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“This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Lecture Notes in Electrical Engineering. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91334-6_58 ”.

Today, despite increased information demand from consumers and food chain players alike, Europe’s food businesses and farmers are slow at adopting digital technologies. This is due in part to the inherent complexities of relevant products and processes, and in part to the dynamically changing open network organization of the food sector with its multitude of SMEs, its cultural diversity, its differences in expectations and in the ability to serve transparency needs. The agri-food sector needs to take more advantage of the potential of digital technologies. Relevant technologies may include Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence, Big Data technologies, remote and localized sensing. This chapter will engage the agri-food community in supporting the development of solutions to remove the barriers to adoption of digital technologies, taking a multi-actor approach across different supply chains (conventional and organic) from farm to fork.

This research aims to evaluate the stakeholders’ perception on the areas of smart specialization strategy (RIS3) defined for a given region. A quantitative methodology was followed through questionnaires applied to different stakeholders from two Portuguese island regions (Madeira and Azores); regional VRIO model was tested for these regions. The results of the research indicate that stakeholder perception is not the same as its policy makers in the areas of smart specialization defined in the RIS3 of the region where they belong. Our research provides support to policy makers in regional strategies modeling, assessing, and measuring island regional performance. Furthermore, this research suggests measures to conduit the gaps found in the island regions’ smart specialization strategies.

We are witnessing how digital technologies can be used to transform everyday life – launch new or grow incumbent companies, change teaching and learning environment, and research. The latest literature research has overwhelmingly positively assessed the use of digital technologies in higher education, indicating certain challenges in this regard. In the modern era, higher education institutions need to evolve steadily, following the digital transformation. Overall, the emphasis is on the encouragement and promotion of digital technology in the learning process. However, a small number of research papers addressed the learning environment’s digital transformation in the past decade. With the aim of contributing to a relevant topic, this paper presents a systematic literature review of related articles published on learning environment digital transformation in ten years. Accordingly, significant and eminent results are discussed, together with guidelines for future research.

Pressure ulcers are a critical issue for patients and healthcare professionals, requiring their frequent monitoring, with a consequent impact on healthcare costs. This problem has been gaining attention and approaches have been proposed, using sensor-based systems, to facilitate this monitoring and help health caregivers to achieve greater effectiveness in the treatment of this type of ulcer. In this paper, the architecture, and the prototype of a new system for pressure ulcer monitoring and prevention are presented. It considers information related to both intrinsic and extrinsic predisposing factors and it addresses the components of data acquisition, data analysis, and production of complementary support to well-informed clinical decision-making. The system includes a pressure ulcer management portal and a mobile application, that allows caregivers to manage clinical information about pressure ulcers of the patients and uses data acquired from a pressure sensor sheet under the mattress to provide useful information for monitoring the patients. Considering the situation of each patient, the system will produce indicators/alerts to healthcare professionals, simultaneously improving pressure-ulcer patient care quality and safety and minimizing the burnout in healthcare professionals.

Efficient use of resources is a critical factor in almond crops. Technological solutions can significantly contribute to this purpose. The VeraTech project aims to explore the integration of sensors and cloud-based technologies in almond crops for efficient use of resources and reduction of environmental impact. It also makes available a set of relevant and impactful performance indicators in agricultural activity, which promote productivity gains supported by efficient use of resources. The proposed solution includes a sensor network in the almond crops, the transmission of data and its integration in the cloud, making this data available to be consumed, processed, and presented in the monitoring and alerts dashboard. In the current state of the development, several data are collected by sensors, transmitted over LoRaWAN, integrated using AWS IoT Core, and monitored and analysed through a cloud business analytics service.