Abstract
Over the last few years, the need for electricity has increased in households as new and different appliances are progressively introduced. This increased demand for electricity raises a concern to many developed and developing countries since it is a human's responsibility to assure a sustainable future. Energy demand management can be an effective approach to reduce the energy consumption; this approach requires final consumers to be empowered with more information for improving their decision-making and actions on the energy usage through increased awareness. Therefore, metering and behind the meter monitoring systems have a crucial role in the exploitation of this potential in the customer side. A significant disadvantage of traditional meters is the fact that they do not provide detailed information to the customers, which is achieved with the help of smart meters. A smart meter allows the customers to have access to the information about electricity consumption of the appliances in their houses. The acceptance of smart meters by customers is the fundamental step to achieve the potential carbon emission reductions that are provided by the use of advanced metering infrastructures. The smart meter is an advanced energy meter that measures consumption of electrical energy such as a traditional meter but also provides additional information in real time, making it the key element of the new energy demand management system. Integration of smart meters into electricity grids implies the implementation of several technologies, depending on the features that each situation request. The design of a smart meter has been in constant development since it is increasingly necessary to satisfy both the requirements of the utility company and those of the customer. Therefore, smart metering provides benefits to the energy utilities optimizing their business, and beyond that it can provide advantages to the final customers. All over the world many smart metering projects have been developed. However, it is still not entirely clear which are the associated costs, the characteristics, and the mechanisms internal to projects that bring advantages and benefits for the different concerned parties. The smart metering methods and the communication technologies used in smart grid are being substantially studied due to widespread applications of smart grid. The monitoring and control processes are largely used in industrial systems. Nevertheless, the energy management requirements at service supplier and customer promoted the evolution of smart grid and consequently the development of microgrids. This chapter discusses various characteristics and technologies that can be integrated with a smart meter for smart grids and microgrids uses. In fact, placement of smart meters needs proper selection and implementation of a communication network fulfilling the security standards of smart grid/microgrid communication. This chapter outlines various issues and challenges involved in design, deployment, utilization, and maintenance of the smart metering infrastructure.

Abstract
Wisdom of the crowds, Technological capabilities and Functional alignment, which when recognised and utilised in innovation processes, can unlock the ability to source, develop and commercialise ideas at rapid pace. The phenomenon is known as technological convergence. By definition, technological convergence is described as the process by which Information and Communications Technologies (ICTs) converge towards new and more unified markets. This convergence often leverages the three dimensions of innovation – economic, technical and functional. On the economic side, the focus of a focal firm is on maximising profits with minimal costs under resource constraints brought about in-part by liberalisation of markets. In this regard, open innovation which involves harnessing wisdom of the crowds at the fuzzy front-end of the innovation process has increasingly been promoted as a pragmatic mechanism for accessing widely distributed knowledge (Thanasopon, Papdopoulos & Vidgen, 2016), in large firms (Brunswicker & Chesbrough, 2018) and SMEs (Vanhaverbeke, Frattini, Roijakkers & Usman, 2018). On the technical side, the main driver has been the rise of enabling technologies, at times revolutioning social behaviour but mostly brought about through incremental shifts in technical abilities. Finally, convergence is realised through functional alignment, characterised by integration of computational, behaviour and communication factors in a unique value-proposition delivered through new product or new service (Canals, Torres & Borés, 2001). The growing prominence of technological convergence means firms can no longer afford to work in silos or rely on proprietory waterfall solutions to achieve competitive advantage and influence societal progress. Here, we build on our July 2018 editorial which emphasised the cumulative importance of management research and management practice working together for societal progress. W-T-F is offered here as the fundamental trilogy that both managers and researchers need to address to survive and thrive in an increasingly digitised and globally-connected world. (...)

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The sizing and siting of renewable resources-based distributed generation (DG) units has been a topic of growing interest, especially during the last decade due to the increasing interest in renewable energy systems and the possible impacts of their volatility on distribution system operation. This paper goes beyond the existing literature by presenting a comprehensive optimization model for the sizing and siting of different renewable resources-based DG units, electric vehicle charging stations, and energy storage systems within the distribution system. The proposed optimization model is formulated as a second order conic programming problem, considering also the time-varying nature of DG generation and load consumption, in contrast with the majority of the relevant studies that have been based on static values.

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Using 2D images in authentication systems raises the question of spoof attacks: is it possible to deceive an authentication system using fake models possessing identical visual properties of the genuine one? In this work, an anti-spoofing method approach for a wine anti-counterfeiting system is presented. The proposed method relies in two different color spaces: CIE L*u*v* and, to distinguish between a genuine instance and a spoof attack. To evaluate the proposed strategy, two databases were used: a private database, with photos/2D attacks of cork stoppers, created for this work; and the public Replay-Attack database that is used for face spoofing detection methods testing. The results on the private database show that the anti-spoofing approach is able to distinguish with high accuracy a real photo from an attack. Regarding the public database, the results were obtained with existing methods, as the best HTER results using a single frame approach.