262 research outputs found
Agent-based (BDI) modeling for automation of penetration testing
Penetration testing (or pentesting) is one of the widely used and important methodologies to assess the security of computer systems and networks. Traditional pentesting relies on the domain expert knowledge and requires considerable human effort all of which incurs a high cost. The automation can significantly improve the efficiency, availability and lower the cost of penetration testing. Existing approaches to the automation include those which map vulnerability scanner results to the corresponding exploit tools, and those addressing the pentesting as a planning problem expressed in terms of attack graphs. Due to mainly non-interactive processing, such solutions can deal effectively only with static and simple targets. In this paper, we propose an automated penetration testing approach based on the belief-desire-intention (BDI) agent model, which is central in the research on agent-based processing in that it deals interactively with dynamic, uncertain and complex environments. Penetration testing actions are defined as a series of BDI plans and the BDI reasoning cycle is used to represent the penetration testing process. The model is extensible and new plans can be added, once they have been elicited from the human experts. We report on the results of testing of proof of concept BDI-based penetration testing tool in the simulated environment
Smart Grid Technologies in Europe: An Overview
The old electricity network infrastructure has proven to be inadequate, with respect to modern challenges such as alternative energy sources, electricity demand and energy saving policies. Moreover, Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) seem to have reached an adequate level of reliability and flexibility in order to support a new concept of electricity network—the smart grid. In this work, we will analyse the state-of-the-art of smart grids, in their technical, management, security, and optimization aspects. We will also provide a brief overview of the regulatory aspects involved in the development of a smart grid, mainly from the viewpoint of the European Unio
Creating a Standardized Risk Assessment Framework Library for Healthcare Information Technology
Data breaches are occurring at an unprecedented rate. In February 2019 alone, over a million individuals were reported to the United States government as having been involved in a breach of their medical data by healthcare entities. Although many organizations have some policies, procedures and risk management components in place, few (if any) organizations are centrally connecting legal requirements, penetration tests, policies and procedures into a standardized and consistent methodology for further analysis and auditing. This research produces a new open source risk management standardized library coordinating the aforementioned risk management components. The new library is applied to an open source vulnerable web-application example to emphasize the benefits from the adoption of such a public standardized risk assessment library
Multi-agent system for flood forecasting in Tropical River Basin
It is well known, the problems related to the generation of floods, their control, and management,
have been treated with traditional hydrologic modeling tools focused on the study and
the analysis of the precipitation-runoff relationship, a physical process which is driven by the
hydrological cycle and the climate regime and that is directly proportional to the generation
of floodwaters. Within the hydrological discipline, they classify these traditional modeling
tools according to three principal groups, being the first group defined as trial-and-error models
(e.g., "black-models"), the second group are the conceptual models, which are categorized
in three main sub-groups as "lumped", "semi-lumped" and "semi-distributed", according to
the special distribution, and finally, models that are based on physical processes, known as
"white-box models" are the so-called "distributed-models". On the other hand, in engineering
applications, there are two types of models used in streamflow forecasting, and which are
classified concerning the type of measurements and variables required as "physically based
models", as well as "data-driven models".
The Physically oriented prototypes present an in-depth account of the dynamics related
to the physical aspects that occur internally among the different systems of a given hydrographic
basin. However, aside from being laborious to implement, they rely thoroughly
on mathematical algorithms, and an understanding of these interactions requires the abstraction
of mathematical concepts and the conceptualization of the physical processes that
are intertwined among these systems. Besides, models determined by data necessitates an
a-priori understanding of the physical laws controlling the process within the system, and
they are bound to mathematical formulations, which require a lot of numeric information
for field adjustments. Therefore, these models are remarkably different from each other
because of their needs for data, and their interpretation of physical phenomena. Although
there is considerable progress in hydrologic modeling for flood forecasting, several significant
setbacks remain unresolved, given the stochastic nature of the hydrological phenomena, is
the challenge to implement user-friendly, re-usable, robust, and reliable forecasting systems,
the amount of uncertainty they must deal with when trying to solve the flood forecasting
problem. However, in the past decades, with the growing environment and development of
the artificial intelligence (AI) field, some researchers have seldomly attempted to deal with
the stochastic nature of hydrologic events with the application of some of these techniques.
Given the setbacks to hydrologic flood forecasting previously described this thesis research
aims to integrate the physics-based hydrologic, hydraulic, and data-driven models under the
paradigm of Multi-agent Systems for flood forecasting by designing and developing a multi-agent system (MAS) framework for flood forecasting events within the scope of tropical
watersheds.
