ABSTRACT. This research and proof-of-concept paper presents the design and implementation of a wireless local and remote-controlled prototype Rover endowed with live video streaming capability (VAAS – Vision-as-a-Service) using MQTT, one of the most effective protocols in IoT environments. This prototype works under an IPv6 WAN connection to a Cloud Computing Service and IPv4 WLAN connectivity for local control. Intelligent and Autonomous transportation systems will contribute significantly to develop Smart-Cities, intelligent logistics scenarios, and unmanned search vehicles for places not suitable for human beings, and that is the importance of the present practical paper, as well as to prove the feasibility of using MQTT through dual-stack IoT scenarios.

ABSTRACT. In the current study, the identification of open pit mining areas has been conducted using multispectral satellite images of medium (Landsat 8) and high (Sentinel 2B) spatial resolution of the province of Zamora Chinchipe in southern Ecuador. Such research involved several digital processes such as atmospheric correction, image fusion through the Brovey algorithm, noise elimination among others. We worked simultaneously with spatial and spectral patterns through the application of algorithms in order to increase spatial resolution, and spectral indices that enhance variables of interest. In addition, the Pixel Purity Index (PPI) methodology has been applied in order to obtain the classes involved in the study area based on the pure pixels and the results were compared between the two methodologies. The zones considered open-pit mining have been obtained in both cases.

ABSTRACT. The concept of Citizen Participation is increasingly being used by politicians, public officials, and civil society. Citizen participation is a topic of debate about its relevance and implementation mechanisms. On the other hand, citizen participation is a core part of the idea of Open Government as an element that configures a novel public management strategy. Open Government strategies are being assumed by governments at different levels of government, but also by civil society organizations that are involved in issues of citizen participation. However, there is a diversity about how the concept is used by different social sectors. In this sense, it is pertinent to know how this concept is perceived among the main sectors that trigger citizen participation. It is important to know these perceptions because the dispersion of the concept entails a gap between the aspirations, expectations, and objectives of public policies that promote citizen participation. The objective of this research is to analyze citizen participation from the perspectives of two fundamental sectors in the political-social participation process: Civil Society Organizations (CSO) and Government. To contrast, the perspectives of the two sectors, the case of the State of Jalisco, Mexico is studied. This research shows the results of a survey administrated to civil society organizations and public officials involved in open government actions. In order to contrast ideas and assessments, two dimensions are established for its analysis: a) open government, and b) citizen participation. The results show a considerable gap between the perceptions of public officials and organized civil society.

ABSTRACT. We report the development of an electronic system for detection and monitoring of preeclampsia for pregnant women. It is proposed, taking into account the fundamental indicators in the presence of this disorder that can be detected after 20 weeks of gestation, such as hypertension and proteinuria. The main objective is to maintain a frequent monitoring of the pregnancy of women in pregnancy, in order to reduce maternal mortality by detecting possible complications in its initial stage. The proposed electronic system allows: to measure the variables of pressure (mmHg) and proteinuria (mg / dL), keep a record of the measured variables, visualize the data through an interface and generate reports of the stored data. Using WIFI technology, the measured data is sent to a concentrator (Personal Computer), which houses a server that contains a MySQL database for the storage and presentation of the data. When the data is presented in a graphical interface, the system generates a report per patient taking into account the values of the variables of the last dates for analysis of a doctor. As a result, a promising economic electronic system that provides assistance to pregnant woman in different situation and circumstances has been developed.

ABSTRACT. The Internet has become an important source of overall health information and seems to be a common source of information used by patients in the process of decision-making before choosing a health provider. Technology holds enormous potential for improving the operational and administrative efficiency of health sector institutions, improving services, optimizing processes, and building trust between hospitals, patients and other stakeholders. Consequently, there have been increasing calls for evaluating health institutions websites, as they are widely considered to be the primary platform for interaction with patients. This study, therefore, seeks to contribute to extant knowledge by assessing eighteen hospital websites from Portugal. This is particularly important as little is known about the provided services and use of health sector websites. This work applies a four-dimensional assessment tool (HSWAI). The 4 criteria for determining site development and effectiveness include; Content, Technology, Service and Participation. This study evidences that Portuguese health sector institutes should improve their websites, especially in terms of provided electronic services, as well as user participation issues.

