Demand-side flexibility management is a key enabler of the transformation towards the high penetration of renewable energy resources. We present a flexibility-management system called Flex4Grid, which is designed to provide a low-cost solution for residential consumers wishing to participate in power-grid balancing. The Flex4Grid system continuously forecasts the need for flexibility in a power grid and informs consumers about the flexibility-management periods. Consumers can provide their flexibility to an aggregator in exchange for a reward, which depends on the selected incentive scheme. The automation of the flexibility-management events is provided by interfacing with devices and the system via the Z-Wave and open platform communication unified architecture (OPC UA) technologies. The Flex4Grid system has been deployed in three pilots in Slovenia and Germany. A large-scale pilot in Celje, Slovenia, with 1047 participants, was used to collect statistical data regarding how consumers participate in the flexibility-management events. A critical peak-pricing incentive scheme was used in the Celje pilot. The smaller German pilots with a total of 185 participants were used for testing the technical capabilities of the system. User-satisfaction surveys were performed in all three pilots. The results indicate that the proposed approach is appropriate for engaging consumers in flexibility-management events. On average, the pilots' participants reduced their load by 10% during a peak event. The overall scores of the user-satisfaction survey were 3.4 and 3.9 on a 5-point Likert scale for the German and Slovenian pilots, respectively. These are good results for a prototype system; however, improvements to the stability and usability of the system are required.

The smart management of freshwater for precision irrigation in agriculture is essential for increasing crop yield and decreasing costs, while contributing to environmental sustainability. The intense use of technologies offers a means for providing the exact amount of water needed by plants. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the natural choice for smart water management applications, even though the integration of different technologies required for making it work seamlessly in practice is still not fully accomplished. The SWAMP project develops an IoT-based smart water management platform for precision irrigation in agriculture with a hands-on approach based on four pilots in Brazil and Europe. This paper presents the SWAMP architecture, platform, and system deployments that highlight the replicability of the platform, and, as scalability is a major concern for IoT applications, it includes a performance analysis of FIWARE components used in the Platform. Results show that it is able to provide adequate performance for the SWAMP pilots, but requires specially designed configurations and the re-engineering of some components to provide higher scalability using less computational resources.

The aim of this work is to present the first results obtained by means of the new validation of the water balance and crop development model CRITERIA-ID, specifically set up for the SWAMP (Smart Water Management Platform) platform on one of the pilots, in the framework of the SWAMP project, aimed at providing support for precision irrigation in agriculture. The platform consists of an IoT solution for monitoring the farming and irrigation systems combined with data analytic solution to assess the irrigation need of plants, and support for irrigation planning and water distribution both at farm and district level. CRITERIA-ID has been tested on two test cases for the Italian pilot, located in the land reclamation and irrigation consortium of Emilia Centrale (North Italy). The comparison of crop irrigation water needs computed by CRITERIA-ID with actual irrigation performed by farmers has been carried out, together with a comparison of crop water stress. The analysis has shown that for both the test cases the two data series are comparable, but some differences have been highlighted: in some cases the farmer irrigation is not decided on the basis of the actual water needs of the crops but on farm management decisions. In addition, if the total annual volumes of irrigation of the two series are comparable, the scheduling is different, where the observed irrigation data bring the crop to too high (or too low) level of water stress. Thus, the present work has shown that the application of CRITERIA-ID simulation model is a valid tool to support irrigation management because it allows an optimal use of the resource avoiding crop yield losses with a rational irrigation scheduling. The reliability of these outcomes sets the conditions for further exploitation of the model in the future, firstly for its integration into the SWAMP platform.

The advances in the theory of wireless sensor networks have been remarkable during the past decades, but there is a lack of extensive experimental evaluations. In this paper we present performance-evaluation methods and results for POBICOS (platform for opportunistic behaviour in incompletely specified, heterogeneous object communities), which is an advanced middleware for wireless sensor networks (WSNs). The measurements concern energy consumption, duty cycle, and OS task profiling as well as communication characteristics such as round trip time (RTT) and throughput. In addition, a bandwidth analysis during a longterm experiment of fully functional POBICOS network and application is studied. Based on the evaluation results, power mode and data cache improvements are presented as well as CPU clock frequency optimizations.

This paper describes an end-user model for a domestic pervasive computing platform formed by regular home objects. The platform does not rely on pre-planned infrastructure; instead, it exploits objects that are already available in the home and exposes their joint sensing, actuating and computing capabilities to home automation applications. We advocate an incremental process of the platform formation and introduce tangible, object-like artifacts for representing important platform functions. One of those artifacts, the application pill, is a tiny object with a minimal user interface, used to carry the application, as well as to start and stop its execution and provide hints about its operational status. We also emphasize streamlining the user's interaction with the platform. The user engages any UI-capable object of his choice to configure applications, while applications issue notifications and alerts exploiting whichever available objects can be used for that purpose. Finally, the paper briefly describes an actual implementation of the presented end-user model.

Wirelessly networked sensors and actuators are a cornerstone of systems that try to introduce smartness in a wide range of outdoor and indoor environments. The robust and secure operation of such systems is of central importance and will definitely play a key role in terms of their adoption by organizations and individuals. However, the commonly applied security mechanisms based on current standards are either resource consuming, inconvenient to use, or both. In this paper, a generic, lightweight and user-friendly approach to implement secure network management and confidentiality in a Distributed Sensor Networks (DSNs) is proposed.