How COVID-19 is Accelerating the Digital Revolution : Challenges and Opportunities

This book explores how digital technologies have proved to be a useful and necessary tool to help ensure that local and regional governments on the frontline of the emergency can continue to provide essential public services during the COVID-19 crisis. Indeed, as the demand for digital technologies grows, local and regional governments are increasingly committed to improving the lives of their citizens under the principles of privacy, freedom of expression and democracy.

The Digital Revolution began between the late 1950s and 1970s and represents the evolution of technology from the mechanical and analog to the digital. The advent of digital technology has also changed how humans communicate – today using computers, smartphones and the internet. Further, the digital revolution has made a tremendous wealth of information accessible to virtually everyone. 

In turn, the book focuses on key challenges for local and regional governments concerning digitaltechnologies during this crisis, e.g. the balance between privacy and security, the digital divide, and accessibility. Privacy is a challenge in the mitigation of COVID-19, as governments rely on digital technologies like contact-tracking apps and big data to help trace peoples’ patterns and movements. While these methods are controversial and may infringe on rights to privacy, they also appear to be effective measures for rapidly controlling and limiting the spread of the virus. Next, the book discusses the 10 technology trends that can help build a resilient society, as well as their effects on how we do business, how we work, how we produce goods, how we learn, how we seek medical services and how we entertain ourselves. Lastly, the book addresses a range of diversified technologies, e.g. Online Shopping and Robot Deliveries, Digital and Contactless Payments, Remote Work, Distance Learning, Telehealth, Online Entertainment, Supply Chain 4.0, 3D Printing, Robotics and Drones, 5G, andInformation and Communications Technology (ICT).

Dr. R. Anandan completed his UG, PG and Doctorate in Computer Science and Engineering. He is IBMS/390 Mainframe professional and he is recognized as Chartered Engineer from Institution of Engineers in India and received fellowship from Bose Science Society, India. He completed 7 certification courses mainly from CISCO. He is currently working as Professor and Head, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, School of Engineering and Associate Director – Innovation and Incubation, Vels Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India which is Pioneer Institution in Engineering. He has vast experience in corporate and all levels of Academic in Computer Science and Engineering his knowledge of interests not limited to Artificial intelligence Soft Computing, Machine Learning, High Performance Computing, Big data Analytics, Image Processing, 3D printing and knowledge Engineering. Under his eminent guidance 8 Ph.D Research Scholarsare pursuing, under his Supervision. 3 Ph.D., Research Scholars have been awarded under his Guidance and Supervision. He associated as Member in many reputed International and National societies like International Association of Engineers (IAENG) Hong Kong, Computer Science Teacher Association (CSTA) New York, Universal Association of Computer and Electronics Engineers, USA, Association of Computer Sciences and Information Technology (IACSIT), Singapore, Institution of Engineers, India, Computer Society of India and Indian Society of Technical Education (I.S.T.E) He serves as Editorial Board Member / Technical Committee/ Reviewer of International Journal such Arab/UK/USA journals (Springer, Thomson Reuters, SCI, Elsevier). He servers as International Committee Members towards International Conference conducted in association with Springer and Scopus. He has published more than 130 research papers in various International Journals such in Scopus, SCI and referred journal. He has presented 76 papers at various International Conferences. He received best reviewer award for the year 2017-2018 from The International Arab Journal of Information Technology (SCI Journal) under Elsevier Publication, Netherland and the reviewer of the year 2018 – 2019 from Energy Review Elsevier Publication, Amsterdam, Netherland. He received Appreciation award on Teachers Day towards publication of articles for the academic year 2017-2018. He is the Recipient of the awards Dr. APJ ABDUL KALAM Best Scientist Award for Computer Science Engineering from BOSE Science Society, Tamil Nadu, India, Distinguished Researcher in Artificial Intelligence Award by Research under Literal Access Awards, India, Outstanding Scientist award by International Research Awards on Engineering, Science and Management, Award for excellence in Young Researcher in Computer Science Engineering by Global Outreach Research, New Delhi, India and Distinguished Professor Award by Vedant Academics Bangkok Awards – 2019 during International Award Conference on Multi-Disciplinary Research and Application - 2019 held in Kasetsart University, Chatuchak, Bangkok, Thailand and received the Achievers Icon Award 2020 in the category Innovative Educator in Computer Science and Engineering by Band Opus India Pvt. Ltd. He authored and Edited 16 books, some of his leading books are Software Engineering, Advanced Java Programming, Functions of Hardware and Internet, Bigdata and Hadoop Beginners Guide for OOPS Concepts in Java Programming, Web Technology, Statistics with R Programming, Information Security, Artificial Intelligence and A Closer look at Bigdata Analytics. He filed 9 patents of his work. He is also associated as Editor in Wiley, World Scientific Press and Nova Publishers.

