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Nowadays, manufacturing processes have become highly complex. Besides, more and more, governmental institutions require companies to implement systems to trace a product’s life (especially for foods, clinical materials or similar items). In this paper, we propose a new framework, based on cyber-physical systems, for developing traceability systems in small manufacturing companies (which because of their size cannot implement other commercial products). We propose a general theoretical framework, study the requirements of these companies in relation to traceability systems, propose a reference architecture based on both previous elements and build the first minimum functional prototype, to compare our solution to a traditional tag-based traceability system. Results show that our system reduces the number of inefficiencies and reaction time.

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Users are each day more aware of their privacy and data protection. Although this problem is transversal to every digital service, it is especially relevant when critical and personal information is managed, as in eHealth and well-being services. During the last years, many different innovative services in this area have been proposed. However, data management challenges are still in need of a solution. In general, data are directly sent to services but no trustworthy instruments to recover these data or remove them from services are available. In this scheme, services become the users’ data owners although users keep the rights to access, modify, and be forgotten. Nevertheless, the adequate implementation of these rights is not guaranteed, as services use the received data with commercial purposes. In order to address and solve this situation, we propose a new trustworthy personal data protection mechanism for well-being services, based on privacy-by-design technologies. This new mechanism is based on Blockchain networks and indirection functions and tokens. Blockchain networks execute transparent smart contracts, where users’ rights are codified, and store the users’ personal data which are never sent or given to external services. Besides, permissions and privacy restrictions designed by users to be applied to their data and services consuming them are also implemented in these smart contracts. Finally, an experimental validation is also described to evaluate the Quality of Experience (in terms of user satisfaction) and Quality of Service (in terms of processing delay) compared to traditional service provision solutions.

The execution of scientific workflows is gaining importance as more computing resources are available in the form of grid environments. The Publish/Subscribe paradigm offers well-proven solutions for sustaining distributed scenarios while maintaining the high level of task decoupling required by scientific workflows. In this paper, we propose a new model for supporting scientific workflows that improves the dissemination of control events. The proposed solution is based on the mapping of workflow tasks to the underlying Pub/Sub event layer, and the definition of interfaces and procedures for execution on brokers. In this paper we also analyze the strengths and weaknesses of current solutions that are based on existing message exchange models for scientific workflows. Finally, we explain how our model improves the information dissemination, event filtering, task decoupling and the monitoring of scientific workflows.

Recent disasters have shown that having clearly defined preventive procedures and decisions is a critical component that minimizes evacuation hazards and ensures a rapid and successful evolution of evacuation plans. In this context, we present our Situation-Aware System for enhancing Evacuation Plans (SASEP) system, which allows creating end-user business rules that technically support the specific events, conditions and actions related to evacuation plans. An experimental validation was carried out where 32 people faced a simulated emergency situation, 16 of them using SASEP and the other 16 using a legacy system based on static signs. From the results obtained, we compare both techniques and discuss in which situations SASEP offers a better evacuation route option, confirming that it is highly valuable when there is a threat in the evacuation route. In addition, a study about user satisfaction using both systems is presented showing in which cases the systems are assessed as satisfactory, relevant and not frustrating.

The mobile radio systems beyond third generation (3G) will evolve in all-IP systems, integrating Internet and mobile systems advantages. BRAIN project is developing a system architecture which combines local coverage broadband radio access systems based in HIPERLAN/2 with several wider coverage mobile radio systems, enabling full coverage of seamless IP-based services for users in hot spot areas and on the move. End to end quality of service (QoS) provision is one of the mayor challenges in the design of such a system and must be supported by the application, network and wireless access layers. This paper proposes a QoS system architecture, including the terminal architecture, the IP based access network and the main characteristics of the enhancements to the air interface based in HIPERLAN/2 focusing on its wireless QoS support.

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