ABSTRACT. E-Health constitutes an interdisciplinary practice where the health sciences and the field of technologies and communication dialogue. Despite its long and extensive history, the review in scientific journals and specialized platforms on the subject, shows that it is an area of study insufficiently addressed in Latin America and the Caribbean. This work has the objective to reflect on e-health practices in Ecuador. The methodology is based on bibliographic review in documentary and virtual sources. The results show several web platforms that belong to institutions, organizations, hospitals, associations or charitable foundations, whose contents privilege the promotion and prevention of public health, in addition to other tools that encourage and streamline health processes for medical centers as for Ecuadorian citizenship. It is concluded analyzing the low advance in this field and the need to design more current strategies and programs that are adapted to the social and cultural realities of the country.

ABSTRACT. Cloud computing technology is being adopted by organizations driven by their need of reducing operational costs, and to deliver scalable and flexible services. Solutions deployed on cloud are a great point of interest in the commercial and governmental area for e-commerce transactions due to their availability and advantages of those platforms. Here, electronic invoicing applications play a key role in commercial activities, being a branch of vital importance for the business activities. In order to accomplish certain tasks (e.g., collection of overdue invoices, notifications about payment plans) technological solutions have been proposed. However, it is important to establish architectures that support developers in creating said solutions in order to send messages about issues of interest for organizations in a proper manner. Thus, this paper proposes a services architecture for the creation of this type of platforms, which allows the management of notifications with information provided by companies. Such service could be provided by the use of cloud computing technologies in order to allow ubiquitous and heterogeneous access in a flexible and easy to configure manner, in which it will be possible to change the notifications’ requirements without a reimplementation of the application. Here, a model driven engineering can be a suitable solution to be taken into consideration.

ABSTRACT. While cross-border e-commerce aims at efficiency and speed, the area still faces administrative burden and time-consuming issued when goods are being circulated across borders. The current paper looks into the problems cited by companies, tax boards, customers and other relevant stakeholders in VAT declarations in cross-border e-commerce and aims to solve them through creating an automated VAT declaration system in cooperation with various e-commerce platforms and aimed at non-EU SMEs. The paper defines the problems in today’s system through analyzing EU documents and interviews conducted with relevant stakeholders and looks into the new legal VAT reform that will enable companies to declare their VAT in only one chosen EU Member State.

ABSTRACT. With this paper we aim at investigating interrelations between open government data (OGD) and corruption, in particular, the potential of OGD to reduce the level of corruption and to stimulate the creation of public services. For this purpose, we delve into the case of Ukraine. Ukraine is an example of an efficient use of open data for the creation of data-driven public services and anti-corruption tools. First, we provide an overview of major OGD initiatives in Ukraine. Second, we have conducted interviews with leading open data stakeholders and experts from Ukraine. The analysis of these interview aims at understanding in how far OGD eradicates corrupt behavior. We present the findings from this analysis in terms of the categories of government accountability, cultural issues, abundance of data, intrinsic data issues, the role of e-services and the relationship of OGD implementation and communication.

ABSTRACT. Open Government Data is an initiative that promotes transparency, accountability and value creation by making government data available to all. Open government data initiatives have become very popular worldwide because of the benefits that they can entail, especially in developed countries. However, many of these initiatives no always achieve the expected benefits. Although related research has reported that most of these initiatives face various problems affecting their success, little emphasis has been put on understanding such problems. Accordingly, in this study, we report our efforts to explore the main problems affecting open government data initiatives. Specifically, we performed a literature review in order to establish seven problem categories with their respective subcategories. Additionally, using an Information Systems adoption process, we established the impact and occurrence of each of these problems before, during, and after the open government data initiative is adopted.

