, in order to evaluate the impact of our proposal, we have performed an experiment, with non-expert users in data visualization. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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21 pages, 2122 KiB

Open AccessArticle

The Evolutionary Game for Collaborative Innovation of the IoT Industry under Government Leadership in China: An IoT Infrastructure Perspective

by Jie Hou and Baizhou Li

Sustainability 2020, 12(9), 3648; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093648 - 01 May 2020

Cited by 18 | Viewed by 3034

Abstract

Since the United States, the European Union, China, and other countries put forward the development strategy of Internet of Things (IoT), it has been growing rapidly, leading to industrial restructuring and the sustainable development of various industries. Not only can collaborative innovation of the IoT industry accelerate R&D efficiency and product substitution frequency of IoT infrastructure, but also it can promote the construction of smart cities, the application of Big Data and Cloud Computing, and the development of 5G. In China, government is a leader and initiator of IoT infrastructure deployment. Therefore, in this paper, we construct an evolutionary game model of the IoT industry under government leadership represented by government, telecom equipment manufacturers, and telecom operators. Then, we analyze the asymptotic stability, equilibrium stability, and evolutionary stability strategy of the model. Finally, we carry out numerical simulation to investigate the effect of eight factors and four mechanisms on evolutionary behaviors of the three parties. The results show each factor has a different influence on them. Evolutionary game model offers ideas for government and industry subjects before the collaborative innovation of IoT infrastructure deployment in practice. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Applications of Internet of Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities)

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