With the emergence of the agent technologies, the "agent-based modeling" and "multiagent
systems" simulation methods have provided applications for some areas of hydro base
management like flood protection, planning, control, management, mitigation, and forecasting
to combat the shocks produced by floods on society; however, all these focused on
evacuation drills, and the latter not aimed at the tropical river basin, whose hydrological
regime is extremely unique.
In this catchment modeling environment approach, it was applied the multi-agent systems
approach as a surrogate of the conventional hydrologic model to build a system that operates
at the catchment level displayed with hydrometric stations, that use the data from hydrometric
sensors networks (e.g., rainfall, river stage, river flow) captured, stored and administered
by an organization of interacting agents whose main aim is to perform flow forecasting and
awareness, and in so doing enhance the policy-making process at the watershed level.
Section one of this document surveys the status of the current research in hydrologic
modeling for the flood forecasting task. It is a journey through the background of related
concerns to the hydrological process, flood ontologies, management, and forecasting. The
section covers, to a certain extent, the techniques, methods, and theoretical aspects and
methods of hydrological modeling and their types, from the conventional models to the
present-day artificial intelligence prototypes, making special emphasis on the multi-agent
systems, as most recent modeling methodology in the hydrological sciences. However, it is
also underlined here that the section does not contribute to an all-inclusive revision, rather
its purpose is to serve as a framework for this sort of work and a path to underline the
significant aspects of the works.
In section two of the document, it is detailed the conceptual framework for the suggested
Multiagent system in support of flood forecasting. To accomplish this task, several works
need to be carried out such as the sketching and implementation of the system’s framework
with the (Belief-Desire-Intention model) architecture for flood forecasting events within the
concept of the tropical river basin. Contributions of this proposed architecture are the
replacement of the conventional hydrologic modeling with the use of multi-agent systems,
which makes it quick for hydrometric time-series data administration and modeling of the
precipitation-runoff process which conveys to flood in a river course. Another advantage is
the user-friendly environment provided by the proposed multi-agent system platform graphical
interface, the real-time generation of graphs, charts, and monitors with the information
on the immediate event taking place in the catchment, which makes it easy for the viewer
with some or no background in data analysis and their interpretation to get a visual idea of
the information at hand regarding the flood awareness.
The required agents developed in this multi-agent system modeling framework for flood
forecasting have been trained, tested, and validated under a series of experimental tasks,
using the hydrometric series information of rainfall, river stage, and streamflow data collected
by the hydrometric sensor agents from the hydrometric sensors.Como se sabe, los problemas relacionados con la generación de inundaciones, su control y
manejo, han sido tratados con herramientas tradicionales de modelado hidrológico enfocados
al estudio y análisis de la relación precipitación-escorrentía, proceso físico que es impulsado
por el ciclo hidrológico y el régimen climático y este esta directamente proporcional a la
generación de crecidas. Dentro de la disciplina hidrológica, clasifican estas herramientas
de modelado tradicionales en tres grupos principales, siendo el primer grupo el de modelos
empíricos (modelos de caja negra), modelos conceptuales (o agrupados, semi-agrupados o
semi-distribuidos) dependiendo de la distribución espacial y, por último, los basados en la
física, modelos de proceso (o "modelos de caja blanca", y/o distribuidos). En este sentido,
clasifican las aplicaciones de predicción de caudal fluvial en la ingeniería de recursos hídricos
en dos tipos con respecto a los valores y parámetros que requieren en: modelos de procesos
basados en la física y la categoría de modelos impulsados por datos.
Los modelos basados en la física proporcionan una descripción detallada de la dinámica
relacionada con los aspectos físicos que ocurren internamente entre los diferentes sistemas de
una cuenca hidrográfica determinada. Sin embargo, aparte de ser complejos de implementar,
se basan completamente en algoritmos matemáticos, y la comprensión de estas interacciones
requiere la abstracción de conceptos matemáticos y la conceptualización de los procesos
físicos que se entrelazan entre estos sistemas. Además, los modelos impulsados por datos no
requieren conocimiento de los procesos físicos que gobiernan, sino que se basan únicamente
en ecuaciones empíricas que necesitan una gran cantidad de datos y requieren calibración
de los datos en el sitio. Los dos modelos difieren significativamente debido a sus requisitos
de datos y de cómo expresan los fenómenos físicos. La elaboración de modelos hidrológicos
para el pronóstico de inundaciones ha dado grandes pasos, pero siguen sin resolverse algunos
contratiempos importantes, dada la naturaleza estocástica de los fenómenos hidrológicos, es
el desafío de implementar sistemas de pronóstico fáciles de usar, reutilizables, robustos y
confiables, la cantidad de incertidumbre que deben afrontar al intentar resolver el problema
de la predicción de inundaciones. Sin embargo, en las últimas décadas, con el entorno
creciente y el desarrollo del campo de la inteligencia artificial (IA), algunos investigadores
rara vez han intentado abordar la naturaleza estocástica de los eventos hidrológicos con la
aplicación de algunas de estas técnicas.
