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Welcome to PerCrowd 2018!

Pervasive and mobile systems are constrained by energy and performance issues when they operate in isolation. Yet, several studies have shown that smart devices are frequently co-located in proximity to at least one other device throughout the day, suggesting that devices can potentially collaborate to reduce the effort of resource intensive tasks, e.g., sensing, offloading, networking, storage, etc. However, merging the resources of multiple devices to work together is a tough challenge as it requires a common understanding of the context of each device. In addition, since smart devices function in multiple roles, understanding what really constitutes context becomes difficult as different types of contexts need to be modeled depending on the type of task. The goal of this workshop is to explore the use and effect of contexts on multi-device settings, including collaborative and/or opportunistic sensing systems. The significance of this research area is corroborated by the ever increasing emergence of novel self-organizing computing infrastructures that operate in multi-device environments, e.g., edge and fog computing, and the increasing availability of openly available data sources that capture context from multiple devices.

Context information is critical in multi device setups, e.g., for the formation of collaboration groups, and for negotiating responsibilities between the devices. Any misunderstandings in context can thus be extremely counterproductive for the collaboration between devices. Consider, for example, a computational task, e.g., game puzzle, whose execution can be accelerated by dividing computations between two or more devices. To distribute the task, we first need to understand the processing capacity of each device to ensure devices with insufficient resources are not harnessed for this task as they would turn into bottleneck for execution. Similarly, for energy savings purposes, we need to understand the CPU level of each device and the energy consumption of processing to avoid using a device that it is overwhelmed with processing and that will spend more energy due to busy CPU rather than processing. What makes this task even more complex is that a single device rarely can capture sufficient information about its context and execution to be able to provide the required information for other devices. However, given the huge amount of devices and their similarities, and the fact that applications are instrumented to collect and store data into logs, it is possible to envision opportunities for capturing these aspects by aggregating measurements from multiple devices.

Our workshop is the first to address the opportunities and challenges arising from the combination of two emerging domains: crowdsensing based context-awareness and collaborative multi-device computing scenarios. Our unique focus makes PerCrowd an exciting forum to discuss key research challenges and familiarize with state-of-the-art research in these topics.

PerCrowd'18: Call for papers

Call for papers

Opportunistic self-organization of pervasive and mobile systems has become critical for improving the Quality-of-Service (QoS) and Quality-of-Experience (QoE) of applications.  By detecting the context for harnessing collaborative and opportunistic resources in proximity, it is possible to reduce the cost of executing tasks in the constrained resources of smart devices, and to diffuse the presence of smart devices beyond their existing computing isolated behavior.

The goal of PerCrowd 2018 is to explore the impact of context in collaborative and opportunistic computing.  More in detail, The goal of this workshop is to explore the use and effect of contexts on multi-device settings, whose computational behavior can be propagated within the community for optimizing their energy and performance.

Original papers addressing theoretical, practical, and technical aspects of opportunistic and collaborative self-organization of devices are solicited. Papers describing prototype implementations and deployment of such applications and systems are particularly welcome. The submission of informative surveys of the state of the art as well as position papers on controversial issues is also encouraged. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Context-aware collaborative systems and applications
• Resource extension of pervasive and mobile applications
• Opportunistic context modeling
• Pervasive computing applications harnessing multiple devices
• Data-driven techniques for community formation
• Self-organizing community construction and evolution
• Crowdsensing and crowdsourcing models for data acquisition and fusion
• Applications of crowdsensed models, e.g., incentive models, decision making models, and privacy models.
• Infrastructure, architectures, and platforms for collaborative systems
• Lessons and experiences of evaluating multi device context-aware systems and applications
• Emerging applications for multi device environments.

Papers should contain original material and not be previously published or currently under consideration elsewhere. Manuscripts must be limited to 6 pages in IEEE 8.5x11 conference format, and formatted in accordance with the IEEE Computer Society author guidelines.

