This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of Industry Oriented Conferences held at IFIP 20th World Computer Congress in September 2008. The IFIP series publishes state-of-the-art results in the sciences and technologies of information and communication. The scope of the series includes: foundations of computer science; software theory and practice; education; computer applications in technology; communication systems; systems modeling and optimization; information systems; computers and society; computer systems technology; security and protection in information processing systems; artificial intelligence; and human-computer interaction. Proceedings and post-proceedings of refereed international conferences in computer science and interdisciplinary fields are featured. These results often precede journal publication and represent the most current research. The principal aim of the IFIP series is to encourage education and the dissemination and exchange of information about all aspects of computing.

This Festschrift, Unimagined Futures – ICT Opportunities and Challenges, is the first Festschrift in the IFIP AICT series. It examines key challenges facing the ICT community today. While addressing the contemporary challenges, the book provides the opportunity to look back to help understand the contemporary scene and identify appropriate future responses to them. Experts in different areas of the ICT scene have contributed to this IFIP 60th anniversary book, which will be a key input to the ICT community worldwide on setting policy priorities and agendas for the coming decade. In addition, a number of contributions look specifically at the role of professionals and of national, regional, and global organizations in disseminating the benefits of ICT to humanity worldwide.

Services play a central role in the economies of nations and in global commerce, and to some extent we are all in the field of service. Technological Applications and Advancements in Service Science, Management, and Engineering is a compendium of research that proves to be an indispensable resource for cutting-edge knowledge in service science understood as a broad research field that embodies all the aspects that relate to services, their planning, design, operation, evaluation, and improvement. Perfect for academic researchers and practicing professionals, this volume serves as a vehicle for the development of service science and how good services are devised and engineered to get the maximum value for their efforts.

Ongoing advancements in modern technology have led to significant developments in intelligent systems. With the numerous applications available, it becomes imperative to conduct research and make further progress in this field. Intelligent Systems: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools, and Applications contains a compendium of the latest academic material on the latest breakthroughs and recent progress in intelligent systems. Including innovative studies on information retrieval, artificial intelligence, and software engineering, this multi-volume book is an ideal source for researchers, professionals, academics, upper-level students, and practitioners interested in emerging perspectives in the field of intelligent systems.

This book features research presented and discussed during the Research & Innovation Forum (Rii Forum) 2020. As such, this book offers a unique insight into emerging topics, issues and developments pertinent to the fields of technology, innovation and education and their social impact. Papers included in this book apply inter- and multi-disciplinary approaches to query such issues as technology-enhanced teaching and learning, smart cities, information systems, cognitive computing and social networking. What brings these threads of the discussion together is the question of how advances in computer science – which are otherwise largely incomprehensible to researchers from other fields – can be effectively translated and capitalized on so as to make them beneficial for society as a whole. In this context, Rii Forum and Rii Forum proceedings offer an essential venue where diverse stakeholders, including academics, the think tank sector and decision-makers, can engage in a meaningful dialogue with a view to improving the applicability of advances in computer science.

The ItAIS (http://www.itais.org) is the Italian chapter of the Association for Information Systems (AIS: http://www.aisnet.org) which brings together both individual and institutional members. The Italian chapter has been established in 2003, and since then, it has promoted the exchange of ideas, experiences and knowledge among academics and professionals in Italy, devoted to the development, management, organization and use of Information Systems. The contents of this book are based on a selection of the best papers presented at the Annual Conference of the ItAIS, that has been held in Paris, in December 2008. The book adopts an interdisciplinary approach, recognizing the need to harness a number of different disciplines in both the theory and the practice of information systems. The work here presented is comprehensive and up-to-date in this subject. The contributions to this volume aim to disseminate academic knowledge and might be particularly relevant to practitioners in the field.

The modern era of business has prompted an increased focus on the consumer and the responsibility of corporations to consider their ethical and social obligations to their customers. The rise of the consumerist movement has encouraged further research and development on the topic of consumerism, enabling business to succeed in a consumer-driven market. Handbook of Research on Consumerism in Business and Marketing: Concepts and Practices features research on diverse topics on consumerism in the global marketplace, focusing on the ways in which businesses can improve their relationships with customers as well as analyze and influence purchasing behavior. As a comprehensive reference source on topics pertaining to consumer management, identity, and behavior, this publication is intended for use by marketing professionals, business managers, students, and academicians.

This book represents the combined peer-reviewed proceedings of the Seventh International Symposium on Intelligent Distributed Computing - IDC-2013, of the Second Workshop on Agents for Clouds - A4C-2013, of the Fifth International Workshop on Multi-Agent Systems Technology and Semantics - MASTS-2013, and of the International Workshop on Intelligent Robots - iR-2013. All the events were held in Prague, Czech Republic during September 4-6, 2013. The 41 contributions published in this book address many topics related to theory and applications of intelligent distributed computing and multi-agent systems, including: agent-based data processing, ambient intelligence, bio-informatics, collaborative systems, cryptography and security, distributed algorithms, grid and cloud computing, information extraction, intelligent robotics, knowledge management, linked data, mobile agents, ontologies, pervasive computing, self-organizing systems, peer-to-peer computing, social networks and trust, and swarm intelligence.

The progressive combination of cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) will enable new monitoring services, create powerful processing of sensory data streams, and provide a new method for intelligent perception and connection. Examining Cloud Computing Technologies Through the Internet of Things is a pivotal reference source for scholarly research on the latest and innovative facets of cloud-based Internet of Things systems including technical evaluations and comparisons of existing concepts. Featuring coverage on a broad range of topics such as fog computing, network programming, and data security, this book is geared towards advanced-level students, researchers, and professionals interested in exploring and implementing the IoT and related technologies.

This proceedings book presents the latest research findings, and theoretical and practical perspectives on innovative methods and development techniques related to the emerging areas of Web computing, intelligent systems and Internet computing. The Web has become an important source of information, and techniques and methodologies that extract quality information are of paramount importance for many Web and Internet applications. Data mining and knowledge discovery play a key role in many of today's major Web applications, such as e-commerce and computer security. Moreover, Web services provide a new platform for enabling service-oriented systems. The emergence of large-scale distributed computing paradigms, such as cloud computing and mobile computing systems, has opened many opportunities for collaboration services, which are at the core of any information system. Artificial intelligence (AI) is an area of computer science that builds intelligent systems and algorithms that work and react like humans. AI techniques and computational intelligence are powerful tools for learning, adaptation, reasoning and planning, and they have the potential to become enabling technologies for future intelligent networks. Research in the field of intelligent systems, robotics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence and cognitive sciences is vital for the future development and innovation of Web and Internet applications. Chapter "An Event-Driven Multi Agent System for Scalable Traffic Optimization" is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.