Digital Transformation With Ai and Smart Servicing Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development

This book introduces and demonstrates the state-of-the art research and development in tackling sustainable urban and rural integration, supported by digitalization and digital transformation in rural areas with Industry 4.0/5.0 technologies. Digital Transformation with AI and Smart Servicing Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development is centered around how to deal with the sustainable urban and rural integration with advanced digital technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI), Big Data, Crowdsourcing, Crowdsensing and digital twin applications.

Digital Transformation with AI and Smart Servicing Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development comes from the authors international collaborative projects funded by British Council and National Sciences Foundation of China and our Newton Prize Winning project founded by UK Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy. It covers digital platform design with integrated crowdsourcing, crowdsensing and digital twin technologies for smart community services and governing. The authors discuss smart textile design for health and social care and VR/AR based tele-healthcare services for plants, livestock, and people. It also presents smart building technologies and integrated services for remote rural areas.

This book will be a valuable reference for multidisciplinary researchers, policy makers, urban and rural development engineers, and university students to support their research and work in AI and smart technology applications.

Dr Shengfeng Qin is currently a Professor in Design in Northumbria School of Design at Northumbria University, UK. Prior to Northumbria University, he was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Product Design in the Department of Design at Brunel University, UK. He received his Ph.D. degree in design from the University of Wales, UK, in 2000. He was the 2019 Newton Prize recipient based on his collaborative research work with Professor Cuixia Ma at the Institute of Software of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Transforming Service Design and Big Data Technologies into Sustainable Urbanization. Professor Qin has established the Smart Design Lab (SDL) at Northumbria School of Design, leading design research into future smart products, services, and interconnected systems design by applying cutting‑edge smart technologies and smart multidisciplinary design research methods/tools. He is currently the Editor‑in‑Chief of the International Journal of Advanced Design Research and Editor‑in‑Chief of the International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing.

Hongan Wang is currently a Professor with the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also the Director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Human Computer Interaction. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 1999. He has published over 120 papers on important journals and conferences. Prof. Wang won the Second Prize of the 2018 National Science and Technology Progress Award and the First Prize of the 2015 Beijing Science and Technology Award. His research interests include human–computer interaction, real‑time intelligence, and real‑time database.

Cuixia Ma is currently a Professor with the University of Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Shandong University, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and her Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 2003. She was the 2019 Newton Prize recipient and received the First Prize of the 2015 Beijing Science and Technology Award. Her research interests include natural user interface, sketch interaction, multimodal fusion, and visual analysis.