In this paper, we look into smart water metering infrastructures that enable continuous, on-demand and bidirectional data exchange between metering devices, water flow equipment, utilities and end-users. We focus on the design, development and deployment of such infrastructures as part of larger, smart city, infrastructures. Until now, such critical smart city infrastructures have been developed following a cloud-centric paradigm where all the data are collected and processed centrally using cloud services to create real business value. Cloud-centric approaches need to address several performance issues at all levels of the network, as massive metering datasets are transferred to distant machine clouds while respecting issues like security and data privacy. Our solution uses the fog computing paradigm to provide a system where the computational resources already available throughout the network infrastructure are utilized to facilitate greatly the analysis of fine-grained water consumption data collected by the smart meters, thus significantly reducing the overall load to network and cloud resources. Details of the system’s design are presented along with a pilot deployment in a real-world environment. The performance of the system is evaluated in terms of network utilization and computational performance. Our findings indicate that the fog computing paradigm can be applied to a smart grid deployment to reduce effectively the data volume exchanged between the different layers of the architecture and provide better overall computational, security and privacy capabilities to the system.

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks is designed to mark the beginning of the hyper-connected society through a broad set of novel features and disruptive characteristics, delivering massive connectivity, coverage and availability paired with unprecedented speed, throughput and capacity. Such a highly capable networking paradigm, facilitated by its integrated segments and available subsystems, will propel numerous cutting-edge, innovative and versatile services, spanning every possible business vertical. Augmented, response-capable healthcare services have already been identified as one of the prime objectives of both vendors and customers; therefore, addressing controversies and shortcomings related to the specific field is considered a priority for all stakeholders. The scope of this paper is to present the architectural elements of 5G which enable efficient, remote healthcare services along with emergency health monitoring and response capability. In addition, we propose a holistic scheme based on technical enablers such as Internet-of-Things (IoT) and Fog Computing, for mitigating common issues and current limitations which may compromise the proclaimed service delivery.

Recent technological improvements in vehicle manufacturing may greatly improve safety however, the individuals' driving behaviour still remains a factor of paramount importance with aggressiveness, lack of focus and carelessness being the main cause of the majority of traffic incidents. The imminent deployment of 5G networking infrastructure, paired with the advent of Fog computing and the establishment of the Internet of Things (IoT) as a reliable and cost-effective service delivery framework may provide the means for the deployment of an accurate driving monitoring solution which could be utilized to further understand the underlying reasons of peculiar road behaviour, as well as its correlation to the driver's physiological state, the vehicle condition and certain environmental parameters. This paper presents some of the fundamental attributes of Fog computing along with the functional requirements of a driving behaviour monitoring framework, followed by its high level architecture blueprint and the description of the prototype implementation process.

As road transportation has been identified as a major contributor of environmental pollution, motivating individuals to adopt a more eco-friendly driving style could have a substantial ecological as well as financial benefit. With gamification being an effective tool towards guiding targeted behavioural changes, the development of realistic frameworks delivering a high end user experience, becomes a topic of active research. This paper presents a series of enhancements introduced to an eco-driving gamification platform by the integration of additional wearable and vehicle-oriented sensing data sources, leading to a much more realistic evaluation of the context of a driving session.