Dr. G. Suseendran received his M.Sc., Information Technology and M.Phil., degree from Annamalai University, Tamil Nadu, India and Ph.D., degree in Information Technology-Mathematics from Presidency College, University of Madras, Tamil Nadu, India. In additional qualification, he has obtained DOEACC ‘O’ Level AICTE Ministry of Information Technology and Honor Diploma in Computer Programming. He was working as Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology, School of Computing Sciences, Vels Institute of Science, Technology & Advanced Studies (VISTAS), Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India which is well known University. He has 10 years of teaching experience in both UG and PG Level. His research interests include Wireless Senor Network, Ad-hoc networks, IoT, Data Mining, Cloud Computing, Image Processing, Knowledge-based systems and Web Information Exploration. He has produced 4 M.Phil., Scholars and 6 Ph.D., Research Scholars awarded under my Guidance and Supervision. He has published more than 90 research papers in various International Journal such in Science Citation Index, IEEE Access, Springer Book Chapter, Scopus, and UGC referred journals. He has presented 20 papers in various international Conferences. He authored 14 Books/Editor (CRC Press, Springer) and received 6 awards. He has been awarded globally as top reviewer by Publons (Web of Science).

Dr. Pushpita Chatterjee is a Post-doctoral Research Consultant at Tennessee State University, Nashville, TN, USA since 2021. Prior to joining TSU, she was a Research Associate with Old Dominion University, VA from 2016 to 2018 and worked as a Senior Research Lead in SRM Institute of Science and Technology, (a Unit of SRM University, Chennai), Bangalore, India. Dr. Pushpita received her PhD from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India in 2012. She received her MTech in Computer Engineering and MS in Computer and Information Science from University of Calcutta in 2004, and 2002 respectively. She has 50+ papers with 400+ citations to her credit in international journals, conferences, and books. She is actively reviewing papers of tier-1 conferences and IEEE transactions and Elsevier journals. Her research interests include energy-aware computing, machine learning, distributed and trust computing, wireless networks, and software-defined networking. She is co-editing two books with Springer and Elsevier in the field of Cybersecurity and serving as a guest editor for special issues with Elsevier Computers & Electrical Engineering, Hindawi Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing, and TechScience press.

Dr. Noor Zaman Jhanjhi (NZ Jhanjhi) is currently working as Associate Professor, Director Center for Smart society 5.0 [CSS5], and Cluster Head for Cybersecurity cluster, at School of Computer Science and Engineering, Faculty of Innovation and Technology, Taylor’s University, Malaysia. He is supervising a great number of Postgraduate students, mainly in cybersecurity for Data Science. The cybersecurity research cluster has extensive research collaboration globally with several institutions and professionals. DrJhanjhi is Associate Editor and Editorial Assistant Board for several reputable journals, including IEEE Access Journal, PeerJ Computer Science, PC member for several IEEE conferences worldwide, and guest editor for the reputed indexed journals. Active reviewer for a series of top tier journals has been awarded globally as a top 1% reviewer by Publons (Web of Science). He has been awarded as outstanding Associate Editor by IEEE Access for the year 2020. He has high indexed publications in WoS/ISI/SCI/Scopus, and his collective research Impact factor is more than 350 points as of the first half of 2021. He has international Patents on his account, edited/authored more than 30 plus research books published by world-class publishers. He has great experience supervising and co-supervising postgraduate students. An ample number of PhD and Master students graduated under his supervision. He is an external PhD/Master thesis examiner/evaluator for several universities globally. He has completed more than 22 international funded research grants successfully. He has served as Keynote speaker for several international conferences, presented several Webinars worldwide, chaired international conference sessions. His research areas include Cybersecurity, IoT security, Wireless security, Data Science, Software Engineering, UAVs.

Dr. Uttam Ghosh joined Meharry Medical College as an associate professor of cybersecurity in the School of Applied Computational Sciences in January 2022. Earlier, he worked as an assistant professor of the practice in the Department of Computer Science at Vanderbilt University, where he was awarded the 2018 – 2019 Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow (JFTF). Dr. Ghosh obtained his Master of Science and doctorate in electronics and electrical communication engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, India in 2009 and 2013 respectively.  He has post-doctoral experiences at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, Fordham University, and Tennessee State University. Dr. Ghosh has published more than 80 papers in reputed international journals including IEEE Transactions, Elsevier, Springer, IET, Wiley, InderScience, and IETE, and also in top international conferences sponsored by IEEE, ACM, and Springer. He has coedited and published three books: Internet of Things and Secure Smart Environments, Machine Intelligence and Data Analytics for Sustainable Future Smart Cities, and Efficient Data Handling for Massive Internet of Medical Things. Dr. Ghosh has conducted several sessions and workshops related to Cyberphysical Systems (CPS), SDN, IoT and smart cities as co-chair at top international conferences including IEEE GLOBECOM 2020-2021, IEEE MASS 2020, SECON 2019-20, CPSCOM 2019, and ICDCS 2017. He has also served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member at renowned international conferences. Dr. Ghosh is associate editor of Human-centric Computing and Information Sciences and International Journal of Computers and Applications. He is also a reviewer for international journals including IEEE Transactions, Elsevier, Springer, and Wiley. He serves as a guest editor for special issues with IEEE Sensors, IEEE Transaction on Industrial Informatics (TII), IEEE Journal of Health Informatics (JBHI), IEEE Transaction on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE), ACM Transactions on Internet Technology (TOIT), Elsevier Computers & Electrical Engineering, Computer Communications, Springer Cluster Computing, Multimedia Tools and Applications (MTAP), Wiley Internet Technology Letters (ITL), MDPI Sensors, and Future Internet.  Dr. Ghosh is co-editing five books on Smart IoT, Security, and Data Analysis with CRC Press and Springer. He is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of ACM and Sigma-Xi.