De potentiële maatschappelijke en economische impact van AI is enorm. Denk maar aan gepersonaliseerde gezondheidszorg, slimme mobiliteit en industrie 4.0. Bovendien, of als gevolg daarvan, zal de vraag naar data scientists, natural language processing researchers en business intelligence analisten alleen maar groter worden. De logische conclusie is dan ook dat er absoluut nood is aan gespecialiseerde opleidingen.

Erasmushogeschool Brussel heeft dat goed begrepen en biedt vanaf volgend academiejaar twee gloednieuwe postgraduaten aan, waarvan één rond AI.

Lees hier het volledige bloovi artikel

Lees hier ook meer over de evolutie van Artificiële Intelligentie in het opiniestuk van Professor Machine Learning Bart De Moor: “De onwaarschijnlijke evolutie van de informatie-technologie”

Bron artikel: Bloovi

De Federale politie kiest voor Awingu

De federale politie zet volop in op digitalisering. Zo kozen ze enige tijd geleden om in zee te gaan met Awingu en samen een gemeenschappelijk platform uit te bouwen.

Dit platform levert niet alleen tijdswinst op op straat, maar zorgt er ook voor dat de politie gegevens op elk moment kan opzoeken, processen-verbaal kan opstellen en doorgegeven aan justitie voor verdere doeleinden. Het project kwam tot stand via het VITO-raamcontract.

Bekijk hier het interview met Benny Jacobs (Program manager digitalisation) van de federale politie.

Graag meer informatie over de digitalisatiemogelijkheden voor uw organisatie? 

Praat met onze ICT experts

 

From a small, academic project to a renowned software solution that is used globally and affects the lives of millions of people: it sounds like a fairy tale. But this is exactly what Belgian developer Geoffrey De Smet and Red Hat Business Optimizer (aka OptaPlanner) made happen. One of the most remarkable qualities of the software De Smet developed is its tremendous versatility. He himself used it to put together the match schedule for a tournament at his local tennis club. A schedule they had been labouring on for weeks, was put together over a lunch break applying the software. Next, a phone operator in the US installed it to optimize the deployment of its technicians. Hoping to save one or two percent in travel time, they ended up with a twenty-five percent reduction , saving hundreds of millions of dollars and heavily reducing CO² emissions in the process.

The very first version of the software came into being in 2006, during an academic challenge meant to optimize the university’s timetable. “I was playing around with optimization algorithms and made nice progress by combining them with JBoss code”, De Smet recalls. “In the following years I further improved the software on my own in my spare time. This continued when I started working as a Java consultant and later Java lead at Schaubroeck, were I supported the development of a local government budget software. In that period more and more developers started using OptaPlanner.”

De Smet managed to secure his first customers, including a home for the elderly in France. But the development of the software truly made a huge leap forward when he joined Red Hat in 2010. Today, he is the Business Lead for Business Optimizer - or OptaPlanner - at the company. As such he can count on a community of talented full-time core engineers, hundreds of contributors and the feedback of thousands of users downloading the tool every month.

“Every organization has planning issues,” is how De Smet explains the success of his software. “Common sense helps- to some extent in efficiently - deploying available people and resources. Our technology, however, always succeeds to further enhance and optimize the process. And we are not talking about efficiency gains of just a few percent, but rather ten, twenty or even twenty-five percent. This leads to enormous savings in logistics, which result in higher profits and higher productivity…usually being the main goal in the retail and transportation industry. In healthcare environments usage of the software focuses more on employee well-being.”

There are also opportunities for society in general to profit from De Smet’s achievements. A government agency carrying out security inspections of bridges for instance will soon start using his software as well. Their intention is not to do the same number of inspections with less engineers, but instead to permit them more time per inspection. This will seriously increase the safety of citizens relying on that infrastructure.

“I am constantly amazed by the diversity of our customers”, De Smet says. “All judiciary hearings in the UK are being scheduled with OptaPlanner. At the same time, a hugely popular car rental company in Europe uses the software to solve the puzzle of having the right car available for a customer at the requested time. This can get especially complicated considering they offer customers a choice in pick-up and return-locations. , And then there’s Thyssenkrupp, that implemented OptaPlanner to schedule maintenance of 220,000 elevators and escalators across North America which requires 2,500 technicians. Using the software, they managed to increase the number of completed maintenance jobs from fifty to seventy-five percent per year. Over the next year, they want to further improve that score by aiming to do maintenance on all 220,000 installations within a year.”

