According to the World Health Organization, cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death accounting for 30% of deaths worldwide. Among these diseases, the incidence and prevalence of pathologies related to atrial electrical disfunctions, mainly involving supraventricular arrhythmias (SVAs) are today reaching pandemic proportions. SVAs are highly debilitating for the patient, ranging from a reduced quality of life to the development of stroke events. Today's standard for health screening is a clinical visit to a health facility where assessments are performed through the identification of biomarkers, that represent a snapshot in time that, on the one hand, may not identify the pathology, and, on the other hand, requires specific follow-on clinical visits. In this context, digital medicine may help through the use of technologies and tools for the measuring of human health biomarkers in a more pervasive and effective way, increasing the possibility of identifying the pathology and hence reducing the need for further visits. Data generated from wearables can potentially create personalized baselines for health and can help improve population health, advance clinical research, and guide the development of new devices. Collecting, processing and understanding of digital biomarkers extracted from such novel devices are an intensive and challenging process that requires an interdisciplinary effort, ranging from artificial intelligence to ethical and legal aspects.
This tutorial will cover the latest advances on technology ethics and two IEEE initiatives namely IEEE 7000 standard and the Ethics Certification Programme for Autonomous and Intelligent Systems (ECPAIS). These provide a basis for raising awareness and providing a systematic framework for the innovators, researchers and technologists as well as small and large enterprises involved in AI and technology innovation and development. The main focus is on Autonomous Decision Making and Algorithmic Learning Systems and two complementary approaches to the risk reduction in societal harms and ethical assurance of these technologies.
It can be stated that the sustainable development of our planet is considerably related to a significant and constant reduction of environmental pollution in the next years. In this perspective, the technological transition of power production from traditional energy sources to 100% renewable energy sources, represents a valuable solution to the global climate change challenge, decreasing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Indeed, this is one of the most relevant actual topics of all governments policy and it has considerable attention in the scientific community. As well known, electrical power systems are changing from centralized generation systems to distributed generation systems due to the increase of renewable energy sources. In the next future, the main grid will be composed by interconnected microgrids that can be managed and controlled independently. In particular, in a power system with conventional power plants, where synchronous machines are adopted, and distributed generation plants, where static conversion systems are used, the system stability is entrusted only on the conventional power generation systems thanks to their rotating inertia and damping. Indeed, static power converters cannot provide inertia and damping to power systems, so they are vulnerable to power dynamics and system faults. Thus, power system stability is degraded as the penetration of renewable energy sources increases and this issue is amplified in a possible future power system with only renewable sources. The "Smart Inverters" concept represents a promising solution to overcome the operative limits of traditional renewable energy sources. A Smart Inverter is an inverter with the capability to make a proactive and autonomous decision based on local measurements and external data. This new concept allows obtaining an energy source able to perform different functions, in real-time operations, like gridsupporting mode to provide ancillary services or grid-forming mode in the case of islanded microgrid following a fault. Also, innovative energy storage systems and hybrid solutions play an important role in order to ensure a power reserve to increase grid stability. In this context, the aim of this tutorial is to provide the audience with the actual scenario and the future perspective on the innovative solutions and control strategies in the inverter-based renewable energy sources. Moreover, a detailed overview of the energy storage systems and innovative hybrid solutions will be discussed. More in detail, the tutorial is structured as follows: The first part will be focused on the actual technological transition to an electrical system with 100% renewable energy sources in terms of innovations and operative limits of the traditional systems. These innovative paradigms will also address the social impact and government policies. The second part of the tutorial will examine the new scenarios of the future power system in terms of the interconnected microgrids with particular attention to the stability of the low-inertia systems. Finally, the tutorial will give particular attention to the Smart Inverters and their features and challenges in terms of functions, performance improvement, and operation mode. An extensive analysis regarding the control strategies based on the Virtual Synchronous Machine concept and multilevel technologies will be provided. Moreover, a part of this tutorial will be focused on storage systems, innovative hybrid solutions, and management strategies.
In this tutorial the circulatory shock will be defined and used as a key example to show the importance for the hemodynamic monitoring in the intensive care unit (ICU). As covid pandemic taught us, ICU is particular hospital ward where patients with severe or life-threatening illnesses and injuries are admitted, they require constant care, close supervision from life support equipment and medication in order to be stabilized and to avoid life-threatening events. ICUs are staffed by highly trained physicians, nurses and respiratory therapists. The available technology and the key methodological aspects behind the parameters commonly used in clinical practice will be overviewed (e.g. gold standard measurement and beat-to-beat estimation of cardiac output, estimation of cardiac afterload and preload). The integration of artificial intelligence in the monitoring systems represents a great opportunity, the automatic risk stratification could be helpful in prioritizing risky patients and in better managing the staff workload. Some examples will be illustrated.
Internet of Things will not be only a new worldwide network interconnecting trillions of (smart) devices but, most importantly, a platform (system of systems) where to develop a new wave of (cyber-physical) services for humans and machines. In this context, in order to build IoT systems, the so-called IoT-Edge-Cloud continuum paradigm is having tremendous focus from the research community as well as from the industry. This paradigm can therefore be an enabler to push intelligence from the core of the network to its edge: from centralized data mining to embedded machine learning in tiny IoT devices to federated machine learning involving networks of edge devices. Moreover, methodologies are emerging to support analysis, design, implementation and evaluation of solutions involving mining and machine learning at the IoT edge. In this talk, we will focus on IoT from both the architectural and machine learning at the edge perspectives. Finally, some use cases will be discussed related to mobile edge computing, ambient assisting living environments, and intelligent transportation systems.
Localization will greatly increase the overall value of the 5G ecosystem and beyond, exploiting both new waveforms, denser deployments, larger bandwidths and antennas, as well as other wireless technologies integrated in todays' smartphones. The 3GPP localization framework (eLCS) is also expanding to support these developments, but new technical challenges have also emerged in supporting different 5G verticals. Building on top of the current effort in 3GPP, the main findings from the research conducted in the framework of the H2020 LOCUS project will be presented, as well as its contribution to the ongoing standardization activities until the most recent Release 18. Future directions for 3GPP eLCS to evolve are also discussed, in view of the current challenges.
Our understanding of the classical reliability concepts of security and adequacy is increasingly being challenged by the rising penetration level of variable renewable energy (VRE) sources and distributed energy resources (DER) and the more frequent occurrence of extreme, high-impact low-probability (HILP) events - for instance driven by climate change - with potentially catastrophic impacts. In this tutorial, we will discuss how there is a need for introducing new analysis and modelling frameworks to deal with the increasing fragility of low-carbon grids and exposure to climate change-driven extreme events. The key desirable features of such frameworks will be presented for both operation and planning and from both technical and economic/commercial perspectives, along with metrics, methodologies and modelling tools that can help make future systems more secure, reliable and resilient. Several conceptual, modelling and analytical challenges, approaches and solutions will be outlined. The key question that will be addressed is whether power and energy systems should be made "stronger" (e.g., through component hardening), "bigger" (more redundant, through investment in new transmission/generation asset) or "smarter" (through new smart grid technologies and operational and commercial practices). Besides different examples taken from the lecturer's several international projects in the area, the South Australia "Black System" event of September 2016, the UK demand disconnection event of August 2019, and the Texas power crisis of February 2021, will be taken as "textbook" case studies to practically illustrate some of the general concepts presented.
The Covid-19 pandemic advanced the digital transformation by at least 10-15 years, bringing chaos to many productive sectors including tourism, mobility, trade, the hotel and food industries. The speech will analyze the impact of Covid-19 on the whole society and show how innovation can help rethinking business models and the boundaries between industries.