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One of the biggest challenges in building sustainable smart cities of the future is skill management and development. Developing the digital skills of the municipalities' workforce is crucial for all occupational profiles and specifically for those that are actively involved in the development and operation of digital services for a smart city. In this context, the current paper presents a semantically enhanced cloud-based IT approach which integrates learning pathways with competence management of personnel working as management and technical employees in a smart city municipality. The proposed approach combines a rule-based expert system with a semantically rich infrastructure in order to map skill gap diagnosis to required learning objects and, thus, to contribute in developing appropriate competences of smart city professionals. The semantic infrastructure of the learning platform consists of an ontology which encapsulates the appropriate knowledge and a rule-base for modeling the steps of an employee training process. In order to achieve efficiency in competence management the semantic model has been transformed into a relational database schema, which is further utilized by the system for the execution of useful queries. The paper presents the key modeling artifacts of the proposed approach and the architecture of the implemented CMUTE system.

Learning analytics have proved promising capabilities and opportunities to many aspects of academic research and higher education studies. Data-driven insights can significantly contribute to provide solutions for curbing costs and improving education quality. This paper adopts a two-phase machine learning approach, which utilizes both unsupervised and supervised learning techniques for predicting outcomes of students following Higher Education programs of studies. The approach has been applied in a case-study which has been performed in the context of an undergraduate Computer Science curriculum offered by the University of Thessaly in Greece. Students involved in the case study were initially grouped based on the similarity of specific education-related factors and metrics. Using the K-Means algorithm, our clustering experiments revealed the presence of three coherent clusters of students. Subsequently, the discovered clusters were utilized to train prediction models for addressing each particular cluster of students individually. In this regard, two machine learning models were trained for every cluster of students in order to predict the time to degree completion and student enrollment in the offered educational programs. The developed models are claimed to produce predictions with relatively high accuracy. Finally, the paper discusses the potential usefulness of the clustering-aided approach for learning analytics in Higher Education.

This paper presents a novel hybrid approach to feature detection designed specifically for enhancing Feature-Based Image Registration (FBIR). Through an extensive evaluation involving state-of-the-art feature detectors such as BRISK, FAST, ORB, Harris, MinEigen, and MSER, the proposed hybrid detector demonstrates superior performance in terms of keypoint detection accuracy and computational efficiency. Three image acquisition methods (i.e., rotation, scene-to-model, and scaling transformations) are considered in the comparison. Applied across a diverse set of remote-sensing images, the proposed hybrid approach has shown marked improvements in match points and match rates, proving its effectiveness in handling varied and complex imaging conditions typical in satellite and aerial imagery. The experimental results have consistently indicated that the hybrid detector outperforms conventional methods, establishing it as a valuable tool for advanced image registration tasks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As cloud computing continues to evolve, efficiently managing resource allocation and resolving system bottlenecks remain pivotal challenges. This paper explores the application of Deep Learning (DL), particularly Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), to these critical issues. We employ the MNIST dataset, typically used for image classification, as a proxy to model and analyze cloud resource bottlenecks. This approach allows us to simulate complex pattern recognition scenarios that are analogous to identifying and resolving bottlenecks in cloud environments. Our study assesses various DL architectures, including Recurrent Neural Networks Residual Networks (ResNets), and CNNs, with our proposed CNN model demonstrating superior performance. It achieved an accuracy of 99.61% within just 10 epochs and excelled in managing unpredictable cloud performance issues caused by resource bottlenecks. These findings underscore the robust potential of CNNs to enhance cloud applications and emphasize the crucial role of DL in addressing cloud computing challenges. Further research is recommended to tailor DL architectures specifically for optimizing cloud resource allocation and system performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization and industrialization have significantly disturbed the environmental ecosystem, leading to critical challenges such as global warming, extreme weather events, and water scarcity. Forecasting temperature trends is crucial for enhancing the resilience and quality of life in smart sustainable cities, enabling informed decision-making and proactive