ABSTRACT. The present study aims to review the status of local e-government sophistication in the province of Manabí (Ecuador). Website content analysis and a three-dimensional maturity model (e-information, e-services, e-participation) are used to assess the state of maturity of the 22 cantons that compose the province. Descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and clustering technics are used to analyze results. The comparison of the results with previous studies in other countries allows the conclusion that there is still a significant margin for improvement in the studied cantons, namely in the dimensions related to electronic service delivery and citizen’s participation. The results also show the existence of a hierarchy between the three dimensions of analysis and that different profiles of municipalities exist in what concerns the balance between those three dimensions. These last two findings are consistent with other studies that used the same methodology in other countries

ABSTRACT. This paper brings us a vision of what dissenting votes mean in eSociety, particularly linked to eJustice, and a real cases in Spanish jurisdictional process. As soon as judicial decision has an increased repercussion even more than it could have itself, our hyper-connected society and social networks on the Internet take a relevant influential role, giving a never before seen feedback to the Judiciary. Easy access to case law, jurisdictional texts and judicial decisions in electronic form are elements with great impact, surpassing traditional publicity. An interesting case of study related to electronic media, and particularly through social networks, has been the dissenting vote of the rape case called “the wolfpack”, known as “La manada” in Spain, that that has crossed the borders of electronic protests to the streets, with demonstrations and reactions against it, particularly from feminist movements. Our hypothesis is that dissenting vote as an eSociety conceptualization has an electronic-digital component whose easy diffusion through the Internet makes it different from the traditional concept. It changes from being an ordinary procedural mechanism within a restricted scope of decision, to opening a debate at citizenship level. It involves nuances on transparency in the digital society, and of course in the idea of Open Justice as part of Open Government initiatives. As a field experience and methodological system, we will use electronic justice ICT tools, such as web-based HJ of the Constitutional Court of Spain and others to explore these considerations analytically.

ABSTRACT. Population growth is a phenomenon that needs to be controlled and planned over a long period of time. However, it has been demonstrated, that cities grow disorganized, expanding into unsuitable places as a result of schedules performed with obsolete cartographic thematic information and of large scale. Based on the aforementioned, through the use of geotechnologies and the multicriteria evaluation (Saaty) of the variables such as Morphological Unit, Earrings, Soil texture and, Agrological classes, it has been possible to identify feasible places for the expansion of the urban area of the city of Babahoyo in Ecuador. Taking as reference the limitations of the territory in which the city is located, the constant presence of limitations (light, moderate, severe) to accept this type of urban use has been evident. Some 29.53% of the study area has not been not suitable for this activity, while 38.01% have moderate to severe limitations, and only 21.26% appear to have slight to moderate limitations. This indicates, that Babahoyo lacks of appropriate spaces and has no limitations for human settlements. This situation has led the decision-makers to analyze the feasibility of building on the wetland that is located on the outskirts of the city.

ABSTRACT. Ground-Penetrating Radar (GPR) is a non-destructive, non-invasive tool that can be used to help detecting water leaks in water distribution networks. SensPort was a project carried out with the financing of the Walloon Region in Belgium. It used ground penetrating radar, advanced and integrated systems to provide a convenient, inexpensive, and non-invasive solution. We describe the importance of detecting water leaks in underground pipes in cities and under roads. The paper describes the development life cycle of a human-computer interface with a mobile (e.g., tablet-like) device to visualize water leaks in an area being studied. The visualization strategies used considered the processing of data as images and 2D/3D representations on mobile devices.

