FORECASTING CRITICAL AIRCRAFT LAUNCH AND RECOVERY EQUIPMENT (ALRE) COMPONENTS' DEMAND

Demand signals across the Navy’s NIMITZ Class Carrier (CVN) Aircraft Launch and Recovery Equipment (ALRE) market-basket are highly erratic and do not fit neatly into the traditional demand-based sparing construct. This causes the Naval Supply Systems Command Weapons Systems Support (NAVSUP WSS) planning efforts to continually lag behind requirements, with material often arriving late-to-need. This project attempts to develop a comprehensive and more reliable ALRE material requirement forecast model. To accomplish this effectively, a comprehensive list of historical CVN ALRE demand data were analyzed in order to identify any correlation between ALRE demand and a ship’s operating phase status, and to identify whether that correlation directly drives ALRE demand. The analysis begins by collecting historical CVN ALRE demand data and identifying the improvements for the current forecasting model. After a complete analysis of the current forecasting model, we utilized multiple linear regression and evaluated various forecasting methods as the best available methods for developing/discovering an optimized and robust forecasting method. In conclusion, the extremely low demand quantities of critical ALRE components continue to make forecasting extremely unreliable, but we believe NAVSUP can improve the accuracy of ALRE demand forecast by adapting a flexible forecasting system.NAVSUPhttp://archive.org/details/forecastingcriti1094561212Lieutenant Commander, United States NavyLieutenant, United States NavyLieutenant Commander, United States NavyApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Secure Distributed Dynamic State Estimation in Wide-Area Smart Grids

Smart grid is a large complex network with a myriad of vulnerabilities, usually operated in adversarial settings and regulated based on estimated system states. In this study, we propose a novel highly secure distributed dynamic state estimation mechanism for wide-area (multi-area) smart grids, composed of geographically separated subregions, each supervised by a local control center. We firstly propose a distributed state estimator assuming regular system operation, that achieves near-optimal performance based on the local Kalman filters and with the exchange of necessary information between local centers. To enhance the security, we further propose to (i) protect the network database and the network communication channels against attacks and data manipulations via a blockchain (BC)-based system design, where the BC operates on the peer-to-peer network of local centers, (ii) locally detect the measurement anomalies in real-time to eliminate their effects on the state estimation process, and (iii) detect misbehaving (hacked/faulty) local centers in real-time via a distributed trust management scheme over the network. We provide theoretical guarantees regarding the false alarm rates of the proposed detection schemes, where the false alarms can be easily controlled. Numerical studies illustrate that the proposed mechanism offers reliable state estimation under regular system operation, timely and accurate detection of anomalies, and good state recovery performance in case of anomalies

Rethinking Digital Forensics

© IAER 2019In the modern socially-driven, knowledge-based virtual computing environment in which organisations are operating, the current digital forensics tools and practices can no longer meet the need for scientific rigour. There has been an exponential increase in the complexity of the networks with the rise of the Internet of Things, cloud technologies and fog computing altering business operations and models. Adding to the problem are the increased capacity of storage devices and the increased diversity of devices that are attached to networks, operating autonomously. We argue that the laws and standards that have been written, the processes, procedures and tools that are in common use are increasingly not capable of ensuring the requirement for scientific integrity. This paper looks at a number of issues with current practice and discusses measures that can be taken to improve the potential of achieving scientific rigour for digital forensics in the current and developing landscapePeer reviewe

Lessons Learned about Change Capital in the Arts: Reflections on a four-year evaluation of Nonprofit Finance Fund's Leading for the Future initiative

