Abstract
The research project "Smart Shires: Sustainable Smart Services for the Countryside" addresses the technological and social imbalances arising from digital innovation traditionally focused on dense metropolitan areas. Recognizing that replicating traditional "smart city" infrastructures in decentralized or rural regions is economically and logistically unfeasible, the project introduces a software architecture designed for sustainable, secure, and opportunistic deployment of smart services in low-connectivity environments. The architecture integrates alternative cooperative communication approaches—such as community-based mesh networks and trusted data mules—with edge, cloud, or decentralized storage computing infrastructures that ensure privacy preservation. Furthermore, scalable blockchain-based techniques and smart contracts are employed to securely trace and reward resource-sharing and user cooperation via crypto-tokens. Validated through specific use-cases such as eHealth monitoring and interactive conversational tools driven by Large Language Models (LLMs), the project successfully establishes a modular framework to bridge the rural-urban digital divide sustainably. Results The proposed architectural framework and the selected peer-reviewed publications are the main outputs of the project and they include: ● Francesco Blefari, Gabriele D’Angelo, Stefano Ferretti, Angelo Furfaro, Paolo Giaccone, Moreno Marzolla, Francesco Aurelio Pironti, Luca Serena. “A Framework for the Development of Sustainable Smart Services for the Countryside.” IEEE Computer, Vol. 58, Issue 12, 2025. ● S. Ferretti, L. Cassano, G. Cialone, J. D'Abramo, F. Imboccioli. "Decentralized Coordination for Resilient Federated Learning: A Blockchain-based Approach with Smart Contracts and Decentralized Storage." Computer Communications (Elsevier), April 2025. ● F. A. Pironti, F. Blefari, A. Furfaro. "Supporting C2C Communications in a Smart Shire Environment Using DLT-based Data Mules." Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud 2024), August 2024, Wien, Austria. ● L. Cassano, J. D'Abramo, S. Munir, S. Ferretti. "Trust and Resilience in Federated Learning Through Smart Contracts Enabled Decentralized Systems." In Proceedings of the 7th IEEE International Conference on Blockchain (Blockchain 2024), August 2024, Copenhagen, Denmark. ● G. D'Angelo, S. Ferretti, M. Marzolla. “Performance evaluation of a self-clustering heuristic for adaptive PADS.” In Proceedings of the 2025 29th International Symposium on Distributed Simulation and Real Time Applications (DS-RT 2025), Prague, Czech Republic.
Dettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Gabriele D'Angelo
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Informatica - Scienza e Ingegneria
Coordinatore:
Università degli Studi di URBINO "Carlo Bo"(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 55.946,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
28/09/2023
Data di fine:
27/09/2025