ABSTRACT. This work describes the AirQ2: Quito Air Quality Monitoring and Visualization Tool, which is a web application for data visualization of meteorological and contaminant data of the Ecuadorian capital. The tool was implemented in R-shiny and allows the users to visualize hourly, daily, monthly profiles of the variables; a variety of univariate and multivariate graphs for exploratory data analysis; as well as, a spatial geolocalized representation of the contaminants. AirQ2 can support decision and policy makers to develop environmental policies and regulations; as well as, help to the general public to better understand and educate on air pollution tendencies in urban conglomerates.

ABSTRACT. Public opinion is associated with the study of attitudes, preferences, and beliefs among people toward a specific subject. This study is applicable in many fields, such as politics, to better understand citizens' opinions and to manage them accordingly; for commercial companies, to understand customers' satisfaction; among academic organizations, for research purposes; and in media, for posting articles based on public opinion. The fact that public opinion could be used as a tool in many fields is the core motivation of this work. According to academic literature, one of the most widely used techniques to quantify and interpret public opinion is surveying. Surveying consists of a series of steps to choose a sample population, develop a questionnaire to be answered by the sample population, collect the response data using different methods, and finally interpret and quantify the results. In this work, the Twitter social network is used to collect data in the context of the 2018 Ecuadorian national referendum and constitutional reforms during the three months of political campaigning before the voting. The objective was to analyze public opinions obtained from Twitter and to compare it with the official results presented by the National Council of Elections in Ecuador after the voting. The results presented in this work indicate that Twitter data can be used to extract public opinion with a high level of confidence in sensitive scenarios like elections or voting processes.

ABSTRACT. E-voting implantation is happening at a slower pace than anticipated. Several technical, social and cultural challenges hinder a broader application. In this work, the authors contribute to address the problem by applying a practical evaluation framework to two of the most widely used e-voting systems: Helios Voting and iVote from Scytl. The framework is strongly based on the technical and security requirements issued by the Council of Europe in 2017. The authors believe it can constitute a useful source of information for election officials, researchers and voters. The ultimate goal is contributing to a gradual, secure and protocolized expansion of e-voting in Europe; more so in the present times, with mounting geo-political conflicts and crossed interests.

ABSTRACT. The world’s digital transformation has influenced not only the way we do business, but also the way we perform daily activities. Social media has a clear influence on people, especially during events such as elections where recent international events have shown that social media played an important role. In fact, there are three main aspects in this digital landscape: political movements and political candidates looking for popular support (number of followers), citizens’ messages discussing social issues (trending topics on social media), and political propaganda appearing in the net in favor or against politicians or political movements (advertisement).

One of the issues with social media is the presence of automatic accounts (bots) that artificially fill accounts with fake followers, create false trending topics, and share fake news or simply flood the net with propaganda. All this artificial generated information may influence people and sometimes may even censor people’s real opinions undermining their freedom of speech and affecting true democracy.

In this paper, we present a set of observations based on two main objectives: collect evidence of digital campaigning during the Presidential Elections in Ecuador 2017 and describe the mechanisms used for this campaign. Finally, we show how candidates prepared online campaigns in Twitter and how normal patterns of new followers’ subscriptions were altered. And, we collected information about more than 30,000 bots filtered only by political content used for propaganda purposes.

ABSTRACT. The Industry 4.0 promotes the use of information technologies in manufacturing processes to obtain customized products that satisfy new consumers by transforming the traditional model of automation to a model of interconnected services. This new model allows the communication between clients, factory and suppliers, creating an ecosystem that includes the so-called "smart" intelligence and allows to have a more flexible production system through the interconnection and sharing of data. In this new environment, Standardization is the key factor for this interconnected world. This paper analyzes the need to adapt existing standards or create new ones for Industry 4.0. The main contribution of this paper is to discuss the importance of standardization in Industry 4.0 and identify the aspects that represent a great opportunity for research and work.

