Kristina Flüchter

Bio: Kristina Flüchter is an academic researcher from ETH Zurich. The author has contributed to research in topics: The Internet & Internet appliance. The author has an hindex of 5, co-authored 7 publications receiving 2942 citations.

Internet of Things - Technology and Value Added

Abstract: It has been next to impossible in the past months not to come across the term ‘‘Internet of Things’’ (IoT) one way or another. Especially the past year has seen a tremendous surge of interest in the Internet of Things. Consortia have been formed to define frameworks and standards for the IoT. Companies have started to introduce numerous IoTbased products and services. And a number of IoT-related acquisitions have been making the headlines, including, e.g., the prominent takeover of Nest by Google for $3.2 billion and the subsequent acquisitions of Dropcam by Nest and of SmartThings by Samsung. Politicians as well as practitioners increasingly acknowledge the Internet of Things as a real business opportunity, and estimates currently suggest that the IoT could grow into a market worth $7.1 trillion by 2020 (IDC 2014). While the term Internet of Things is now more and more broadly used, there is no common definition or understanding today of what the IoT actually encompasses. The origins of the term date back more than 15 years and have been attributed to the work of the Auto-ID Labs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on networked radio-frequency identification (RFID) infrastructures (Atzori et al. 2010; Mattern and Floerkemeier 2010). Since then, visions for the Internet of Things have been further developed and extended beyond the scope of RFID technologies. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) for instance now defines the Internet of Things as ‘‘a global infrastructure for the Information Society, enabling advanced services by interconnecting (physical and virtual) things based on, existing and evolving, interoperable information and communication technologies’’ (ITU 2012). At the same time, a multitude of alternative definitions has been proposed. Some of these definitions exhibit an emphasis on the things which become connected in the IoT. Other definitions focus on Internet-related aspects of the IoT, such as Internet protocols and network technology. And a third type centers on semantic challenges in the IoT relating to, e.g., the storage, search and organization of large volumes of information (Atzori et al. 2010). The fields of application for IoT technologies are as numerous as they are diverse, as IoT solutions are increasingly extending to virtually all areas of everyday. The most prominent areas of application include, e.g., the smart industry, where the development of intelligent production systems and connected production sites is often discussed under the heading of Industry 4.0. In the smart home or building area, intelligent thermostats and security systems are receiving a lot of attention, while smart energy applications focus on smart electricity, gas and water meters. Smart transport solutions include, e.g., vehicle fleet tracking and mobile ticketing, while in the smart health area, topics such as patients’ surveillance and chronic disease management are being addressed. And in the context of Accepted after one revision by Prof. Dr. Sinz.

Implementing the connected e-bike: challenges and requirements of an IoT application for urban transportation

Abstract: As local transportation systems are facing enormous challenges in consequence of extensive urban growth, technological advancements are creating unprecedented opportunities as the Internet is extending into the real world, connecting physical items to the virtual world and creating an Internet of Things (IoT). While many activities are exploring corresponding applications, e.g. connecting bicycles to the Internet, widespread economic success of a truly connected device is still outstanding. Focusing on electric bicycles (e-bikes), this study investigates challenges and requirements of an IoT implementation based on GPS trackers from a technological as well as consumer perspective. The results of a four-month field study suggest a high interest of users in data from a connected e-bike but also indicate that technological restrictions still exist e.g. concerning the completeness of collected data. Also, such limitations appear to become further accentuated in view of high user expectations towards the accuracy and visualization of data, pointing to tradeoffs, which may have to be made in the design of IoT implementations between the completeness and convenience of data collection as well as the energy consumption of a sensor and the attractiveness of use cases to consumers.

Digital commuting: the effect of social normative feedback on e-bike commuting - evidence from a field study

Abstract: As a consequnce of extensive urban growth, local transportation systems are facing enormous challenges, leading to massive investments in infrastructure and travel demand management measures to steer demand for specific travel modes. Meanwhile, technological advancements are creating unprecedented opportunities for collecting and utilizing travel data at previously unknown levels of detail. Such information may in the form of social normative feedback constitute a powerful tool for influncing human behaviour. Focusing on electric bicycles (e-bikes) as potentially central means of future transportation, this study evaluates whether IS-enabled social normative feedback can increase the usage of e-bikes for commuting. The results of a five-week field study and mixed effects logistic regression analysis support a positive impact of social normative feedback on e-bike commuting. We, however, also detect a negative effect on a group of participants with particularly long commuting distances, and effects of weather conditions and commuting distances on e-bike usage. Our findings add to existing research in the areas of travel mode choice, and social norms, and support policy makers in travel demand management. Ultimately, employers may view our findings as a source of inspiration for promoting the health of their employees and increasing the attractiveness of their places to work.

Promoting Sustainable Travel Behavior through IS-Enabled Feedback – Short-Term Success at the Cost of Long-Term Motivation?