urban planning. This research specifically targeted Ahmedabad city in India and employed the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average with exogenous factors (SARIMAX) model to forecast temperatures over a ten-year horizon using two decades of real-time temperature data. The stationarity of the dataset was confirmed using an augmented Dickey–Fuller test, and the Akaike information criterion (AIC) method helped identify the optimal seasonal parameters of the model, ensuring a balance between fidelity and prediction accuracy. The model achieved an RMSE of 1.0265, indicating a high accuracy within the typical range for urban temperature forecasting. This robust measure of error underscores the model's precision in predicting temperature deviations, which is particularly relevant for urban planning and environmental management. The findings provide city planners and policymakers with valuable insights and tools for preempting adverse environmental impacts, marking a significant step towards operational efficiency and enhanced governance in future smart urban ecosystems. Future work may extend the model's applicability to broader geographical areas and incorporate additional environmental variables to refine predictive accuracy further. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we address the challenge of accurately classifying human movements in complex environments using sensor data. We analyze both video and radar data to tackle this problem. From video sequences, we extract temporal characteristics using techniques such as motion history images (MHI) and Hu moments, which capture the dynamic aspects of movement. Radar data are processed through principal component analysis (PCA) to identify unique detection signatures. We refine these features using k-means clustering and employ them to train hidden Markov models (HMMs). These models are tailored to distinguish between distinct movements, specifically focusing on differentiating sitting from falling motions. Our experimental findings reveal that integrating video-derived and radar-derived features significantly improves the accuracy of motion classification. Specifically, the combined approach enhanced the precision of detecting sitting motions by over 10% compared to using single-modality data. This integrated method not only boosts classification accuracy but also extends the practical applicability of motion detection systems in diverse real-world scenarios, such as healthcare monitoring and emergency response systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a semi-automated approach for the prioritization of software features in medium- to large-sized software projects, considering stakeholders' satisfaction and dissatisfaction as key criteria for the incorporation of candidate features. Our research acknowledges an inherent asymmetry in stakeholders' evaluations, between the satisfaction from offering certain features and the dissatisfaction from not offering the same features. Even with systematic, ordinal scale-based prioritization techniques, involved stakeholders may exhibit hesitation and uncertainty in their assessments. Our approach aims to address these challenges by employing the Binary Search Tree prioritization method and leveraging the mathematical framework of Intuitionistic Fuzzy Sets to quantify the uncertainty of stakeholders when expressing assessments on the value of software features. Stakeholders' rankings, considering satisfaction and dissatisfaction as features prioritization criteria, are mapped into Intuitionistic Fuzzy Numbers, and objective weights are automatically computed. Rankings associated with less hesitation are considered more valuable to determine the final features' priorities than those rankings with more hesitation, reflecting lower indeterminacy or lack of knowledge from stakeholders. We validate our proposed approach with a case study, illustrating its application, and conduct a comparative analysis with existing software requirements prioritization methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Text classification involves organizing textual information into predefined classes, a task which is particularly useful in domains like sentiment analysis, spam detection, and content labeling. In India, where a massive amount of information is generated daily through newspapers and social media, Hindi is one of the most widely used and spoken languages. However, there is limited research on Hindi text classification and, particularly, regarding Hindi news classification. This paper presents a research study to classify Hindi news articles published in Hindi-language newspapers in India by using and comparing various Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) algorithms. To prepare the textual news data for classification, pre-processing and feature engineering techniques, such as count vectorizer, Tf-Idf vectorizer and Doc2Vec, were used and applied to convert texts into vectors. This pre-processing step on the textual data was very challenging due to the presence of multimodal words, conjunctions, punctuation, and special characters in Hindi texts. The study considered Hindi news headlines from predetermined categories (Science, Sports, Entertainment and Business) and, among the different ML and DL models tested and evaluated, Linear Regression with Doc2Vec vectorizer and SGD classifier with Tf-Idf vectorizer produced best accuracies of 97.04% and 96.59%, respectively. The best performing DL