“In Belgium, we just started working for KAVA, an organisation of more than 1,300 pharmacists”, De Smet continues. “They were struggling to allocate evenings and weekends their members are on call. Putting together such a schedule , you need to not only take into account the distance between the available pharmacists, but also the density of the population in an area. Wanting to be fair, they also needed to take into account members’ vacations and the fact that ‘on call’ duty on public holidays was equally spread. Those are very complicated yet exciting challenges.”

When asked whether he is dreaming of even bigger achievements, De Smet does not have to think long: “Air traffic is immensely complex, of course, so we would definitely like to see our technology at work within an airline company or an airport. Staying closer to home and to the ground, we would also love to tackle the challenges of the Belgian railways. I’m pretty sure that will be a hard nut to crack,” he laughs.

Find out more about Red Hat

 

 

 

Amerikaanse en Chinese wetenschappers hebben samen een zachte robotlens ontwikkeld die kan gecontroleerd worden door rond te kijken of te knipperen.

De menselijke oogbol is te beschouwen als een elektrische dipool: het netvlies achteraan is negatief geladen en het hoornvlies vooraan is positief geladen. Dit potentiaalverschil kan je meten door huidelektroden rond het oog te plakken en ze via een elektronische versterker te verbinden met registratieapparatuur. Wanneer het oog beweegt om rond te kijken of te knipperen, dan verandert de spanning tussen de elektroden. Met het opgemeten signaal, een zogenaamd electro-oculogram (EOG), kan je dus oogbewegingen analyseren.

Het Vlaamse onderzoeksinstituut imec paste dit principe vorig jaar al toe om een eye-tracking-bril te ontwerpen. Met dergelijke bril zou je via je ogen commando's kunnen geven in AR-of VR-toepassingen. Horizontale oogbewegingen kan je bijvoorbeeld gebruiken om te swipen en knipperbewegingen om stapjes vooruit te zetten in de virtuele wereld. Dergelijke bril kan ook helpen om neurodegeneratieve aandoeningen die een invloed hebben op oogbewegingen (zoals Alzheimer en Parkinson) vroegtijdig op te sporen.

Lees verder

Bron: Datanews

 

 

 

Deze week organiseerde Microsoft hun jaarlijkse partner event "Microsoft Inspire". 
Innovatie-cases van bijvoorbeeld Unilever en de nieuwste business en tech trends kwamen aan bod.

Hoe kan technologie mensen sterker kan maken? Bekijk in deze video de belangrijkste inzichten uit de keynotes.  

Cyber security: wapen uw organisatie tegen de dreiging uit cyberspace

Wist u dat tussen 2017 en 2018 maar liefst 26% van alle retailbedrijven meer dan eens een lek in hun confidentiële data ontdekt hebben? De toenemende digitalisering zorgt ervoor dat er steeds meer data online wordt opgeslagen, maar dit zet natuurlijk ook de deur wagenwijd open voor cyberaanvallen en hackers.

Afgelopen tien jaar is de e-commerce wereldwijd geëxplodeerd. Ondanks deze groei hinken vele organisaties serieus achterop op vlak van cyber security. Heel wat financiële en persoonlijke gegevens liggen gewoon voor het grijpen en criminelen maken hier dan ook gretig gebruik van. Meer nog, ze worden er steeds beter in. 

Vaak wordt het management zich pas bewust van de beveiligingsbehoeften wanneer hun beveiliging faalt, zoals bij een datalek. Niet alleen een kostelijke zaak, maar het tast ook het imago van je onderneming aan. Klanten en burgers verliezen al snel het vertrouwen, zeker wanneer waardevolle informatie wordt gestolen. Het investeren in een goede cyber security is dan ook geen overbodige luxe.

Meer weten? Het nieuwe Cyber Treat Insights Report van BDO geeft inzicht in het groeiende cybergevaar en hoe u zich er als organisatie tegen kunt wapenen.

Red Hat ziet zichzelf steeds meer als de motor voor de hybride cloud. Dat bleek onlangs tijdens ons bezoek aan de jaarlijkse hoogmis Red Hat Summit 2019. De diverse producten van de open source-specialist zijn min of meer standaard geworden in de enterprisemarkt. Ook blijkt uit gesprekken met medewerkers en klanten dat de open source-specialist steeds meer aandacht geeft aan het midmarket-segment. Een interessante ontwikkeling.

