Hans Schaffers

The Future Internet

Irrespective of whether we use economic or societal metrics, the Internet is one of the most important technical infrastructures in existence today. It will be a catalyst for much of our innovation and prosperity in the future. A competitive Europe will require Internet connectivity and services beyond the capabilities offered by current technologies. Future Internet research is therefore a must. This book is published in full compliance with the Open Access publishing initiative; it is based on the research carried out within the Future Internet Assembly (FIA). It contains a sample of representative results from the recent FIA meetings spanning a broad range of topics, all being of crucial importance for the future Internet. The book includes 32 contributions and has been structured into the following sections, each of which is preceded by a short introduction: Foundations: architectural issues; socio-economic issues; security and trust; and experiments and experimental design. Future Internet Areas: networks, services, and content; and applications.

ECOSPACE -- Towards an Integrated Collaboration Space for eProfessionals

This paper provides an overview on the ECOSPACE Integrated Project that is partly funded by the European Commission in the framework of the collaborative work environments framework. We present the motivation, goals and research approach of the project

Special issue on smart applications for smart cities: new approaches to innovation: guest editors' introduction

Cities are complex, networked and continuously changing social ecosystems, shaped and transformed through the interaction of different interests and ambitions. Employment, sustainable development, inclusion, security and quality of life are important concerns and in this respect many cities are confronted with a wide range of challenges. Cities, particularly in rural areas, are also facing the implications of ageing population in combination with economic decline [9]. However cities also represent a promise for the future: a vision of freedom, creativity, opportunity and prosperity [4]. More than half of the global population is now urban and projections estimate that this percentage will even grow towards 70 % in 2050 [13]. At the same time, technology is currently promoting unprecedented changes in urban areas, which are often labelled as

Enhancing collaboration in communities of professionals using a Living Lab approach

The Living Lab approach within the multi-year integrated project ECOSPACE focused on community building and active user involvement in the process of developing, introducing and evaluating new collaboration concepts and tools. This article reports about implementing and evaluating our adapted Living Labs framework to facilitate innovation in collaborative work environments to enhance professional communities. The pursued implementation approach is considered as a strategy for innovation, change and adoption. We use a perspective of socio-technical systems to explain the change-catalysing role of our framework and findings.

A Living Lab approach for enhancing collaboration in Professional Communities

The ECOSPACE Integrated Project has developed an advanced collaborative workspace platform for eProfessionals. The technologies, services and collaboration tools have been developed, integrated and validated in various living labs addressing different contexts of eProfessional working. This paper reports about the Living Lab for Professional Communities of Innovation and covers three different user environments where innovative tools, services and practices have been experimented in different experimental settings. The first setting addresses the support of new work and collaboration practices in professional education. The second setting focuses on collaboration among business and research partners in promoting regional innovation. The third setting is about collaborative innovation in virtual communities. In the three settings, different user communities have adopted and experimented different sets of collaboration services. The paper presents the living lab methodology designed to launch, operate and monitor the different innovation and validation settings. Based on a cross-comparison of results and a longitudinal analysis, conclusions are drawn regarding the effectiveness of innovation services and collaborative platform, strategies to involve users and building user communities, and the effectiveness of the living labs methodology.

Collaborative Environments to Support Professional Communities: A Living Lab Approach

The living labs approach within ECOSPACE focuses on early user community building and active user involvement in the process of developing, testing and evaluating new collaboration concepts and tools. This paper reports about implementing and evaluating the living labs approach to facilitate innovation in collaborative work environments to enhance professional communities. The living lab approach is considered as a strategy for innovation, change and adoption. The perspective of socio-technical systems is used to understand and explain the change-catalyzing role of the living lab approach.

Mobile and Location-Aware Workplaces and Global Value Networks: A Strategic Roadmap

The introduction of new technologies and processes for communication, collaboration and knowledge exchange has changed considerably our work environment and the way we are organising our work. In this paper the implications of flexible mobile and collaborative workplaces for global value networks are explored through future scenarios and roadmapping. In particular we focus on the advances in mobile and location-aware workplaces and their role in organising and coordinating global business activities. The paper presents several mobile workplace scenarios and outlines a roadmap and a research agenda for strategic research and innovation.

Collaboration support for cross-border networks of living labs

During the last years, the concept of Living Labs as environments of user driven and collaborative innovation has received much attention. Until recently, collaboration and networking between single living labs has not been much of an issue. The APOLLON project has now extended the concept of single living labs to cross-border networks of living labs aiming to support SMEs innovation and access to international markets. APOLLON demonstrates the opportunities of cross border living labs to support SMEs in four pilots in four different domains. This paper focuses in particular on methods, tools and guidelines to support cross-border collaboration between living labs and with SMEs. We explain the methodology that has been developed to support collaboration in initiating, planning and establishing cross border networks of living labs within APOLLON, and provide some initial results on how the methodology has supported the collaboration process. The paper analyses the collaboration processes and collaboration needs and bottlenecks, and the methods that have been applied to overcome collaboration bottlenecks.

The living labs concept enhancing regional innovation policies and instruments

This paper takes its point of departure in an analysis of regional innovation policies and policy instruments, dedicated to economic and social development, to explore the potential integration of living labs innovation concepts to enhance such policy instruments. It is argued that the living labs concept which is built upon principles of user driven open innovation has the potential to enrich the existing set of instruments for regional innovation policies. In order for this living labs concept to become effectively integrated as part of the set of regional innovation instruments, regional policy instruments must adapt and itself innovate. The paper identifies the key issues in making the living labs concept more effective for regional innovation and presents a set of recommendations regarding the role of the living labs concept in policy instruments for regional innovation.

Next generation internet research and experimentation

Editors: Martin Serrano, National University of Ireland Galway, Ireland Nikolaos Isaris, European Commission, Belgium Hans Schaffers, Saxion University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands John Domingue, Open University, United Kingdom Michael Boniface, IT Innovation, United Kingdom Thanasis Korakis, Polytechnic Institute of NYU, USA ISBN: 9788793519121 e-ISBN: 9788793519114 Available From: June 2017 Price: € 90.00The demand for ways to explore and understand how applications and services behave in a shared software defined infrastructures is increasing. Completely new applications are emerging, alongside “Big Data” and the convergence of services with mobile networks and the Internet of Things (IoT) all exploiting Cloud scalability and flexibility along with integration with software defined networks. These innovative technologies are creating opportunities for industry that requires a new collaborative approach to product and services that combines, commercial and funded research, early-stage and close-to-market applications, but always at the cutting edge of ideas.New media applications and services are revolutionising social interaction and user experience in both society and in wide ranging industry sectors. The rapid emergence of pervasive human and environment sensing technologies, novel immersive presentation devices and high performance, globally connected network and cloud infrastructures is generating huge opportunities for application providers, service provider and content providers. These new applications are driving convergence across devices, clouds, networks and services, and the merging of industries, technology and society. Yet the developers of such systems face many challenges in understanding how to optimise their solutions (Quality of Service – QoS) to enhance user experience (Quality of Experience – QoE) and how their disruptive innovations can be introduced into the market with appropriate business models.