model was found to be the Bi-LSTM with an accuracy of approximately 97% on the testing data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Effective collision risk reduction in autonomous vehicles relies on robust and straightforward pedestrian tracking. Challenges posed by occlusion and switching scenarios significantly impede the reliability of pedestrian tracking. In the current study, we strive to enhance the reliability and also the efficacy of pedestrian tracking in complex scenarios. Particularly, we introduce a new pedestrian tracking algorithm that leverages both the YOLOv8 (You Only Look Once) object detector technique and the StrongSORT algorithm, which is an advanced deep learning multi-object tracking (MOT) method. Our findings demonstrate that StrongSORT, an enhanced version of the DeepSORT MOT algorithm, substantially improves tracking accuracy through meticulous hyperparameter tuning. Overall, the experimental results reveal that the proposed algorithm is an effective and efficient method for pedestrian tracking, particularly in complex scenarios encountered in the MOT16 and MOT17 datasets. The combined use of Yolov8 and StrongSORT contributes to enhanced tracking results, emphasizing the synergistic relationship between detection and tracking modules. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the proliferation of IoT devices, there has been exponential growth in data generation, placing substantial demands on both cloud computing (CC) and internet infrastructure. CC, renowned for its scalability and virtual resource provisioning, is of paramount importance in e-commerce applications. However, the dynamic nature of IoT and cloud services introduces unique challenges, notably in the establishment of service-level agreements (SLAs) and the continuous monitoring of compliance. This paper presents a versatile framework for the adaptation of e-commerce applications to IoT and CC environments. It introduces a comprehensive set of metrics designed to support SLAs by enabling periodic resource assessments, ensuring alignment with service-level objectives (SLOs). This policy-driven approach seeks to automate resource management in the era of CC, thereby reducing the dependency on extensive human intervention in e-commerce applications. This paper culminates with a case study that demonstrates the practical utilization of metrics and policies in the management of cloud resources. Furthermore, it provides valuable insights into the resource requisites for deploying e-commerce applications within the realms of the IoT and CC. This holistic approach holds the potential to streamline the monitoring and administration of CC services, ultimately enhancing their efficiency and reliability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has posed significant challenges in accurately diagnosing the disease, as severe cases may present symptoms similar to pneumonia. Real-Time Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction (RT-PCR) is the conventional diagnostic technique; however, it has limitations in terms of time-consuming laboratory procedures and kit availability. Radiological chest images, such as X-rays and Computed Tomography (CT) scans, have been essential in aiding the diagnosis process. In this research paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) approach based on Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to enhance the detection of COVID-19 and its variants from chest X-ray images. Building upon the existing research in SARS and COVID-19 identification using AI and machine learning techniques, our DL model aims to extract the most significant features from the X-ray scans of affected individuals. By employing an explanatory CNN-based technique, we achieved a promising accuracy of up to 97 % in detecting COVID-19 cases, which can assist physicians in effectively screening and identifying probable COVID-19 patients. This study highlights the potential of DL in medical imaging, specifically in detecting COVID-19 from radiological images. The improved accuracy of our model demonstrates its efficacy in aiding healthcare professionals and mitigating the spread of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Strict adherence to data integrity and quality standards is crucial for the pharmaceutical industry to minimize undesired effects and ensure that medicines are of the required quality and safe for patients. A common data quality standard in the pharmaceutical industry is ALCOA+, which is a set of guiding principles for ensuring data integrity. Failure to comply with ALCOA+ guidelines, usually detected after audit inspections, may result in serious consequences for pharmaceutical manufacturers, such as the incurrence of fines, increase in costs, and production delays. It is, therefore, imperative to devise methods able to monitor ALCOA+ compliance and detect decreasing trends in data quality automatically. In this paper we present ALCOAi, a deep learning model based on the transformer architecture, which is able to process large quantities of non-homogeneous data and compute current and future ALCOA+ compliance. The proposed model can estimate trends concerning most ALCOA+ principles. The model was tested on a real dataset comprising raw sensor data, machine-provided values, and human-entered free-text data from two pharmaceutical manufacturing lines. The performed tests led to promising results in forecasting ALCOA+ compliance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]