72529 - Smart City and Mobile Technologies

Learning outcomes

Today Smart City is an area of research and application with huge potential for growth and involves a variety of relevant aspects: the role of government for strategic planning and development of a nation, the construction of social and relationship capital, technologies like factors facilitating innovation, the new positioning of citizens and their associations.

At the end of the course the student will have the basic knowledge - in terms of technologies, methods and tools - for design and development of software applications to assist the implementation of innovative services in the context of digital cities, with particular reference to mobile technologies and embedded systems. A further objective of the course is the presentation of some lines of scientific research in the field of ICT for Smart City which will, in the near future, triggering processes of technological innovation in various applications of interest.

Course contents

The course wants to be in the context of Smart Sustainable City, as a priority, as the basis for the learning of techniques for the realization of innovative services, with particular reference to mobile technologies and embedded systems. Crucial role in smart services can be attributed to the development and dissemination of sensors of various kinds, in a scenario known as the IoT (Internet of Things), as well as crucial is the innovation in the field of embedded systems, and in particular of Video Content Analysis technology, and the availability of efficient cloud computing architectures and distributed information systems for the management of Big Data.

Main contents of the course

·         The foundation for the realization of innovative services in contexts Smart City

·         Sensing technologies

·         Embedded systems and applications (eg, environmental monitoring, video surveillance, smart building, indoor and outdoor localization, home automation, machine vision)

·         Design methodologies and development environments for applications (with particular focus on mobile devices as clients)

·         Cloud Computing and Big Data

There will also be seminars on aspects of interest for Smart City.

The course is supported by guided exercises in laboratory.

Readings/Bibliography

lecture slides are available at http://smartcity.csr.unibo.it/smart-city-e-tecnologie-mobili/

Teaching methods

During the lessons, will be discussed the general issues related to the design and development of "smart services". The course will be accompanied by guided exercises in the classroom and in the laboratory. These activities are planned in such a way that within each exercise, the student can achieve practically the solutions of the problems outlined during theoretical lessons.

Assessment methods

The exam consists of two parts:

· a software project concerning an application related to one or more topics covered in the course; the delivery of project documentation and software developed is essential to take the oral test;

· an oral test which consists mainly in the discussion of the project but also provides in-depth questions on the exam program.

Teaching tools

Most of the projects discussed during the course are derived from experiences in the context of Smart City Lab (http://smartcity.csr.unibo.it), a research laboratory of Department of Computer Science and Engineering where are available some single-board computers (eg Raspberry PI.,  Nano mainboard,  Udoo Neo extended board) and related software development platforms for embedded systems, sensing and mobile devices. In particular, for the implementation of embedded system applications Microsoft Windows and Linux operating systems will be adopted. For the design and implementation of software applications on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) mainly will be used software development kits for Android platforms.

Links to further information

http://smartcity.csr.unibo.it/smart-city-e-tecnologie-mobili/

Office hours

See the website of Dario Maio