Background: Smartphone apps are an increasingly popular means for delivering psychological interventions to patients suffering from a mental disorder. In line with this popularity, there is a need to analyze and summarize the state of the art, both from a psychological and technical perspective. Objective: This study aimed to systematically review the literature on the use of smartphones for psychological interventions. Our systematic review has the following objectives: (1) analyze the coverage of mental disorders in research articles per year; (2) study the types of assessment in research articles per mental disorder per year; (3) map the use of advanced technical features, such as sensors, and novel software features, such as personalization and social media, per mental disorder; (4) provide an overview of smartphone apps per mental disorder; and (5) provide an overview of the key characteristics of empirical assessments with rigorous designs (ie, randomized controlled trials [RCTs]). Methods: The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines for systematic reviews were followed. We performed searches in Scopus, Web of Science, American Psychological Association PsycNET, and Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online, covering a period of 6 years (2013-2018). We included papers that described the use of smartphone apps to deliver psychological interventions for known mental disorders. We formed multidisciplinary teams, comprising experts in psychology and computer science, to select and classify articles based on psychological and technical features. Results: We found 158 articles that met the inclusion criteria. We observed an increasing interest in smartphone-based interventions over time. Most research targeted disorders with high prevalence, that is, depressive (31/158,19.6%) and anxiety disorders (18/158, 11.4%). Of the total, 72.7% (115/158) of the papers focused on six mental disorders: depression, anxiety, trauma and stressor-related, substance-related and addiction, schizophrenia spectrum, and other psychotic disorders, or a combination of disorders. More than half of known mental disorders were not or very scarcely (<3%) represented. An increasing number of studies were dedicated to assessing clinical effects, but RCTs were still a minority (25/158, 15.8%). From a technical viewpoint, interventions were leveraging the improved modalities (screen and sound) and interactivity of smartphones but only sparingly leveraged their truly novel capabilities, such as sensors, alternative delivery paradigms, and analytical methods. Conclusions: There is a need for designing interventions for the full breadth of mental disorders, rather than primarily focusing on most prevalent disorders. We further contend that an increasingly systematic focus, that is, involving RCTs, is needed to improve the robustness and trustworthiness of assessments. Regarding technical aspects, we argue that further exploration and innovative use of the novel capabilities of smartphones are needed to fully realize their potential for the treatment of mental health disorders.

Research and development in Collaborative Indoor Positioning Systems (CIPSs) is growing steadily due to their potential to improve on the performance of their non-collaborative counterparts. In contrast to the outdoors scenario, where Global Navigation Satellite System is widely adopted, in (collaborative) indoor positioning systems a large variety of technologies, techniques, and methods is being used. Moreover, the diversity of evaluation procedures and scenarios hinders a direct comparison. This paper presents a systematic review that gives a general view of the current CIPSs. A total of 84 works, published between 2006 and 2020, have been identified. These articles were analyzed and classified according to the described system’s architecture, infrastructure, technologies, techniques, methods, and evaluation. The results indicate a growing interest in collaborative positioning, and the trend tend to be towards the use of distributed architectures and infrastructure-less systems. Moreover, the most used technologies to determine the collaborative positioning between users are wireless communication technologies (Wi-Fi, Ultra-WideBand, and Bluetooth). The predominant collaborative positioning techniques are Received Signal Strength Indication, Fingerprinting, and Time of Arrival/Flight, and the collaborative methods are particle filters, Belief Propagation, Extended Kalman Filter, and Least Squares. Simulations are used as the main evaluation procedure. On the basis of the analysis and results, several promising future research avenues and gaps in research were identified.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to investigate how citizens’ perception of empowerment can influence the intention to use and intention to recommend e-participation.Design/methodology/approach: A research model is evaluated using structural equation modelling. An online survey questionnaire was used to collect data from 210 users of e-participation.Findings: The results show that psychological empowerment influences the intention to use and recommend e-participation. Performance expectancy and facilitating conditions were the strongest predictors of intention to use; effort expectancy and social influence had no significant effect on the prediction of intention to use e-participation.Research limitations/implications: The use of psychological empowerment as a higher-order multidimensional construct is still insufficiently researched. Future research may explore the effect of each dimension of psychological empowerment in different scenarios of e-participation adoption. Caution is needed when generalising our findings towards the adoption of e-participation in different locations or with different participants.Practical implications: The findings can help the local governments to design strategies for the promotion and diffusion of e-participation amongst the citizenry. Those strategies should focus on citizens’ perception of empowerment, thereby creating a positive attitude towards intention to use and recommend e-participation.Originality/value: An innovative research model integrates the unified theory of acceptance, use of technology and psychological empowerment; the last as a higher-order construct.

The holy grail of smart cities is an integrated, sustainable approach to improve the efficiency of the city’s operations and the quality of life of citizens. At the heart of this vision is the citizen, who is the primary beneficiary of smart city initiatives, either directly or indirectly. Despite the recent surge of research and smart cities initiatives in practice, there are still a number of challenges to overcome in realizing this vision. This position paper points out six citizen-related challenges: the engagement of citizens, the improvement of citizens’ data literacy, the pairing of quantitative and qualitative data, the need for open standards, the development of personal services, and the development of persuasive interfaces. The article furthermore advocates the use of methods and techniques from GIScience to tackle these challenges, and presents the concept of an Open City Toolkit as a way of transferring insights and solutions from GIScience to smart cities.