Accepted papers will be published by the IEEE Computer Society Press in the combined PerCom 2018 Workshop Proceedings and will appear on IEEE Xplore. At least one author of each accepted paper must register and attend the workshop to present the paper. There is no workshop-only registration. An oral presentation at the workshop is strictly required. Failure to present the paper at the workshop will result in the withdrawal of the paper from the Proceedings as well as from the IEEE Xplore.

Important Dates

Abstract Registration: October 21, 2017
Submission Deadline: October 29, 2017

Acceptance Notification: December 23, 2017

Camera Ready due: January 12, 2018

Workshop: March 19

PerCrowd'18: Organizing committee

Program Committee Chairs 

• Huber Flores, University of Helsinki, Finland.
• Pan Hui, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.
• Vassilis Kostakos, The University of Melbourne, Australia

 Workshop Web Chair 

• Rajesh Sharma, Institute of Computer Science, University of Tartu, Estonia.

Publicity Chairs

• Aaron Yi Ding, Department of Computer Science, Technical University of Munich, Germany. 
• Chu Luo, The University of Melbourne, Australia

Technical Program Committee  

• Henri Blunck, Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Bochum University of Applied Sciences, Germany.
• Dimitrios Chatzopoulos,  The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.
• Bo Han, AT&T Research, USA.
• Simo Hosio, Center of Ubiquitous Computing, University of Oulu, Finland.
• Cheng-Hsin Hsu, National Tsingh Hua University, Taiwan.  
• Sokol Kosta,  Center for Communication Media and Information Technologies, Aalborg University, Copenhagen.
• James Kwok, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong.
• Eemil Lagerspetz, University of Helsinki, Finland.
• Yong Li, Department of Electronic Engineering,, Tsinghua University, China.
• Jukka Manner, Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland.
• Mirco Musolesi,  Department of Geography, University College London, UK
• Petteri Nurmi, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Finland.     
• Andrea Passarella, IIT-CNR, Italy.   
• Matti Siekkinen, Department of Computer Science, Aalto University, Finland
• Xiang Su, Center of Ubiquitous Computing, University of Oulu, Finland. 
• Sasu Tarkoma, University of Helsinki, Finland.
• Lars Wolf, TU Braunschweig, Germany.  
• Eiko Yoneki, University of Cambridge, UK.

PerCrowd'18: Program

Monday, March 19th, 2018.

7:45 am - 8:00 am : Opening remarks by General chair(s)

Opening Session

Dr. Huber Flores, University of Helsinki, Finland.

8:00 am - 9:00 am : Keynote speaker

Title: The Internet of People (IoP): A New Wave in Pervasive Mobile Computing

Dr. Andrea Pasarella, IIT-CNR, Italy.

Abstract:
Cyber-Physical convergence, the fast expansion of the Internet at its edge, and tighter interactions between human users and their personal mobile devices push toward an Internet where the human user becomes more central than ever, and where their personal devices become their proxies in the cyber world, in addition to acting as a fundamental tool to sense the physical world. The current Internet paradigm, which is infrastructure-centric, is not the right one to cope with such emerging scenario with a wider range of applications. This calls for a radically new Internet paradigm, that we name the Internet of People (IoP), where the humans and their personal devices are not seen merely as end users of applications, but become active elements of the Internet. Note that IoP is not a replacement of the current Internet infrastructure, but it exploits legacy Internet services as (reliable) primitives to achieve end-to-end connectivity on a global-scale. The talk discusses the key features of the IoP paradigm along with the underlying research issues and challenges. Then it presents emerging networking and computing paradigms that are anticipating IoP.

Speaker Bio:
Andrea Passarella (Ph.D 2005) is currently a Researcher at the Institute for Informatics and Telematics (IIT) of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). Prior to join IIT he was with the Computer Laboratory of the University of Cambridge, UK. He has published 130+ papers on Online and Mobile social networks, opportunistic, ad hoc and sensor networks, receiving the best paper award at IFIP Networking 2011 and IEEE WoWMoM 2013. He is the founding Associate Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier Online Social Networks. He is co-author of the book "Online Social Networks: Human Cognitive Constraints in Facebook and Twitter Personal Graphs" (Elsevier, 2015), and was Guest Co-Editor of several special sections in ACM and Elsevier Journals and of the book "Multi-hop Ad hoc Networks: From Theory to Reality" (2007). He is the chair of the IFIP WG 6.3 "Performance of Communication Systems".

