Energy efficiency is a major concern to achieve sustainability in modern society. Smart cities sustainability depends on the availability of energy-efficient infrastructures and services. Buildings compose most of the city, and they are responsible for most of the energy consumption and emissions to the atmosphere (40%). Smart cities need smart buildings to achieve sustainability goals. Building’s thermal modeling is essential to face the energy efficiency race. In this paper, we show how ICT and data science technologies and techniques can be applied to evaluate the energy efficiency of buildings. In concrete, we apply machine learning techniques to classify buildings based on their energy efficiency. Particularly, our focus is on single-family buildings in residential areas. Along this paper, we demonstrate the capabilities of machine learning techniques to classify buildings depending on their energy efficiency. Moreover, we analyze and compare the performance of different classifiers. Furthermore, we introduce new parameters which have some impact on the buildings thermal modeling, especially those concerning the environment where the building is located. We also make an insight on ICT and remark the growing relevance in data acquisition and monitoring of relevant parameters by using wireless sensor networks. It is worthy to remark the need for an appropriate and reliable dataset to achieve the best results. Moreover, we demonstrate that reliable classification is feasible with a few featured parameters.

As the integration of large-scale wind energy is increasing into the electricity grids, the role of wind energy suppliers should be investigated as a price-maker as their participation would influence the locational marginal price (LMP) of electricity. The existing bidding strategies for a wind energy supplier faces limitations with respect to the potential cooperation, other competitors’ bidding behavior, network loss, and uncertainty of wind production (WP) and balancing market price (BMP). Hence, to solve these problems, a novel bidding strategy (BS) for a wind power supplier as a price-maker has been proposed in this paper. The new algorithm, called the evolutionary game approach (EGA) inspired hybrid particle swarm optimization and improved firefly algorithm (HPSOIFA), has been proposed to handle the bidding issue. The bidding behavior of power suppliers, including conventional power suppliers, has been encoded as one species to obtain the equilibrium where the EGA can explore dynamically reasonable behavior changes of the opponents. Each species of behavior change has been exploited by the HPSOIFA to improve the optimization solutions. Moreover, a deep learning algorithm, namely deep belief network, has been implemented for improving the accuracy of the forecasting results considering the WP and BMP, and the uncertainty revealed in the WP and BMP has been modeled by quantile regression (QR). Finally, the Shapley value (SV) has been calculated to estimate the benefits of cooperative power suppliers. The presented case studies have verified that the proposed algorithm and the established bidding strategy exhibit higher effectiveness.

The growing prevalence of cybersecurity threats is a significant concern for railway systems, which rely on an extensive network of onboard and trackside sensors. These threats have the potential to compromise the safety of railway operations and the integrity of the railway infrastructure itself. This paper aims to examine the current cybersecurity measures in use, identify the key vulnerabilities that they address, and propose solutions for enhancing the security of railway infrastructures. The report evaluates the effectiveness of existing security protocols by reviewing current standards, including IEC62443 and NIST, as well as case histories of recent rail cyberattacks. Significant gaps have been identified, especially where modern and legacy systems need to be integrated. Weaknesses in communication protocols such as MVB, CAN and TCP/IP are identified. To address these challenges, the paper proposes a layered security framework specific to railways that incorporate continuous monitoring, risk-based cybersecurity modeling, AI-assisted threat detection, and stronger authentication methodologies. The aim of these recommendations is to improve the resilience of railway networks and ensure a safer, more secure infrastructure for future operations.

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is considered as one of the most widely used wireless identification technologies in the Internet of Things. Many application areas require a dense RFID network for efficient deployment and coverage, which causes interference between RFID tags and readers, and reduces the performance of the RFID system. Therefore, communication resource management is required to avoid such problems. In this paper, we propose an anti-collision protocol based on feed-forward Artificial Neural Network methodology for distributed learning between RFID readers to predict collisions and ensure efficient resource allocation (DMLAR) by considering the mobility of tags and readers. The evaluation of our anti-collision protocol is performed for different mobility scenarios in healthcare where the collected data are critical and must respect the terms of throughput, delay, overload, integrity and energy. The dataset created and distributed by the readers allows an efficient learning process and, therefore, a high collision detection to increase throughput and minimize data loss. In the application phase, the readers do not need to exchange control packets with each other to control the resource allocation, which avoids network overload and communication delay. Simulation results show the robustness and effectiveness of the anti-collision protocol by the number of readers and resources used. The model used allows a large number of readers to use the most suitable frequency and time resources for simultaneous and successful tag interrogation.

Mobility trace techniques makes possible drawing the behaviors of real-life movement which shape wireless networks mobility whereabouts. In our investigation, several trace mobility models have been collected after the devices’ deployment. The main issue of this classical procedure is that it produces uncompleted records due to several unpredictable problems occurring during the deployment phase. In this paper, we propose a new procedure aimed at collecting traces while deployment phase failures are avoided, which improves the reliability of data. The introduced procedure makes possible the complete generation of traces with a minimum amount of damage without the need to recover mobile devices or lose them, as it is the case in previous mobility traces techniques. Based on detecting and correcting all accidental issues in real time, the proposed trace scanning offers a set of relevant information about the vehicle status which was collected during seven months. Furthermore, the proposed procedure could be applied to generate vehicular traces. Likewise, it is suitable to record/generate human and animal traces. The research outcomes demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the smart collection algorithm based on the proposed trace mobility model.