A Formal Framework for Modeling Trust and Reputation in Collective Adaptive Systems

Trust and reputation models for distributed, collaborative systems have been studied and applied in several domains, in order to stimulate cooperation while preventing selfish and malicious behaviors. Nonetheless, such models have received less attention in the process of specifying and analyzing formally the functionalities of the systems mentioned above. The objective of this paper is to define a process algebraic framework for the modeling of systems that use (i) trust and reputation to govern the interactions among nodes, and (ii) communication models characterized by a high level of adaptiveness and flexibility. Hence, we propose a formalism for verifying, through model checking techniques, the robustness of these systems with respect to the typical attacks conducted against webs of trust.Comment: In Proceedings FORECAST 2016, arXiv:1607.0200

How to Create an Innovation Accelerator

Too many policy failures are fundamentally failures of knowledge. This has become particularly apparent during the recent financial and economic crisis, which is questioning the validity of mainstream scholarly paradigms. We propose to pursue a multi-disciplinary approach and to establish new institutional settings which remove or reduce obstacles impeding efficient knowledge creation. We provided suggestions on (i) how to modernize and improve the academic publication system, and (ii) how to support scientific coordination, communication, and co-creation in large-scale multi-disciplinary projects. Both constitute important elements of what we envision to be a novel ICT infrastructure called "Innovation Accelerator" or "Knowledge Accelerator".Comment: 32 pages, Visioneer White Paper, see http://www.visioneer.ethz.c

How Local Governments Structure Contracts with Private Firms: Economic Theory and Evidence on Solid Waste and Recycling Contracts

Solid waste management services are contracted out to private firms in many U.S. communities. Household waste collection, transport, and disposal are relatively straightforward services to define within the terms of a contract. The addition of recycling, however, significantly complicates matters. How should contracts be structured to provide incentives for recycling? Who should own key facilities, such as recyclable materials processing facilities? Should a separate contract for processing and sale of materials be used, or should these services be provided by government employees or purely private markets? These questions are addressed in this study using the principal-agent framework and the theory of incomplete contracts in economics. I explain stylized facts in the industry, including facts about asset ownership, and look in detail at contracts used in seven communities that have achieved high rates of waste diversion and recycling.incentive contracts, asset specificity, principal-agent models, waste collection, recycling

Quality of Information in Mobile Crowdsensing: Survey and Research Challenges

Smartphones have become the most pervasive devices in people's lives, and are clearly transforming the way we live and perceive technology. Today's smartphones benefit from almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity and come equipped with a plethora of inexpensive yet powerful embedded sensors, such as accelerometer, gyroscope, microphone, and camera. This unique combination has enabled revolutionary applications based on the mobile crowdsensing paradigm, such as real-time road traffic monitoring, air and noise pollution, crime control, and wildlife monitoring, just to name a few. Differently from prior sensing paradigms, humans are now the primary actors of the sensing process, since they become fundamental in retrieving reliable and up-to-date information about the event being monitored. As humans may behave unreliably or maliciously, assessing and guaranteeing Quality of Information (QoI) becomes more important than ever. In this paper, we provide a new framework for defining and enforcing the QoI in mobile crowdsensing, and analyze in depth the current state-of-the-art on the topic. We also outline novel research challenges, along with possible directions of future work.Comment: To appear in ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN

Crowdsourcing as a way to access external knowledge for innovation

This paper focuses on “crowdsourcing” as a significant trend in the new paradigm of open innovation (Chesbrough 2006; Chesbrough & Appleyard 2007). Crowdsourcing conveys the idea of opening the R&D processes to “the crowd” through a web 2.0 infrastructure. Based on two cases studies of crowdsourcing webstartups (Wilogo and CrowdSpirit), the paper aims to build a framework to characterize and interpret the tension between value creation by a community and value capture by a private economic actor. Contributing to the discussions on “hybrid organizational forms” in organizational studies (Bruce & Jordan 2007), the analysis examines how theses new models combine various forms of relationships and exchanges (market or non market). It describes how crowdsourcing conveys new patterns of control, incentives and co-ordination mechanisms.communauté ; crowdsourcing ; innovation ; formes organisationnelles hybrides ; plateforme ; web 2.0

The three dimensions of a communitarian institution. The Open Source Software Community Case

The analysis of the empirical studies relative to the Free/Libre/Open Source Software (FLOSS) case highlights the necessity to enlarge the set of categories used to describe developers incentives. In particular, the evidences stress the important role played by another category of incentives, broadly and roughly defined as psychological and social motivations. However, the theories elaborated to cope with this dimension, such as ift economy,epistemic community or community of practice, are not combined into a unique structured framework. Each one of them, in fact, is focused on particular features of the FLOSS model, so that the FLOSS community itself is often described as ahybrid institution, obtained combining different perspectives. However, it is possible construct a mechanism here called reflexive identity able to bridge the analyzed theories and to explain the empirical evidences left aside by self-supply, reputation and signaling. The reflexive identity mechanism develops through the nexus of ties connecting the community members. In order to cooperate, members have to negotiate the system of meanings they use to interface with the world and with the communitarian environment. But this means reshaping also their own vision of the world, redefining their values and thus their identity. The space opened by the negotiation, then, is the space where community aims, principles and ethos act directly on membersidentity, making them internalize the communitarian structure of rules. The reflexive identity principle, then, merges the psychological and social dimension of the FLOSS phenomenon with the structure of rules adopted by the FLOSS community, and thus it constitutes together with self-supply, signaling, reputation and peer regard the basis upon which the FLOSS community is built.Open Source Software; FLOSS

Decoding the "Free/Open Source(F/OSS) Software Puzzle" a survey of theoretical and empirical contributions

F/OSS software has been described by many as a puzzle. In the past five years, it has stimulated the curiosity of scholars in a variety of fields, including economics, law, psychology, anthropology and computer science, so that the number of contributions on the subject has increased exponentially. The purpose of this paper is to provide a sufficiently comprehensive account of these contributions in order to draw some general conclusions on the state of our understanding of the phenomenon and identify directions for future research. The exercise suggests that what is puzzling about F/OSS is not so much the fact that people freely contribute to a good they make available to all, but rather the complexity of its institutional structure and its ability to organizationally evolve over time.F/OSS software, Innovation, Incentives, Governance, Intellectual Property Rights

Public-Private Partnerships for Development: A Handbook for Business

CED partnered with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) on this publication, which is designed to help businesses operating in developing countries understand how to build public-private partnerships that will benefit their host country populations and the participating firms