## 2 The Smart Angel Project
### Smart Angel and Urban Mobility
#### 2.5.3 The Cloud-Based Component  
As defined by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, \"Cloud computing is a model for enabling ubiquitous, convenient, on-demand network access to a shared pool of configurable computing resources (e.g., networks, servers, storage, applications, and services) that can be rapidly provisioned and released with minimal management effort or service provider interaction\" [22]. Such an approach has the advantage of offering its users the possibility to concentrate on their own applications without having to consider the management of the hardware, the development of specific software services, scalability issues, _etc._  
In the Smart Angel project, the cloud system, based on Microsoft Azure, collects all the data coming from the tutors, the games and the monitoring activities and stores them in a central database developed with an SQL server and then deployed in cloud. From the end users' point of view, the cloud system allows connecting through a different smart phone and finding all previous data, as well as accessing the system from any place and at any time. The tutors can monitor their end users without having to be physically at the care centre. Furthermore, all the system related documents, photos and videos also are collected in the cloud database and managed by the cloud providers with respect to data security, backups, needed storage space, _etc._  
The cloud system offers several other advantages, the most important of which is its scalability. The system can easily grow with respect to the amount of data that can be handled and to the number of users (impaired people, tutors and associations). Within the project, the test is taking place with a limited number of users, but we already have contacts for an international follow-up involving different countries and when the prototype will become a product its users will grow. Furthermore, the system has the potentiality to be used also by different populations with similar problems as, for example, people at the first stages of dementia [23]. Moreover, tutors could ask for more or different usage data to be tracked and analysed. Therefore, both the quantity of data to handle and the needed data processing capability may have to grow considerably. A dedicated Internet server might perform well enough in the first experimental phases, but as the system grows, a great investment would be needed. The cloud solution allows to scale efficiently simply by changing a few software parameters. Another important advantage of the cloud solution is that it offers business intelligence and machine learning algorithms. The cloud-based system allows analysing data in real time, also when complex analyses are needed and therefore it offers the best possible support both for the end users and for the tutors. For example, if a user leaves his safe area on a Tuesday morning, the system will immediately analyse the user's history finding out that in the last months he has gone out of the safe area in the same direction every Tuesday morning and the tutor has accepted the event as normal. The system will learn from previous data in real time, and will not alert then tutor for the same event again. Having a virtually unlimited computing power makes it possible to find answers to complex situations in a very short time. Tracking algorithms are based on maps from the cloud provider, which are guaranteed to be up to date with respect to roads, public transports, pedestrian areas, _etc._ Furthermore, the cloud-based service offers data streaming management, which has been used for the tutors training sessions. Cloud services also guarantee that Smart Angel will be available 24 h a day and 7 days a week and all the involved servers will be upgraded when needed. This is a very important point since Smart Angel, in order to be efficiently used, needs to be accessible to the final users at any time. Having all these services available makes it possible to concentrate the project resources on the development and test of the specific prototype.