Tijdens de jaarlijkse conferentie in Boston van de Red Hat-community, voor het bedrijf nog steeds de meest waardevolle ‘asset’, kon niemand er omheen. Het 26-jarige bedrijf is zo goed als onmisbaar geworden als het gaat om het gebruik van open source binnen grootzakelijke IT-omgevingen. Zeker nu open ecosystemen steeds meer in de mode raken.

Van grote bedrijven tot aan vrijwel alle IT-infrastructuurleveranciers, ergens in hun oplossingen en toepassingen hebben zij wel een samenwerking met de open source-gigant. Al zijn het maar verbindingen met Kubernetes, het open source containerplatform van Google. Containers zijn de standaard geworden als het gaat om het kunnen afleveren van diverse workloads waar eindgebruikers die maar willen. Aan de edge-kant van hun netwerk, in het al dan niet on-premise datacenter, in hybride cloudomgevingen of in de bekende grote public cloudomgevingen.

Lees hier het volledige artikel

 

Bron: Techzine België

 

 

 

Awingu lanceert versie 4.2 van zijn unified workspace platform. Arnoud Marliere van Awingu legt uit welke nieuwe features en verbeteringen deze versie heeft.

Enkele nieuwe uitbreidingen:

• Verbeteringen aan end-user UX
• Uitbreiding van aggregatiemogelijkheden
• Verbeteringen in de beveiliging en "compliance space"
• Verbeteringen aan de funderingen van het platform

meer informatie

One-off smart city projects are rarely designed for the long haul. To build a city that will grow and support its citizens for decades to come, you must identify what really matters and create an architectural framework that supports that vision.

Imagine this scene, 20 years from now: You wake up, open your window, and look out over your city. I can guess that it’s a fantastic place. Note that I said “fantastic,” not “smart.”

From my own future-vision window of 2038, I see Rome. Its bi-millennial history is reflected in every stone. But this future Rome is also a city that works fluidly around me. I live a modern life while being immersed in Rome’s awesome grandeur. I have easy access to services and information. I do not distinguish between what is smart and what isn’t, because it just doesn’t matter. What does matter is that the city and its services provide what I need, when and where I need it.

I expect the projects we think of as “smart” today to turn into something else. Instead of calling out a collection of "smart" features, the city itself will seamlessly evolve in a fluid experience continuously adjusting around me and everyone else. By my expectations, these features will enable cities to better accomplish their mission to provide infrastructure, and to enable business and personal relationships. They should be unnoticeable, an obvious part of what you see around you, the way we take electricity for granted today. 

What smart really means

Current and future smart projects cannot be isolated from their surrounding environments. Smart parking, for example, isn’t a matter of just counting inbound and outbound cars and helping you to find a free lot.  Real smart parking is aware that you are entering or exiting. It interacts with an intelligent traffic system to reduce queues. It informs the restaurant that you are arriving to claim your booked table. It drives your autonomous car to the closest free lot. It charges your credit card and sends the information to your car system for your convenience. It also provides real-time information to improve operations and security in the area.

Moreover, every smart project is unique, depending on the uniqueness of each and every city. The local aspirations, needs, and priorities combine with specific legacy infrastructure and services, organizations, and regulations, defining a unique meaning for a smart project for a specific city and community. Nowadays, a smart city can be a concept (such as Singapore, based on the clear goal of sustainability and livability) or an ambition (like Dubai's aim to be the happiest city in the world). It can also be a way to solve specific problems, or an improvement in the efficiency and experience of public services.

There are plenty of opportunities, and more will be enabled by emerging technologies such as 5G, blockchain, and artificial intelligence. Around these technologies is a vibrant, multidimensional ecosystem embracing traditional players, technology providers, and innovators, with potentially infinite combinations to solve each unique city problem.

Technologies are the core enabler for such transformations, but they are not enough to make something “smart.” It is not difficult to gain additional insights about a service by gathering more digital information from a sea of sensors, or to open up relationships with citizens by providing digital access to the public services. Rather, the "smart" label should be assigned only when technology enables a foundational change, such as dramatically reducing water or power losses, transforming an insecure area into a public garden for families, or improving accessibility to people with disabilities. With a proper vision, a city can become more efficient and sustainable, and citizens' daily experiences will improve.

