Estimating Impact and Frequency of Risks to Safety and Mission Critical Systems Using CVSS

Many safety and mission critical systems depend on the correct and secure operation of both supportive and core software systems. E.g., both the safety of personnel and the effective execution of core missions on an oil platform depend on the correct recording storing, transfer and interpretation of data, such as that for the Logging While Drilling (LWD) and Measurement While Drilling (MWD) subsystems. Here, data is recorded on site, packaged and then transferred to an on-shore operational centre. Today, the data is transferred on dedicated communication channels to ensure a secure and safe transfer, free from deliberately and accidental faults. However, as the cost control is ever more important some of the transfer will be over remotely accessible infrastructure in the future. Thus, communication will be prone to known security vulnerabilities exploitable by outsiders. This paper presents a model that estimates risk level of known vulnerabilities as a combination of frequency and impact estimates derived from the Common Vulnerability Scoring System (CVSS). The model is implemented as a Bayesian Belief Network (BBN)

Infrastructures and New Technologies as Sources of Spanish Economic Growth

The paper revises the impact of infrastructures and Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) on economic growth. It takes Spain as a reference case due to the accessibility to capital services estimates. The Spanish database allows the measurement of the impact on growth of three ICT assets (software, hardware and communication) and six different types of infrastructures (roads, railways, airports, ports, as well as urban and water infrastructures). It also allows the distinction between public and privately owned infrastructures. As a first step, the paper recommends the adjustment of the National Accounts (NA) figures, especially when the endogenous approach to compute the user cost is utilized. The rationale for the adjustment relies on the need to recognize explicitly the services provided by public capital, not fully included in NA.ICT, Infrastructures, growth accounting

Evaluation of Utility Relocation Costs and Best Management Practices

In recent years, the SCDOT has experienced a significant variation in estimated costs for the relocation of utilities on many projects. This has led to cost overruns and caused concerns for the district engineers responsible for the projects. Through meetings with SCDOT personnel and utility company representatives it was determined that a standardized cost estimate form combined with improved change order management and cost management strategies was needed. Recently submitted estimates were analyzed and rated by a panel on multiple criteria to generate a list of \u27poor\u27, \u27good\u27, and \u27excellent\u27 estimates. The \u27excellent\u27 estimates provided insight into the development of a standard estimate form and the deficiencies noted in all of the estimates were addressed in the standard form. The standardized cost estimate form should be simple, easy to use, and flexible for use on all types of utility relocation projects. An Excel spreadsheet was developed with line items for material, labor, and overhead costs. It is recommended that all utility companies on all utility relocation cost estimates submitted to the SCDOT use this format. This report presents five separate standardized estimate forms for power, communication, gas, water, and sanitary sewer utilities. This report also makes recommendations for improvements to the SCDOT\u27s cost management database while utilizing cost management best practices. The main suggestion to improve the overall cost management process is to transition to a professional project management software such as Primavera P6 that can work seamlessly with the standardized estimate forms presented in this report, manage planned versus actual costs, search and sort data by any field, and generate useful cost and schedule reports

Data literacy in the smart university approach

Equipping classrooms with inexpensive sensors for data collection can provide students and teachers with the opportunity to interact with the classroom in a smart way. In this paper two approaches to acquiring contextual data from a classroom environment are presented. We further present our approach to analysing the collected room usage data on site, using low cost single board computer, such as a Raspberry Pi and Arduino units, performing a significant part of the data analysis on-site. We demonstrate how the usage data was used to model specifcic room usage situation as cases in a Case-based reasoning (CBR) system. The room usage data was then integrated in a room recommender system, reasoning on the formalised usage data, allowing for a convenient and intuitive end user experience based on the collected raw sensor data. Having implemented and tested our approaches we are currently investigating the possibility of using (XML)Schema-informed compression to enhance the security and efficiency of the transmission of a large number of sensor reports generated by interpreting the raw data on-site, to our central data sink. We are investigating this new approach to usage data transmission as we are aiming to integrate our on-going work into our vision of the Smart University to ensure and enhance the Smart University's data literacy