Multimedia and communication technologies in Digital Ecosystems

A Digital Ecosystem is an evolving computer based system that uses communication and networking technologies to provide a solution for a specific application domain. This paper investigates how the latest multimedia and communication technologies can be used in the development of Digital Ecosystems. The high-level models of two ongoing research projects for developing Digital Ecosystems are presented as examples. The first system aims to maximize the Utilisation of Harvested Rain Water by considering factors such as stored water level, predicted rainfall and the watering needs of different plants. The second system uses a wireless Sensor Network for bushfire detection and other weather parameters for generating early warnings. The choice of type of input and output information for these Digital Ecosystems needs to consider Quality of Service parameters, particularly delay and jitter.