Abstract: The shaping of sustainable future transportation systems is posing serious challenges for policy-makers today and massive investments are made into infrastructures and travel demand management. Meanwhile, Green IS research is addressing the potential of information systems as high-scale, low-cost means of influencing human actions and has successfully been applying psychological theories. However, research is still in its early stages and while positive short-term effects are relatively well understood, little is known about the long-term effects of such measures. This study, investigates the impact of an IS-enabled social normative feedback intervention on the intrinsic motivation of participants of an e-bike commuting competition. The results of a four-month field study show a negative effect of the intervention on participants’ intrinsic motivation, thus challenging long-term benefits of the measure. Additionally, our findings lend support to the reasoning of Cognitive Evaluation Theory that a dissatisfaction of participants’ need for autonomy may underlie this effect.

How do hedonic design features influence an application's usage

Abstract: Mobile applications (apps) have permeated every walk of our life. This has motivated many companies to jump onto the «mobile wave» and develop specific apps for their products and services. With the growing number of apps, it has become ever more difficult for companies to arrest attention and to motivate users to continuously use the installed apps. A strategy that frequently is followed is to «beautify» primarily utilitarian apps with hedonic design features in order to increase enjoyment. The current study therefore attempts to understand what effects do hedonic design features have on the usage of utilitarian apps. Our findings show that the implementation of hedonic design features goes along with two effects. First, the general duration how long a user uses an app is increased. Second, there is an inadvertent side effect in that hedonic design features negatively impact the usage duration of an app's utilitarian functionality. The paper concludes with the discussion of theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

Internet of Things in Industries: A Survey

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) has provided a promising opportunity to build powerful industrial systems and applications by leveraging the growing ubiquity of radio-frequency identification (RFID), and wireless, mobile, and sensor devices. A wide range of industrial IoT applications have been developed and deployed in recent years. In an effort to understand the development of IoT in industries, this paper reviews the current research of IoT, key enabling technologies, major IoT applications in industries, and identifies research trends and challenges. A main contribution of this review paper is that it summarizes the current state-of-the-art IoT in industries systematically.

A Survey on Internet of Things: Architecture, Enabling Technologies, Security and Privacy, and Applications

Abstract: Fog/edge computing has been proposed to be integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) to enable computing services devices deployed at network edge, aiming to improve the user’s experience and resilience of the services in case of failures. With the advantage of distributed architecture and close to end-users, fog/edge computing can provide faster response and greater quality of service for IoT applications. Thus, fog/edge computing-based IoT becomes future infrastructure on IoT development. To develop fog/edge computing-based IoT infrastructure, the architecture, enabling techniques, and issues related to IoT should be investigated first, and then the integration of fog/edge computing and IoT should be explored. To this end, this paper conducts a comprehensive overview of IoT with respect to system architecture, enabling technologies, security and privacy issues, and present the integration of fog/edge computing and IoT, and applications. Particularly, this paper first explores the relationship between cyber-physical systems and IoT, both of which play important roles in realizing an intelligent cyber-physical world. Then, existing architectures, enabling technologies, and security and privacy issues in IoT are presented to enhance the understanding of the state of the art IoT development. To investigate the fog/edge computing-based IoT, this paper also investigate the relationship between IoT and fog/edge computing, and discuss issues in fog/edge computing-based IoT. Finally, several applications, including the smart grid, smart transportation, and smart cities, are presented to demonstrate how fog/edge computing-based IoT to be implemented in real-world applications.

Industry 4.0: state of the art and future trends

Abstract: Rapid advances in industrialisation and informatisation methods have spurred tremendous progress in developing the next generation of manufacturing technology. Today, we are on the cusp of the Fourth Industrial Revolution. In 2013, amongst one of 10 ‘Future Projects’ identified by the German government as part of its High-Tech Strategy 2020 Action Plan, the Industry 4.0 project is considered to be a major endeavour for Germany to establish itself as a leader of integrated industry. In 2014, China’s State Council unveiled their ten-year national plan, Made-in-China 2025, which was designed to transform China from the world’s workshop into a world manufacturing power. Made-in-China 2025 is an initiative to comprehensively upgrade China’s industry including the manufacturing sector. In Industry 4.0 and Made-in-China 2025, many applications require a combination of recently emerging new technologies, which is giving rise to the emergence of Industry 4.0. Such technologies originate from different disciplines ...

Internet of Things for Smart Cities

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) shall be able to incorporate transparently and seamlessly a large number of different and heterogeneous end systems, while providing open access to selected subsets of data for the development of a plethora of digital services. Building a general architecture for the IoT is hence a very complex task, mainly because of the extremely large variety of devices, link layer technologies, and services that may be involved in such a system. In this paper we focus specifically to an urban IoT systems that, while still being quite a broad category, are characterized by their specific application domain. Urban IoTs, in fact, are designed to support the Smart City vision, which aims at exploiting the most advanced communication technologies to support added-value services for the administration of the city and for the citizens.

The Internet of Things--A survey of topics and trends

Abstract: The Internet of Things is a paradigm where everyday objects can be equipped with identifying, sensing, networking and processing capabilities that will allow them to communicate with one another and with other devices and services over the Internet to accomplish some objective. Ultimately, IoT devices will be ubiquitous, context-aware and will enable ambient intelligence. This article reports on the current state of research on the Internet of Things by examining the literature, identifying current trends, describing challenges that threaten IoT diffusion, presenting open research questions and future directions and compiling a comprehensive reference list to assist researchers.