ABSTRACT. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) affect the different processes universities develop, these institutions are fundamental to knowledge production and the development of society. ICTs are dynamic and universities face a complex challenge in order to transform into digital organizations. The objective of this case study is to analyze the inclusion of ICTsbased indicators in the quality evaluation processes of higher education institutions and to propose ICTs aspects to support the digital transformation of Ecuadorian universities. There were analyzed eight quality evaluation models applied in Ecuador in the last five years for higher educational institutions and career accreditation. There was determined that a native impulse for digital transformation has been present in the quality models applied, digital transformation drivers were defined in order to offer a guide to include digital aspects in each quality criteria that impulse digital transformation at Ecuadorian universities.

ABSTRACT. Monitoring of forest ecosystems through the knowledge of aboveground biomass (AGB) is fundamental for the adequate development of management plans in natural resources and for the improvement of wellbeing of the local as well as global population. The amount of biomass is estimated by means of allometric equations that include dasometric variables such as the normal diameter of the tree (D), whose values are determined by applying conventional techniques of forest measurements and alternative methodologies such as the terrestrial laser scanner system. The main aim of the current study has been to analyze the D values of the trees applying a static terrestrial laser-scanning (TLS) technology and conventional techniques (CT) to estimate the AGB in a sector of the "La Armenia" forest, in the central Inter-Andean Valley of Ecuador. Two plots have been defined, with the purpose of optimizing the capture and handling of the terrestrial LIDAR information obtained through the Faro Focus 3D laser scanner, as well as facilitating the field work using a tape measure in the determination of the D of the trees from the generated three-dimensional models. Hereby, the D of 93 trees located within the project's application area have been yielded digitally. We verified statistically that the values of the D of the studied trees applying TLS, are similar within errors as those obtained using TC, given that the hypothesis of equality has been accepted when performing the Z and Chi squared tests, in addition to the Pearson coefficient (R² = 0.995), which indicated a strong correlation of the given variables. Finally, a total of 334,111 tn / ha of forest AGB has been estimated. The amount of biomass estimated based on direct observations of the territory through the application of TLS, provides essential information for decision making in the implementation of policies on forest management in the country.

ABSTRACT. In this paper a study of literature review of the evolutionary process of different encryption mechanisms from the principles of humanity and its various processes decryption is performed, emphasizing the different human activities today, which should be based on confidence and security criteria. Once addressed the different alternatives of classical order is necessary to assume that security systems are exposed to vulnerabilities that can lead to collapse and thus to endanger the information so that it becomes clear to the challenge of raising research a new field as quantum cryptography which is not dependent on the computing capacity of the adversary but is guaranteed absolutely by the laws of quantum physics, although is in a beginning stage is necessary to motivate work for the purpose of research in academia, industry, society in general is taken as a robust alternative security.

ABSTRACT. The automation process for inferring users' interest groups is a challenge task in social networks research and it has applications in marketing, social sciences and recommendation systems. Manually labeling of documents is a difficult and an expensive task, but it is essential for training an automatic text classifier. Actually, there are several approaches where the problem is treated as a multi-label prediction task. In this work, a low-cost and functional methodology is proposed to automatically categorize data by considering Reddit and Twitter data. First, a dataset of 42.100 publications belongs to popular forums site Reddit is collected to train a model with labeled data. Then, a dataset of tweets, an average of 100 tweets per user, from 1573 profiles is collected to predict users’ topics of interest with the trained model. Finally, we were able to automatically categorize data with an average precision of 76.45%.

ABSTRACT. Oral skills development is a critical aspect when learning English since it is a complex process which involves much more than simply pronouncing isolated words. The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the use of the software My English Tutor and the oral skill competence. This research was applied to 18 pupils from third semester and 11 pupils from fourth semester in the English Teacher Training Program at Technical University of Ambato. This preliminary study was carried out using both a control and experimental group design, pre-tests and post-tests were applied as well. Pupils from the experimental group took active part in the practice of MyET Software activities, and the employment of a t-test was used to proof the hypothesis. Furthermore, surveys were used to determine the degree of acceptance and usefulness of this software. The results revealed that the improvement in pronunciation was the same for both control and experimental groups. Additional testing should be done to validate the scores obtained by students with the use of this tool. Pupils showed a positive attitude about using this technological tool.