This report takes stock of a four-year evaluation of Leading for the Future: Innovative Support for Artistic Excellence (LFF), an experimental $15 million funding initiative administered by Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) with support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation (DDCF). The purpose of this analysis is to reflect critically on what was learned from the initiative for the benefit of funders, individual philanthropists and others with an interest in the theory and practice of capitalization as applied to nonprofit arts organizations.The LFF initiative was unique in its exclusive focus on change capital – substantial, flexible, multi-year capital intended to transform how an organization operates and delivers its programs, with the long-term goal of increasing reliable revenue, net of costs. By definition, change capital aims to strengthen an organization's financial position.Ten performing arts organizations received$1 million in change capital, drawn down according to individual plans for change, and an additional $75,000 in planning funds. Exit grants of up to$225,000 were awarded to organizations that made the most progress on their change efforts, for the purpose of advancing ongoing change efforts or seeding new plans.1 The 10 grantees invested LFF change capital in a wide variety of "business model transformations" ranging from building technologies with the potential to attract new donors and audiences, to experimenting with different models for touring, to investing in marketing and development capacities.NFF has previously published a series of working papers, case studies and video highlights from the LFF initiative, exploring the concepts of capital and financial reporting for capital, and documenting the 10 grantees' experiences.2 We will avoid citing the accomplishments and challenges of specific grantees in this report, and focus instead on program level issues and ideas that might be helpful to future investors of change capital. Indeed, the LFF initiative has played out against the backdrop of a national dialogue about capitalization in the nonprofit arts sector, both learning from, and contributing to, a good deal of productive thinking about capital.While the LFF initiative involved large grants, much was learned that might be of value to funders with more modest resources who are interested in exploring the role of capital in the artistic and financial health of the sector

Organizational Capital: A New Approach to Lending in Nonprofit Affordable Housing

In spite of a diminishing supply of public resources, many nonprofit housing developers are expanding their roles and their portfolios to address an increasing need for decent affordable housing. But as nonprofit housing organizations mature, the traditional project-by-project funding system fails to support their broader development goals. This paper stresses the urgent need for equity, or "organizational capital," to help nonprofit housing organizations build their capacity and their impact. Unlike conventional financing, organizational capital is underwritten against a borrower's balance sheet, or its organizational ability to repay. Whereas project-based loans are tied to one particular project, organizational loans can be a source of liquidity whenever an organization needs it: on the front end of a deal, for general business operations or during periods of organizational expansion. Despite its many advantages, there is an extremely limited supply of organizational capital in nonprofit affordable housing. This research outlines the practical challenges to organizational investing and uncovers the underlying barriers that have prevented a nonprofit organizational capital market from emerging. These findings lead us to explore nonprofit housing organizations in a "closed system" of standardized reporting and rational decision-making. The study concludes that while a new nonprofit reporting system would greatly encourage organizational investing in housing, the private markets alone will not bring organizational lending to scale. The final sections of the paper discuss the public policy implications of a closed nonprofit capital system and highlight some innovative approaches taken by lenders to overcome the obstacles of organizational investing and advance a new model of lending in nonprofit affordable housing

Security for the Industrial IoT: The Case for Information-Centric Networking

Industrial production plants traditionally include sensors for monitoring or documenting processes, and actuators for enabling corrective actions in cases of misconfigurations, failures, or dangerous events. With the advent of the IoT, embedded controllers link these `things' to local networks that often are of low power wireless kind, and are interconnected via gateways to some cloud from the global Internet. Inter-networked sensors and actuators in the industrial IoT form a critical subsystem while frequently operating under harsh conditions. It is currently under debate how to approach inter-networking of critical industrial components in a safe and secure manner. In this paper, we analyze the potentials of ICN for providing a secure and robust networking solution for constrained controllers in industrial safety systems. We showcase hazardous gas sensing in widespread industrial environments, such as refineries, and compare with IP-based approaches such as CoAP and MQTT. Our findings indicate that the content-centric security model, as well as enhanced DoS resistance are important arguments for deploying Information Centric Networking in a safety-critical industrial IoT. Evaluation of the crypto efforts on the RIOT operating system for content security reveal its feasibility for common deployment scenarios.Comment: To be published at IEEE WF-IoT 201

CyberGuarder: a virtualization security assurance architecture for green cloud computing

Cloud Computing, Green Computing, Virtualization, Virtual Security Appliance, Security Isolation