Research

The UBI (UrBan Interactions) Research Program studies particularly urban computing, or the interaction between urban spaces, human, information technology and information.

Even though research of information technology has been done for a long time now, the study of urban computing, which examines systematically the application of information technology in urban environments, is relatively young. In addition to information technology and engineering sciences, this multidisciplinary research is based on architecture, media sciences, art, design, anthropology, psychology, sociology, economics and social sciences, among others.

The growth of the importance of urban computing is explained by ICT becoming more common and the urbanisation of the world. According to the UN, already 75% of the population of developed countries and half of the entire population of the world live in cities at the moment and the proportion of urban population is constantly increasing. For example, the average mobile phone penetration of the EU was 112% in the year 2007. According to Bluetooth SIG, by the end of the year 2007, that is ten years after the launch of Bluetooth technology, 1.5 billion Bluetooth radios had been brought to play in different devices. According to Intel, a new access point for a local area network is taken into use every four seconds. Large public displays are being installed both outdoors and indoors for informative and commercial communications. An ever increasing amount of different types of sensors, for example smart weather stations, surveillance cameras and traffic counters are located in urban environments.

The UBI Program combines the universities’ research and societal service duty in a valuable way. The researchers of the UBI Program have hitherto produced ca 50 scientific publications, many of which in leading conferences of the field. Alongside with the research, the UBI Program makes a significant contribution to the urban environment of Oulu. In combining the research and societal service duty, the city of Oulu has a key role as a co-financier and co-realiser.

At the moment, the UBI Program consists of four subprojects:

• The main objective of the RealUbi project is to create the UBI Open Urban Service Network (OUSN) and to develop its feasibility with prototype services. The many different types of computing resources of ubiquitous Oulu are organized by means of a middleware software layer called the UBI Middleware.
• UbiCity project builds new IT infrastructure, which means large public displays and a heterogeneous sensor network, into the city centre of Oulu.
• UbiGo project acts as a stimulating and coordinating interface for SMEs participating in the UBI Program with their own know-how.
• UBI Anthropos is participating in creating a user-friendly ubiquitous city. The project studies the ways different people adopt and use new ubiquitous information technology, such as the UBI HotSpots and versatile sensor networks installed into the city centre of Oulu. The project also studies the attitudes the citizens and occasional visitors have towards the new technology and what kind of values and expectations they associate with it. The project also looks into how the users’ age, gender, education, employment and place of residence affect their opportunities and needs to use and utilize ubiquitous technology. The director of the project is Professor of Cultural Anthropology, PhD Taina Kinnunen.

• UbiLife project studied and developed new applications enabled by new information technology from three different viewpoints. The technology based research component developed new technologies that created a basis for new applications. The application area based ‘living lab’ research component focused on developing and testing the innovative services of a ubiquitous city in an authentic using environment with real end users. The source codes of the softwares developed in the project are available here.