Dados los contratiempos en el pronóstico de inundaciones hidrológicas descritos anteriormente,
esta investigación de tesis tiene como objetivo integrar los modelos hidrológicos,
basados en la física, hidráulicos e impulsados por datos bajo el paradigma de Sistemas de múltiples agentes para el pronóstico de inundaciones por medio del bosquejo y desarrollo
del marco de trabajo del sistema multi-agente (MAS) para los eventos de predicción de
inundaciones en el contexto de cuenca hidrográfica tropical.
Con la aparición de las tecnologías de agentes, se han emprendido algunos enfoques
de simulación recientes en la investigación hidrológica con modelos basados en agentes y
sistema multi-agente, principalmente en alerta por inundaciones, seguridad y planificación
de inundaciones, control y gestión de inundaciones y pronóstico de inundaciones, todos estos
enfocado a simulacros de evacuación, y este último no dirigido a la cuenca tropical, cuyo
régimen hidrológico es extremadamente único.
En este enfoque de entorno de modelado de cuencas, se aplican los enfoques de sistemas
multi-agente como un sustituto del modelado hidrológico convencional para construir un
sistema que opera a nivel de cuenca con estaciones hidrométricas desplegadas, que utilizan
los datos de redes de sensores hidrométricos (por ejemplo, lluvia , nivel del río, caudal del
río) capturado, almacenado y administrado por una organización de agentes interactuantes
cuyo objetivo principal es realizar pronósticos de caudal y concientización para mejorar las
capacidades de soporte en la formulación de políticas a nivel de cuenca hidrográfica.
La primera sección de este documento analiza el estado del arte sobre la investigación actual
en modelos hidrológicos para la tarea de pronóstico de inundaciones. Es un viaje a través
de los antecedentes preocupantes relacionadas con el proceso hidrológico, las ontologías de
inundaciones, la gestión y la predicción. El apartado abarca, en cierta medida, las técnicas,
métodos y aspectos teóricos y métodos del modelado hidrológico y sus tipologías, desde
los modelos convencionales hasta los prototipos de inteligencia artificial actuales, haciendo
hincapié en los sistemas multi-agente, como un enfoque de simulación reciente en la investigación
hidrológica. Sin embargo, se destaca que esta sección no contribuye a una revisión
integral, sino que su propósito es servir de marco para este tipo de trabajos y una guía para
subrayar los aspectos significativos de los trabajos.
En la sección dos del documento, se detalla el marco de trabajo propuesto para el sistema
multi-agente para el pronóstico de inundaciones. Los trabajos realizados comprendieron el
diseño y desarrollo del marco de trabajo del sistema multi-agente con la arquitectura (modelo
Creencia-Deseo-Intención) para la predicción de eventos de crecidas dentro del concepto
de cuenca hidrográfica tropical. Las contribuciones de esta arquitectura propuesta son el
reemplazo del modelado hidrológico convencional con el uso de sistemas multi-agente, lo
que agiliza la administración de las series de tiempo de datos hidrométricos y el modelado
del proceso de precipitación-escorrentía que conduce a la inundación en el curso de un río.
Otra ventaja es el entorno amigable proporcionado por la interfaz gráfica de la plataforma del
sistema multi-agente propuesto, la generación en tiempo real de gráficos, cuadros y monitores
con la información sobre el evento inmediato que tiene lugar en la cuenca, lo que lo hace
fácil para el espectador con algo o sin experiencia en análisis de datos y su interpretación
para tener una idea visual de la información disponible con respecto a la cognición de las
inundaciones.
Los agentes necesarios desarrollados en este marco de modelado de sistemas multi-agente
para el pronóstico de inundaciones han sido entrenados, probados y validados en una serie de tareas experimentales, utilizando la información de la serie hidrométrica de datos de lluvia,
nivel del río y flujo del curso de agua recolectados por los agentes sensores hidrométricos de
los sensores hidrométricos de campo.Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia y Tecnología Informática por la Universidad Carlos III de MadridPresidente: María Araceli Sanchis de Miguel.- Secretario: Juan Gómez Romero.- Vocal: Juan Carlos Corrale
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