Keynote Speakers
University College London
Abstract
The ongoing urbanization process that is taking place worldwide is expected to bring important advantages, including more efficient running of public services and better living standards for citizens. However, if not properly managed, it risks aggravating existing issues, such as traffic congestion, environmental pollution, economic and social inequality. By acquiring, integrating, and analysing large amounts of heterogeneous data, generated in urban spaces by a diversity of sources, such as sensors, devices, vehicles, buildings, and humans, a rich knowledge about the functioning of our cities can be derived and then acted upon to improve the quality of life of its residents. Using three different case studies, I will illustrate recent successes in terms of extracting knowledge from urban data and using it to inform city planning and policy making. I will conclude with a discussion of the many opportunities, but also the big challenges, that a data-driven society faces.
Bio
Since October 2015, Licia is Professor of Pervasive Computing in the Dept. of Computer Science at University College London. She first joined UCL in May 2000 as a Research Assistant, and then as a Ph.D. student (from September 2000 until September 2003). From October 2003 until March 2005, she have been a Research Fellow in the Software Systems Engineering Group at UCL/CS, working on the TAPASEuropean project. She then took on a Lectureship within the same department in April 2005. Before coming to England, Licia was an undergraduate student in the Dipartimento di Informatica at the University of Bologna, Italy.
Education
- Postgraduate Certificate in Learning and Teaching in Higher Education (PGCLTHE), Centre for the Advancement of Learning and Teaching, University College London, London UK. Awarded: September 2007.
- Doctor of Philosophy, Dept. of Computer Science, University College London, London UK. Thesis title: "Reflective Mobile Middleware for Context-Aware Applications". Supervisor: Prof. Wolfgang Emmerich, University College London, London, UK. Awarded: October 2003
- Laurea Degree (comparable to a British MSc) in Computer Science (summa cum laude), Dipartimento di Informatica, University of Bologna, Italy. Dissertation title: "The Problem of Dimensionality Curse in Multi-dimensional Databases" (in Italian). Supervisor: Prof. Paolo Ciaccia, Facolta di Ingegneria, University of Bologna, Italy. Awarded: March 2000.
Research Interests
Her general research area is ubiquitous computing. Her goal is to provide: (1) application developers with useful abstractions, algorithm libraries, and middleware systems to ease ubiquitous computing application development; (2) end users with better experiences when interacting with the technology in their daily life. In practice, Licia is currently researching into the following topics:
- Crowd-sourcing and crowd-sensing;
- Urban computing;
- Location-based services;
- Recommender Systems;
- Data mining for development.
The University of Tokyo
Title
Getting Overview of Cities with IoT; A Key of Successful Application for Better City Management
Abstract
IoT will enhance capability of acquiring and collecting diverse data to support applications for urban services. Benefits of optimization enabled with the diverse data acquired locally, typically data on surrounding environment of a specific device could Individual data reflect only very local and limited aspect of “city environment”, such as local temperature, people density etc. As long as local data is used locally or by individual “silo” systems in a separated manner, the benefits of optimal or better operation can be quite limited. To enhance the benefits of optimization, each services or systems have to work in more collaborative manner. If integration of systems developed and operated by different, sometimes competing organizations is not so easy, another approach would be sharing “a dynamic overview” of city such as people flow. By referring to weather forecast information, many urban activities can “naturally collaborate”, though they do not explicitly exchange information. When weather forecast tells “heavy shower”, railway companies, taxi operators and convenience stores may take collaborative actions in advance very naturally. This presentation will emphasize the importance of sharing “weather forecast” to support city operations and introduce some ideas of generating such common information. And it also touches upon the possibility of IoT technology applications to fast growing cities in developing countries, where no other technologies rather than IoT can support better operations.
Bio
Department of Socio-Cultural and Socio-Physical Environmental Studies / / Spatial Information (Sensing, Simulation and Services)
Career Summary
Educational Activities
Research Activities
