Secure Cloud-Edge Deployments, with Trust

Assessing the security level of IoT applications to be deployed to heterogeneous Cloud-Edge infrastructures operated by different providers is a non-trivial task. In this article, we present a methodology that permits to express security requirements for IoT applications, as well as infrastructure security capabilities, in a simple and declarative manner, and to automatically obtain an explainable assessment of the security level of the possible application deployments. The methodology also considers the impact of trust relations among different stakeholders using or managing Cloud-Edge infrastructures. A lifelike example is used to showcase the prototyped implementation of the methodology

Beach users’ perceptions of coastal regeneration projects as an adaptation strategy in the western Mediterranean

Some coastal environments facing climate change risks are starting to be managed with nature-based solutions (NBS). Strategies based on the rehabilitation of green infrastructures in coastal municipalities, such as renaturalization of seafronts, are considered adaptive to the effects of climate change but may cause misconceptions that could lead to social conflicts between the tourist sector and the society. A survey was carried out to study user perceptions on the effects of climate change, preferences for adaptation strategies, and the assessment of projects of dune reconstruction. We find that while beach users recognize the benefits of NBS for environmental conservation and storm protection, they show little concern about possible effects of climate change on recreational activity and have limited understanding about the protective capacity of NBS. Thus, a greater effort must be made to better explain the effects of climate change and the potential benefits of NBS in coastal risk management.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Improving Ontology Recommendation and Reuse in WebCORE by Collaborative Assessments

In this work, we present an extension of CORE [8], a tool for Collaborative Ontology Reuse and Evaluation. The system receives an informal description of a specific semantic domain and determines which ontologies from a repository are the most appropriate to describe the given domain. For this task, the environment is divided into three modules. The first component receives the problem description as a set of terms, and allows the user to refine and enlarge it using WordNet. The second module applies multiple automatic criteria to evaluate the ontologies of the repository, and determines which ones fit best the problem description. A ranked list of ontologies is returned for each criterion, and the lists are combined by means of rank fusion techniques. Finally, the third component uses manual user evaluations in order to incorporate a human, collaborative assessment of the ontologies. The new version of the system incorporates several novelties, such as its implementation as a web application; the incorporation of a NLP module to manage the problem definitions; modifications on the automatic ontology retrieval strategies; and a collaborative framework to find potential relevant terms according to previous user queries. Finally, we present some early experiments on ontology retrieval and evaluation, showing the benefits of our system

The Current Status of Social Risks on Educational Systems. An Analysis Through Social Media

Este trabajo ha sido publicado en las actas del citado congreso, y revisados los documentos donde ha sido publicado, no se muestran impedimentos legales para que pueda ser publicado el documento.Social Risk in education such as bullying, are usually invisible to teachers and parents, at all educational levels. However, these risks remain a reality everywhere in the world, turning into a problem that is rapidly globalizing due to the widespread access to the Internet. The Internet has permeated our entire society and is now present in almost every activity. The education and most aspects associated with it, such as Social Risks, are not exempt of this new form of communication within our society. This has led to a significant increase in damage Social Risks can exhort on the victims, due to several causes such as their capacity for dissemination, repetition and virality; greater anonymity of aggressors and the chance for more people joining them; continuity over time even when after school hours; display of intimacy before an endless crowd of people; ease of permanent control through geolocation, control of online statuses and connections; and even the risk of easily impersonating a victim. The first step to prevent these issues is to carry out a study on the current state of Social Risks. An updated snapshot would allow to draw up action plans based on reliable data and develop countermeasures to minimize the damage caused by current Social Risks to minors. The objective of this work is to conduct a study on unsolicited data obtained from Social Media on three of the most prominent Social Risks of our society, namely Bullying, Addictions and Xenophobia within the field of education, with the aim of obtaining an updated snapshot of their current status. The study was carried out during the second semester of 2017 and the first semester of 2018, quantifying the presence and emotion of said risks in Social Media, determining the most relevant terms, as well as the most used communication channels

Trust Based Participant Driven Privacy Control in Participatory Sensing

Widespread use of sensors and multisensory personal devices generate a lot of personal information. Sharing this information with others could help in various ways. However, this information may be misused when shared with all. Sharing of information between trusted parties overcomes this problem. This paper describes a model to share information based on interactions and opinions to build trust among peers. It also considers institutional and other controls, which influence the behaviour of the peers. The trust and control build confidence. The computed confidence bespeaks whether to reveal information or not thereby increasing trusted cooperation among peers.Comment: 14 page

An optimal feedback model to prevent manipulation behaviours in consensus under social network group decision making

The file attached to this record is the author's final peer reviewed version. The Publisher's final version can be found by following the DOI link.A novel framework to prevent manipulation behaviour in consensus reaching process under social network group decision making is proposed, which is based on a theoretically sound optimal feedback model. The manipulation behaviour classification is twofold: (1) ‘individual manipulation’ where each expert manipulates his/her own behaviour to achieve higher importance degree (weight); and (2) ‘group manipulation’ where a group of experts force inconsistent experts to adopt specific recommendation advices obtained via the use of fixed feedback parameter. To counteract ‘individual manipulation’, a behavioural weights assignment method modelling sequential attitude ranging from ‘dictatorship’ to ‘democracy’ is developed, and then a reasonable policy for group minimum adjustment cost is established to assign appropriate weights to experts. To prevent ‘group manipulation’, an optimal feedback model with objective function the individual adjustments cost and constraints related to the threshold of group consensus is investigated. This approach allows the inconsistent experts to balance group consensus and adjustment cost, which enhances their willingness to adopt the recommendation advices and consequently the group reaching consensus on the decision making problem at hand. A numerical example is presented to illustrate and verify the proposed optimal feedback model

Privacy, security, and trust issues in smart environments

Recent advances in networking, handheld computing and sensor technologies have driven forward research towards the realisation of Mark Weiser's dream of calm and ubiquitous computing (variously called pervasive computing, ambient computing, active spaces, the disappearing computer or context-aware computing). In turn, this has led to the emergence of smart environments as one significant facet of research in this domain. A smart environment, or space, is a region of the real world that is extensively equipped with sensors, actuators and computing components [1]. In effect the smart space becomes a part of a larger information system: with all actions within the space potentially affecting the underlying computer applications, which may themselves affect the space through the actuators. Such smart environments have tremendous potential within many application areas to improve the utility of a space. Consider the potential offered by a smart environment that prolongs the time an elderly or infirm person can live an independent life or the potential offered by a smart environment that supports vicarious learning

Effectiveness of Corporate Social Media Activities to Increase Relational Outcomes

This study applies social media analytics to investigate the impact of different corporate social media activities on user word of mouth and attitudinal loyalty. We conduct a multilevel analysis of approximately 5 million tweets regarding the main Twitter accounts of 28 large global companies. We empirically identify different social media activities in terms of social media management strategies (using social media management tools or the web-frontend client), account types (broadcasting or receiving information), and communicative approaches (conversational or disseminative). We find positive effects of social media management tools, broadcasting accounts, and conversational communication on public perception