ABSTRACT. Over the past decade, rapid integration of new computer systems and infor¬mation technology takes place both in the State’s and public authorities’ activi¬ties, and in various social spheres. As of today, development and implementa¬tion of high technology and informatization process in various areas of social activities lead to drastic increase in the living standards of population. The healthcare sector is not an exception in this regard. Due to this, application of high technologies in medical activity including provision of medical care using telemedicine becomes particularly apparent. It is worth noting that European countries have a wealth of experience in using telemedicine, while Russia is still at the initial stage of creation and implementation of such information technologies in healthcare. Russian laws and regulations governing organization of telemedicine are still at the phase of discussion and approval. The purpose of this article is to consider problematic issues related to legal regulation of tele¬medicine both in foreign countries and in Russia, as well as to conclude wheth¬er solutions applied abroad to overcome legal gaps in telemedicine can be ap¬plied in Russia.

ABSTRACT. In face of the uninterrupted advancement of Information and Communication Technology (ICT) tools, public sectors are getting closer and closer to citizens. In this sense, web portals have become an important instrument to enable society to access public information. Therefore, this article sought to present an overview of the accountability existing in the official websites of national parliaments and courts of the Southern Common Market (MERCOSUR) countries. The methodology used was based on an observation protocol that took into account the indicators proposed by the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), for the legislative, and by Porto [12], for the judiciary. In conclusion, a significant superiority was observed in Brazil, regarding the presence of accountability dimensions in both parliaments and court of justice. Although Argentina has performed reasonably well in the legislative branch, it lacks substantial improvements in the Argentine Supreme Court of Justice website. On the other hand, Paraguay and Uruguay showed a more effective need to increase the availability of information in their web portals, both for the legislative and judicial branches. The research also indicates an opportunity for greater interaction between the selected countries, in an effort to share good transparency and accessibility practices on public data.

ABSTRACT. In this research, the development of an Electromyograph is proposed to acquire the action potentials that the muscles generate and get a reliable diagnosis to early detection of myopathies. The Electromyographic signal (EMG) is conditioning through instrumentation amplifiers, then it is filtered and finally rectifies to obtain a suitable signal in the digitization process. The Electromyographic signal can be sending through wireless communication, under Bluetooth standard, it can be observed in any type of smart device through an application developed in android studio. The EMG signal allows to observing the potentials generated by the different muscles in form of graphs, these potentials are filtered digitally with the aim of detecting the slightest variation in the action potential of a muscle, thus allowing a high sensitivity to fibrillations and positive waves, both symptoms of a muscular disease. In this way, is intended to give an effective and economic solution to the diagnosis and detection of muscle diseases, through a high sensitivity electromyograph.

ABSTRACT. Rapid technological development and industrialization have brought with them side effects that have little by little damaged the atmosphere, whose importance is vital for the survival of all living beings and the climatic balance. Air pollution is one of the biggest causes of mortality and environmental issues claiming 7 million lives annually due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Urban centers contain millions of people of all ages and health states. However, certain daily activities could be avoided by sensitive population, if the awareness of air quality conditions would be more user friendly/accessible. This paper summarizes the heuristic evaluation carried out to the Quito Air Quality application, a new mobile application to display the concentrations of air pollutants in the whole city of Quito. Since, there is a limited number of monitoring stations (9 stations only) the mobile application use an interpolation method to estimate the concentration of pollutants whatever the location in the city. The development of the interfaces is carried out by an agile, collaborative and user-centered methodology. The results have allowed us to obtain a series of recommendations that could be applied to improve the functionalities and the user interface of any air quality application.

