Future Generation Computer Systems 37 (2014) 201202

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Future Generation Computer Systems

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/fgcs

Editorial

Semantics, intelligent processing and services for big data

Fatos Xhafa a, , Leonard Barolli b
a

Campus Nord, Ed. Omega, Universitat Politcnica de Catalunya (UPC), C/Jordi Girona, 1-3, 08034 Barcelona, Spain

Fukuoka Institute of Technology (FIT), 3-30-1 Wajiro-higashi, Higashi-ku, Fukuoka, 811-0295, Japan

article

info

Article history:
Available online 18 February 2014
Keywords:
Big data
Semantics
Intelligent services
Security
Massive and distributed processing

abstract
With the continuous increase of data, scaling up to unprecedented amounts, generated by Internet-based
systems, Big Data has emerged as a new research field, coined as Big Data Science. The core of Big
Data Science is the extraction of knowledge from data as a basis for intelligent services and decision
making systems, however, it encompasses many research topics and investigates a variety of techniques
and theories from different fields, including data mining and machine learning, information retrieval,
analytics, and indexing services, massive processing and high performance computing. Altogether the
aim is the development of advanced data-aware knowledge based systems.
This special issue presents advances in Semantics, Intelligent Processing and Services for Big Data
and their applications to a variety of domains including mobile computing, smart cities, forensics and
medicine.
2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.

Big Data is a recent research trend from Data Science, with the
particularity of data sets scaling up to large and very large amounts.
The features that define Big Data such as volume, velocity, variety,
etc., bring several challenges to data processing and analysis [1].
There is increasing interest on Big Data, which is promoted, on the
one hand by the increasing capability of Networked, Distributed
and Cloud Computing system [2] to store and manage unprecedented amounts of data, efficient scheduling and resource allocation at large scale [3,4] and, by the significance and relevance to
businesses, which see data as a new asset for their business activity.
This special issue follows The 15th International Conference on
Network-Based Information Systems (NBiS-2012), Melbourne, Australia September 26th28th, 2012 as well as from an open call.
It comprises seven papers selected from twenty five submissions.
The selected papers present research findings on semantics, information retrieval, inference, intelligent processing and services,
scalability and performance evaluation for Big Data. The content of
the special issue is organized as follows.
Castiglione et al. [5] in the first paper present a novel modeling
approach for performance evaluation of big data systems based on
mean field analysis and a set of methods for approximate inference
of probabilistic models, derived from statistical physics.

Guest Editorial Preface of Special Issue Big Data Science.

Corresponding editor. Tel.: +34 93 413 7880; fax: +34 93 413 7833.
E-mail addresses: fatos@lsi.upc.edu (F. Xhafa), barolli@fit.ac.jp (L. Barolli).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.02.004
0167-739X/ 2014 Published by Elsevier B.V.

In the second paper, Alghamdi et al. [6], address semantic approaches for structural and content indexing as a basis for efficient
retrieval of queries over large XML data repositories.
The authors of the third paper, Alamri et al. [7], investigate
techniques for indexing structures of moving objects arising in
many spatial information applications such as in mobile computing
applications. Such techniques are then used for moving object
database indexing and querying.
Farruggia et al. [8] in the fourth paper, present a text-based
indexing system for mammographic image retrieval and classification. The proposed approach addresses challenges in modern medical systems storing huge amount of text, words, images and videos
in ad hoc databases as well as the needs to extract precise information from that large amount of data.
The fifth paper by Chen et al. [9] and sixth paper by Li et al. [10]
deal with security and confidentiality on sensitive data in epayment and forensics in Web and Cloud computing systems.
Issues of lower computation and communication complexity are
addressed in their approaches.
Finally, in the seventh paper by Dobre et al. [11], the authors analyze current approaches for massive data processing and present
solutions designed to support next-generation Big Data applications. The paper brings the case study of smart cities, where big
data is having a real impact. The study covers a full data cycle, starting from data gathering, data integration, processing to intelligent
services for consumption from city planners and administration
bodies.

202

F. Xhafa, L. Barolli / Future Generation Computer Systems 37 (2014) 201202

Acknowledgments
The guest editors of the special issue would like to thank all
authors for their contributions and cooperation in the preparation
of this special issue. We appreciate the efforts of reviewers to
provide timely and constructive feedback to authors. Finally, we
are very grateful to Prof. Sloot, the Editor-in-Chief of FGCS Journal
for his support and encouragement, as well as to the editorial and
managerial journal team for their assistance during the edition of
this special issue. The first guest editor acknowledges the support
from FORMALISM research project.
References
[1] Rizwan Mian, Patrick Martin, Jose Luis Vazquez-Poletti, Provisioning data
analytic workloads in a cloud, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 29 (6) (2013)
14521458.
[2] Buyya, et al., Cloud computing and emerging IT platforms: vision, hype, and
reality for delivering computing as the 5th utility, Future Gener. Comput. Syst.
25 (6) (2009) 599616.
[3] E. Dodonov, R. de Mello, A novel approach for distributed application
scheduling based on prediction of communication events, Future Gener.
Comput. Syst. 26 (5) (2010) 740752.

[4] Anton Beloglazov, Jemal Abawajy, Rajkumar Buyya, Energy-aware resource allocation heuristics for efficient management of data centers
for cloud computing, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 28 (2012) 755768.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2011.04.017.
[5] Aniello Castiglione, Marco Gribaudo, Mauro Iacono, Francesco Palmieri, Exploiting mean field analysis to model performances of big data architectures,
Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 37 (2014) 203211. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.
future.2013.07.016.
[6] Norah S. Alghamdi, Wenny Rahayu, Eric Pardede, Semantic-based structural
and content indexing for the efficient retrieval of queries over large
XML data repositories, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 37 (2014) 212231.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.02.010.
[7] Sultan Alamri, David Taniar, Maytham Safar, A taxonomy for moving object
queries in spatial databases, Future Gener. Comput. Syst. 37 (2014) 232242.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.02.007.
[8] Alfonso Farruggia, Rosario Magro, Salvatore Vitabile, A text based indexing
system for mammographic image retrieval and classification, Future Gener.
Comput. Syst. 37 (2014) 243251. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2014.02.
008.
[9] Xiaofeng Chen, Jin Li, Jianfeng Ma, Wenjing Lou, Duncan S. Wong, New efficient
conditional e-payment systems with transferability, Future Gener. Comput.
Syst. 37 (2014) 252258. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2013.07.015.
[10] Jin Li, Xiaofeng Chen, Qiong Huang, Duncan S. Wong, Digital provenance:
enabling secure data forensics in cloud computing, Future Gener. Comput.
Syst. 37 (2014) 259266. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.2013.10.006.
[11] Ciprian Dobre, Fatos Xhafa, Intelligent services for big data science, Future
Gener. Comput. Syst. 37 (2014) 267281. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.future.
2013.07.014.