Are you ready for the IoT?  Here’s a framework that will get you started. 

Download the idc whitepaper

Why smart projects fail or fade away

We all can think of examples of technology uses that once impressed us but turned into dust. In the same way, how many smart city projects are likely to survive until 2038? In city terms, I've watched a number of projects disappear, including traffic monitoring systems that collected data that didn’t make a difference, a CCTV security network that didn’t increase a venue’s security, and a public Wi-Fi system that was eventually abandoned. (I’d love to hear about your own experiences.)

When projects are designed to address a point problem, well, it isn’t wrong, but implementation usually takes one or two years or even more. Then the solution lasts a year or two before the technology becomes obsolete or a city’s evolving need turns investments elsewhere. And that's with regard only to technology features. Expect at least four generations of technologies between now and that 20-year point, and 10 or more if Moore’s law is applicable. Other factors working against urban planners are changes in city population, economics, and demography. Regulations also evolve as a result.

A city’s infrastructure, services, topology, and population, on the other hand, can last and evolve over a decade or more, which means the innovation we introduce should last as long. 

Think in terms of city services and how they can change as the city does. For example, consider what a smart garden might look like. You can scatter around Wi-Fi access points and implement a good mobile app today. Or alternatively, you can envision a step-by-step evolution over several years to transform the garden experience into one that you can live in, making it more immersive, personal, and relevant.

Take that a step further and consider something more personal: your house. A house has many similarities to a city. It is designed to reflect you and the experience you want to live. It’s sustainable, but it continuously evolves. It’s intimate, and reflects your dreams, aspirations, and needs. A house is alive. Pieces of furniture come and go, parts are broken and replaced, families grow and shrink. You change, and you expect your house to change with you. However, if you don’t pay attention to how your house is evolving, you will face a mess and be disappointed. 

Now, scale that to the city level and project it over the next 20 years.

You can take steps to ensure that your house matches your vision. Engage an architect who can translate your ideas into a project, considering all of the components and constraints and looking at the outcome, even going beyond your initial ideas (or do it yourself). You might also weigh the advantages of doing minor updates in the short term versus a complete renovation that might have a better outcome. Why not do that at the city level?

Houses and city modernization must also consider specific constraints, including history, city planning, and architecture. You may need to consider elements of industrial archaeology—for example, in Rome, your decisions may be forced by the presence of the Coliseum. City designers have to work around that. Or you may have the full freedom of changing virtually everything, as in the living SimCity of Dubai. A multidisciplinary approach led by the city’s administration has to navigate those kinds of issues. 

Smart city success factors

There are three key success factors that recur in successful smart city projects.

First, create your specific strategy. No city in the world is the same, so despite having similar definitions (smart traffic, smart lightning, smart water, etc.), no smart project or service will be identical. When you scratch the surface, you see different goals, constraints, processes, technologies. So define the frame; it will likely stay consistent for a decade or two as changes are limited by a city’s momentum.

Second, you need the right components. Shortcuts, including fancy or cheap solutions, do not work in the mid term. However, open standards do work, as any city infrastructure has demonstrated in recent decades. Technology matters, therefore be smart and protect your investments by leveraging the evolution of standardsrather than potentially ephemeral proprietary capabilities.

Third, what makes a city smart, or fantastic, is the perceived outcome. A customer of mine summarized this concept: “A city is smart if it helps you.” Components or technology changes do not make a city smarter. And no one can deliver a full city outcome working on its own.

What made your 2038 view so fantastic?

Go back to your window to the future and look at your fantastic city in 2038 again: You can now capture what made it so great. You recognize a clear evolution of patterns that systematically changed all parties toward a common design. The local community flourished by leveraging the development opportunities provided by the modernized infrastructures and services. Pervasive efficiency is evident. You live in a fantastic place, not just a smart one.

Smart cities: Lessons for leaders

•    Identify what really matters for your city in the next 2, 5, 10, 20, 30 years.
•    Understand the unique frame of your city and what its future should be.
•    Capture short-term wins that are aligned with and functional to mid- and long-term evolution.
•    Engage the right ecosystem of partners to solve a city problem or enhance a city service.
•    Strategically adopt open standard technologies coherently, with a clear architectural frame.

Lorenzo Gonzales - Strategist, Global Technology and Presales, Hewlett Packard Enterprise