ABSTRACT. This investigation propose a monitoring system of physiological signals in cyclists by using lighting equipment of low power consumption to allow them to be more visible at the moment to share the road with vehicles, preserving your safety and reducing the risk of accidents caused by drivers or pedestrians. The prototype consists of a fixed part located on the bike and a mobile part that is the clothing of the rider. In the mobile part, temperature and pulse oximetry data are processed, submitting the information via Wifi to the bicycle station that coordinates the order of turning on the light signals installed in clothing. The fixed part is responsible to communicate through the LTE network to Internet, in order to manage alerts generated by the system and send the information to a server in the cloud. The data obtained by the system are stored in a Web Hosting that manages events alerts through client/server services to notify family accidents and changes in health status.

ABSTRACT. The increase in life expectancy due to improvements in living and medical standards has resulted in an aging population that in many cases present diseases and disabilities. In the last few years the Ecuadorian Government through its public policy has intended to guarantee the well-being of people from birth to death; however, there have not been enough social programs or opportunities for older people in order to achieve their well-being. This fact gets worse when their families abandon older adults and therefore find themselves alone in total helplessness. Under this context, there are few public nursing homes to help and take care of them in their last years of life. This work presents a care model with the introduction of ICT, implemented in a public Nursing Home with limited human and economic resources located in the Valley of Los Chillos. The primary objective was to enhance well-being of around 50 older people. The study used ICT for surveillance, assistance, and control; helping with the perception of a better life, addressing both physical and psychological states of elders.

ABSTRACT. The use of Online Social Networks (OSNs) in electoral campaigns is no longer an option for candidates and their campaign teams. Their performance in the virtual public sphere will mark substantial differences at the time of vote. Indeed, although the presence of politicians in social media does not guarantee their victory in elections, it is unthinkable to build their public profile outside of OSNs. The present study intends to analyze the use of Twitter by the main female political leaders during the campaign of the mid-term legislative elections in Argentina in 2017. Specifically, it aims to investigate the issues promoted by the Argentine leaders in Twitter, the interactions they had with "traditional" media and the type of dialogue they established with each other. Likewise, based on their profiles, an attempt to identify which leadership characteristics these candidates possess will be made. Finally, we will study the influence of the gender and location variables in their narratives.

ABSTRACT. The economic and environmental need of using the right amount of water for irrigation has led to the development of different technological systems, such as simple automatic solutions that activate the irrigation process at well-defined times. The main disadvantage of those systems is that they do not consider the actual amounts of water needed by the crops nor the meteorological variables that influence their development. An alternative to the use of automatic systems is the use of smart irrigation systems that focus on the actual dosage of water needed by the crops. In the development of this project, the design and implementation of a smart irrigation system are carried out through the sensing of soil moisture and meteorological variables. That information is used to implement a smart control scheme which manages the flow of water for irrigation. One of the novel ideas in this work is the realization of a fuzzy logic system that determines the prevailing sky conditions in the area, which obtained an accuracy of 76.92 %. The amount of water needed for each crop can be determined by an agronomic design, and a comparison of the amount of water required by the smart irrigation system and gravity irrigation was performed, obtaining estimated savings of 68 %. The obtained results serve as a proof of concept for a novel system that could have a beneficial social and environmental impact in agriculture.

ABSTRACT. Tax Administrations have the control of tax evasion but the risk of non-payment exist. To avoid that risk they have used historical information and analysis techniques that allow to identify the source of the evasion problem selecting high-risk taxpayers, create risk models, offer new services, design methods to control taxpayers, and evaluate decisions. However, the Tax Administrations does not have unlimited resources for the control process. Consequently, the management model used in tax administrations must seek the voluntary compliance of taxpayers through intelligent controls and with efficient use of resources. Additionally, those controls must explore a large amount of structured, semi-structured and unstructured information from different source of information that has been accumulated over the years. This study aims to present a literature review about the use of data mining techniques in Tax Administrations. Therefore, we analyze publications in scientific data bases and documents of organizations that support Tax Administrations. Our study focus on identifying problems that could be resolved with data mining, limits that have been risen, results that have been obtained by applying data mining in tax administrations and techniques that have been used. Our study could be beneficial to devise how data mining could support the activities of Tax Administrations and encourage the application of new data mining techniques in the analysis of information.

