IoT for Development (IoT4D)

Dear Colleagues,

As the deployment of IoT networks is expanding due to the continual decrease in the size, cost, and energy consumption of wireless devices, there are many developmental challenges that the IoT can address: food safety can be checked, water quality can be monitored, air quality can be measured, landslides can be detected, and mosquitoes can be counted in cities in real time.

Regarding applications that are relevant to developing countries, IoT solutions are emerging in many fields, including water quality, agriculture, air quality monitoring, animal tracking, and disease mapping. IoT can also benefit scientists from developing countries in bridging the so-called scientific divide. If the digital divide is defined as the gap between those with regular and effective access to digital technologies and those without, then the scientific divide can be defined as the gap between those with access to scientific data and those without. Collection of empirical data has enabled advances in science and contributed to improvements in the quality of life. Until recently, especially in environmental applications, data collection has been based mainly on a limited amount of expensive equipment using wired infrastructure. Data collection was a costly and difficult task, limited to a relatively small number of fixed, sparsely distributed locations, and maintained by organizations with large budgets. As a result, the data gathered is often incomplete, especially for developing countries and remote areas. IoT could change that radically: it is a low-cost and low-power technology that does not require any ore-existing infrastructure and can be deployed in most remote regions. The vast range of sensors that can be connected to the nodes supports many different applications, such as air-quality, water-quality, and soil-moisture monitoring.

To realize these benefits for communities and scientists, a broad portfolio of deployments and new technical solutions will be needed as a proof of concept. It is important that those deploying IoT networks consider both their potential scientific impact and their impact on local society. Wider dissemination is needed to engage a greater audience for sensor development activities.

This Special Issue aims to present a collection of exciting papers that will report the most recent advances in IoT technology for applications in developing countries. Example topics of interest include the following:

• use of IoT in intermittent networks
• lessons learned from IoT deployments in developing countries
• IoT and community networks
• DTN applications for IoT
• low power IoT solutions
• performance of IoT wireless networks in rough environments
• ethical issues in IoT4D
• edge computing applied to IoT in developing countries
• IoT and SDGs
• Localization and context-adaptive Internet of Things
• Fog/Edge Caching techniques for IoT
• Design principals and best practices for IoT application development

Dr. Marco Zennaro
Prof. Pietro Manzoni
Prof. Dr. Sandor Markon
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Future Internet is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• IoT
• ICT4D
• low cost solutions
• IoT4D