9:00 am - 10:00 am : Session 1 - Context modeling and community formation - Chair: Dr. Petteri Nurmi (Lancaster University, UK)

• Towards Collaborative Multi-device Computing, Wenxiao Zhang (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong), Huber Flores (University of Helsinki, Finland) and Pan Hui (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong & University of Helsinki, Finland)
• Combining Crowdsourcing and Crowdsensing to Infer the Spatial Context, Fausto Giunchiglia, Mattia Zeni and Enrico Bignotti (University of Trento, Italy)
• Probability of Task Completion and Energy Consumption in Cooperative Pervasive Mobile Computing, Duc V. Le, Hans Scholten and Paul Havinga (University of Twente, The Netherlands); Thuong C. Nguyen (Trusting Social Co., Australia)
• Pervasive Communities in the Internet of People, Eemil Lagerspetz (University of Helsinki, Finland); Huber Flores (University of Helsinki, Finland); Niko Mäkitalo (University of Helsinki, Finland); Pan Hui (Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong & University of Helsinki, Finland); Petteri Nurmi (Lancaster University, United Kingdom (Great Britain) & University of Helsinki, Finland); Sasu Tarkoma (University of Helsinki, Finland); Andrea Passarella (IIT-CNR, Italy); Joerg Ott (Technische Universität München, Germany); Peter Reichl (University of Vienna, Austria); Marco Conti (IIT-CNR, Italy); Markus Fiedler (Blekinge Institute of Technology, Sweden); Jatinder Singh (University of Cambridge, United Kingdom (Great Britain)); Thorsten Strufe (TU Dresden, Germany); Tobias Hoβfeld (University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany); Anders Lindgren (Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden); Daniele Quercia (Bell Labs Cambridge, United Kingdom (Great Britain)

10:00 am - 10:30 am : Coffee break

10:30 am - 11:30 pm : Session 2 - Use cases for context awareness and decision making - Chair: Dr. Eemil Lagerspetz (University of Helsinki, Finland)

• Context Awareness Mobile Devices for Traffic Incident Prevention, Francesco Mercaldo (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Italy); Fabio Martinelli (CNR-IIT, Italy); VIttoria Nardone (University of Sannio, Italy); Antonella Santone (University of Molise, Italy); Albina Orlando (IAC-CNR, Italy)
• Enhancing Veracity of IoT Generated Big Data in Decision Making, Xiaoli Liu, Satu Tamminen, Xiang Su and Pekka Siirtola (University of Oulu, Finland); Juha Röning (Oulu University Secure Programming Group, Finland); Jukka Riekki (University of Oulu, Finland); Jussi Kiljander (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Finland); Juha-Pekka Soininen (VTT Technical Research Centre, Finland)
• A Context Aware Prototype Application for University Students and Lecturers, Sabiha Nuzhat (Curtin University, United Arab Emirates); Salih Ismail and Talal Shaikh (Heriot Watt University, United Arab Emirates)
• Context Aware Telco Churn Prediction Powered by Temporal Feature Engineering, Ruirui Bai (Soochow University, Hong Kong); Weixiong Rao (Tongji University, China); Mingxuan Yuan (Noah's Ark Lab, Huawei, Hong Kong); Jia Zeng (Noah's Ark Lab, Huawei & Soochow University, Hong Kong); Jianfeng Yan (Huawei Noah's Ark Lab, China)

11:30 pm - 12:00 pm : Group discussion

Concluding remarks

Lunch break: 12:00am - 1:15pm

PerCrowd'18: Photos

Go to the album

Thanks for participating!