ABSTRACT. This PhD. Student works on researching nature and typification of cybercrime, how it affects the infrastructures that provide services to citizens. Strategic infrastructures are object of study. In addition, of these, the so-called critical infrastructures. Is intimate the relationship between critical infrastructures with Smart Cities and these both with Smart G rids to achieve the objectives that better and more efficient way governance of one and the other. This doctoral thesis, also studies the reaction of the states to protect themselves from cybercrime and these infrastructures.

ABSTRACT. The Industry 4.0 or also called the Fourth Industrial Revolution is the digitalization of the manufacturing world through the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in manufacturing processes, through the change of the traditional pyramid model of automation to a model of interconnected services through connecting systems and sharing data to gain efficiency and improve productivity, generating an ecosystem among clients, suppliers and producers. This change is described as disruptive and has already been implemented in large companies such as Siemens, Volkswagen, among others. In practice, SMEs are part of this new ecosystem and must also adopt Industry 4.0. Germany a leading country of the Fourth Industrial Revolution has support programs for SMEs, Spain has also allocated economic resources for this purpose, however, a formal methodology based on digital technologies for the implementation of Industry 4.0 in SMEs is not yet known.

ABSTRACT. The rapid development of the technological media and the improvement of communication have turned the world into a "global village". This term was claimed by the scientist Marshal McLaren, who predicted future development of the world into a global system. As a village, the world becomes smaller with interdependence and inter-state relations. This dependence is expressed both economically and socially. A period of globalization is characterized by the recognition of new global issues, such as global warming, natural disasters, the struggle against poverty and others. These problems require humanity to cooperate in an international framework. However, the recognition itself does not provide the solutions to these problems, and despite the technological and social connections on the Internet, we are still witnesses to government methods that based on concepts and technologies from the previous centuries. Modern nation states that based on cumbersome mechanisms of government and decision making, can not cope with the challenges they face in the technological age. Making decisions in its institutions are slow with a problem to create cooperation (even when there is apparently a common interest). All of these reasons lead to a large gap between government institutions and technological development. One of the most prominent solutions that are supposed to bridge this gap is the combination of advanced communication technology with government concepts. This tool is called digital democracy or e-democracy. That study requires qualitative research based on a thorough distinction of the subject. The study needs to review various theories from the subject of the social and political sciences, humanities, economics, and law with linkage to the resent technological development and new management possibilities. It is important to note that a solution to the problems I have presented before, is not easy and unequivocal. The use of technology and communication is also connected to many various dangers such as terrorism, fundamentalism, and moral nihilism. Therefore, in the one hand, an accurate distinction and in-depth research are needed to help identify the weaknesses of contemporary liberal democracy in order to strengthen them, from the other hand and preserve the strengths and mechanisms that are supposed to swallow the formation of anarchy.

ABSTRACT. This Ph.D. project aims to assess the effects of crowdlaw initiatives, or “authoring and annotation tools created specifically for online legislative purposes” (Noveck, 2015, p.13). This entails analyzing the results of public participation on these platforms (outputs); analyzing whether and the degree to which crowdlaw initiatives translate the public’s preferences into legislation (outcomes); identifying the factors that can explain these results; and finally, evaluating to what extent these platforms are effective according to participants and the main stakeholders involved. This empirical research will be based on a qualitative, multiple case study, focusing on four experiences in Latin America: The Brazil Civil Rights Framework for the Internet, DEMOS, the petitions on Plataforma ConstituciónCDMX and #TuConstitución. It will be carried out through a series of semi-structured interviews with the main actors and participants of the initiatives, expert interviews and process tracing. Data sources include the initiatives' online platforms and reports, press articles, the pieces of legislation each initiative aimed at impacting, and content from the interviews conducted.