The increase in population growth and demand is rapidly depleting natural resources. Irrigation plays a vital role in the productivity and growth of agriculture, consuming no less than 75% of fresh water utilization globally. Irrigation, being the largest consumer of water across the globe, needs refinements in its process, and because it is implemented by individuals (farmers), the use of water for irrigation is not effective. To enhance irrigation management, farmers need to keep track of information such as soil type, climatic conditions, available water resources, soil pH, soil nutrients, and soil moisture to make decisions that resolve or prevent agricultural complexity. Irrigation, a data-driven technology, requires the integration of emerging technologies and modern methodologies to provide solutions to the complex problems faced by agriculture. The paper is an overview of IoT-enabled modern technologies through which irrigation management can be elevated. This paper presents the evolution of irrigation and IoT, factors to be considered for effective irrigation, the need for effective irrigation optimization, and how dynamic irrigation optimization would help reduce water use. The paper also discusses the different IoT architecture and deployment models, sensors, and controllers used in the agriculture field, available cloud platforms for IoT, prominent tools or software used for irrigation scheduling and water need prediction, and machine learning and neural network models for irrigation. Convergence of the tools, technologies and approaches helps in the development of better irrigation management applications. Access to real-time data, such as weather, plant and soil data, must be enhanced for the development of effective irrigation management applications.

Due to the exponential increase in the human population of this bio-sphere, energy resources are becoming scarce. Because of the traditional methods, most of the generated energy is wasted every year in the distribution network and demand side. Therefore, researchers all over the world have taken a keen interest in this issue and finally introduced the concept of the smart grid. Smart grid is an ultimate solution to all of the energy related problems of today’s modern world. In this paper, we have proposed a meta-heuristic optimization technique called the dragonfly algorithm (DA). The proposed algorithm is to a real-world problem of single and multiple smart homes. In our system model, two classes of appliances are considered; Shiftable appliances and Non-shiftable appliances. Shiftable appliances play a significant role in demand side load management because they can be scheduled according to real time pricing (RTP) signal from utility, while non-shiftable appliances are not much important in load management, as these appliances are fixed and cannot be scheduled according to RTP. On behalf of our simulation results, it can be concluded that our proposed algorithm DA has achieved minimum electricity cost with a tolerable waiting time. There is a trade-off between electricity cost and waiting time because, with a decrease in electricity cost, waiting time increases and vice versa. This trade-off is also obtained by our proposed algorithm DA. The stability of the grid is also maintained by our proposed algorithm DA because stability of the grid depends on peak-to-average ratio (PAR), while PAR is reduced by DA in comparison with an unscheduled case.

Decoupled data and control planes in Software Defined Networks (SDN) allow them to handle an increasing number of threats by limiting harmful network links at the switching stage. As storage, high-end servers, and network devices, Network Function Virtualization (NFV) is designed to replace purpose-built network elements with VNFs (Virtualized Network Functions). A Software Defined Network Function Virtualization (SDNFV) network is designed in this paper to boost network performance. Stateful firewall services are deployed as VNFs in the SDN network in this article to offer security and boost network scalability. The SDN controller’s role is to develop a set of guidelines and rules to avoid hazardous network connectivity. Intruder assaults that employ numerous socket addresses cannot be adequately protected by these strategies. Machine learning algorithms are trained using traditional network threat intelligence data to identify potentially malicious linkages and probable attack targets. Based on conventional network data (DT), Bayesian Network (BayesNet), Naive-Bayes, C4.5, and Decision Table (DT) algorithms are used to predict the target host that will be attacked. The experimental results shows that the Bayesian Network algorithm achieved an average prediction accuracy of 92.87%, Native–Bayes Algorithm achieved an average prediction accuracy of 87.81%, C4.5 Algorithm achieved an average prediction accuracy of 84.92%, and the Decision Tree algorithm achieved an average prediction accuracy of 83.18%. There were 451 k login attempts from 178 different countries, with over 70 k source IP addresses and 40 k source port addresses recorded in a large dataset from nine honeypot servers.

Industries are consuming more than 27% of the total generated energy in the world, out of which 50% is used by different machines for processing, producing, and assembling various goods. Energy shortage is a major issue of this biosphere. To overcome energy scarcity, a challenging task is to have optimal use of existing energy resources. An efficient and effective mechanism is essential to optimally schedule the load units to achieve three objectives: minimization of the consumed energy cost, peak-to-average power ratio, and consumer waiting time due to scheduling of the load. To achieve the aforementioned objectives, two bio-inspired heuristic techniques—Grasshopper-Optimization Algorithm and Cuckoo Search Optimization Algorithm—are analyzed and simulated for efficient energy use in an industry. We considered a woolen mill as a case study, and applied our algorithms on its different load units according to their routine functionality. Then we scheduled these load units by proposing an efficient energy management system (EMS). We assumed automatic operating machines and day-ahead pricing schemes in our EMS.

Uncertainties are the most significant challenges in the smart power system, necessitating the use of precise techniques to deal with them properly. Such problems could be effectively solved using a probabilistic optimization strategy. It is further divided into stochastic, robust, distributionally robust, and chance-constrained optimizations. The topics of probabilistic optimization in smart power systems are covered in this review paper. In order to account for uncertainty in optimization processes, stochastic optimization is essential. Robust optimization is the most advanced approach to optimize a system under uncertainty, in which a deterministic, set-based uncertainty model is used instead of a stochastic one. The computational complexity of stochastic programming and the conservativeness of robust optimization are both reduced by distributionally robust optimization.Chance constrained algorithms help in solving the constraints optimization problems, where finite probability get violated. This review paper discusses microgrid and home energy management, demand-side management, unit commitment, microgrid integration, and economic dispatch as examples of applications of these techniques in smart power systems. Probabilistic mathematical models of different scenarios, for which deterministic approaches have been used in the literature, are also presented. Future research directions in a variety of smart power system domains are also presented.

As the world population and its dependency on energy is growing exponentially day by day, the existing energy generating resources are not enough to fulfill their needs. In the conventional grid system, most of the generated energy is wasted because of improper demand side management (DSM). This leads to a difficulty in keeping the equilibrium between the user need and electric power production. To overcome these difficulties, smart grid (SG) is introduced, which is composed of the integration of two-way communication between the user and utility. To utilize the existing energy resources in a better way, SG is the best option since a large portion of the generated energy is consumed by the educational institutes. Such institutes also need un-interrupted power supply at the lowest cost. Therefore, in this paper, we have taken a university campus load. We have not only applied two bio-inspired heuristic algorithms for energy scheduling—namely, the Firefly Algorithm (FA) and the Lion Algorithm (LA)—but also proposed a hybrid version, FLA, for more optimal results. Our main objectives are a reduction in both, that is, the cost of energy and the waiting time of consumers or end users. For this purpose, in our proposed model, we have divided all appliances into two categories—shiftable appliances and non-shiftable appliances. Shiftable appliances are feasible to be used in any of the time slots and can be planned according to the day-ahead pricing signal (DAP), provided by the utility, while non-shiftable appliances can be used for a specified duration and cannot be planned with the respective DAP signal. So, we have scheduled shiftable appliances only. We have also used renewable energy sources (RES) for achieving maximum end user benefits. The simulation results show that our proposed hybrid algorithm, FLA, has reduced the cost excellently. We have also taken into consideration the consumers’ waiting times, due to scheduling of appliances.