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analysis is made regularly; it is carried out
the first time before making the decision on
the smart space development. The analy-
sis is started from the bottom up; starting
from a single scenario and ending up with
the whole smart space. If a smart space is
expected to be profitable or not, depends
on the purpose of the space. For example,
personal spaces provide added value and
experience for their users, and therefore,
profitability is not a relevant question in
that case. In smart cities that provide in-
formation services for a variety of users,
profitability is a key issue to be assessed
and calculated. In the later phases, impact
analysis is performed after each promo-
tion. Early promotions are used for esti-
mating the acceptability of a smart space.
Promotions are made for device develop-
ers, software developers, application de-
velopers at the national and international
levels and for the joint European consor-
tiums that work in different application
fields or related technology areas. The re-
sults of these promotions are analyzed and
used for estimating business impacts and
market penetration. So far, these analyses
are made case by case without any sys-
tematic approach, and thus, these analysis
results do not provide any further under-
standing about the maturity of smart space
ecosystems in general. Moreover, contract
development is still at an immature level.
on investments is calculated so that it
provides information for decision makers
enabling them to estimate short term and
long term requirements, limitations, and
profits. Business and technical risks are
represented as the costs and time required
to pay them back.
•
Assets Analysis.
Concurrently to the risk
analysis, the value of existing assets is
analyzed in order to estimate what could
be reused, such as, what assets need to be
adapted and what kinds of new assets are
to be developed. The focus of the assets
analysis is on the functionality, quality,
constraints and potential of existing assets
in the context of the new smart space under
consideration. Software assets may include
architectural styles, middleware technolo-
gies, tools, languages and source code.
Hardware assets might include devices,
sensors, motes, networks, etc.
•
Prioritization and Selection.
This is the
last activity of the smart space initiation
phase. It results in a smart space applica-
tions backlog. This backlog consists of a
set of prioritized scenarios, describing the
smart space applications that are seen to
have the highest potential, business impact
and market penetration in a reasonable
time frame. Prioritization defines in which
order the scenarios are to be implemented
and used for promoting the space.
•
Risk Analysis.
Risk analysis covers the
risks in business and technical issues.
Business risks are related to the objective
of the space, the role of the company in
the space development and the partners
involved in its development. Moreover,
a return of investment is to be calculated
considering the investments to be made
for technology development, adaptation,
skills development and the timeframe re-
quired for their development. The return
In summary, the above mentioned smart space
initiation activities tackle all of the technical
challenges and issues, but there is lack of meth-
ods and supporting tools for analyzing business
challenges and issues. Moreover, it is obvious that
smart spaces will embody a rich set of roles for
stakeholders that are not known yet. Therefore,
there are still challenges and issues not solved: the
roles of stakeholders in SS initiation and operation
& evolution; and the rights and liabilities of the
stakeholders representing those roles.
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