Trust, Privacy and Transparency with Blockhain Technology in Logistics

Since the introduction of blockchain over a decade ago, many industries and industrial sectors are exploring the potentials of the technology. In line with the trend, logistics sector is not an exception and is investigation various dynamics associated with the implementation of the technology. This study focuses on the linking between the capabilities of blockchain technology and trust, privacy and transparency. In order to explore dynamics of the linkage, the study used case study as a method for the inquiry. These have been common issues in logistics which the existing information solutions are unable in resolving to a greater extent.. The results shows that blockchain technology has the capability to build trust among unknown industry players while maintaining a sufficient level of privacy and transparency at the same time. Overall, the study presents useful insights by contributing to the major issues in logistics and supply chain when an innovative digital technology is put into action

A Local Stability Supported Parallel Distributed Constraint Optimization Algorithm

This paper presents a new distributed constraint optimization algorithm called LSPA, which can be used to solve large scale distributed constraint optimization problem (DCOP). Different from the access of local information in the existing algorithms, a new criterion called local stability is defined and used to evaluate which is the next agent whose value needs to be changed. The propose of local stability opens a new research direction of refining initial solution by finding key agents which can seriously effect global solution once they modify assignments. In addition, the construction of initial solution could be received more quickly without repeated assignment and conflict. In order to execute parallel search, LSPA finds final solution by constantly computing local stability of compatible agents. Experimental evaluation shows that LSPA outperforms some of the state-of-the-art incomplete distributed constraint optimization algorithms, guaranteeing better solutions received within ideal time

Distributed Gibbs: A memory-bounded sampling-based DCOP algorithm

National Research Foundation (NRF) Singapore under International Research Centres in Singapore Funding Initiativ

Decentralized multi-agent reinforcement learning in average-reward dynamic DCOPs

Researchers have introduced the Dynamic Distributed Constraint Optimization Problem (Dynamic DCOP) formulation to model dynamically changing multi-agent coordination problems, where a dynamic DCOP is a sequence of (static canonical) DCOPs, each partially different from the DCOP preceding it. Existing work typically assumes that the problem in each time step is decoupled from the problems in other time steps, which might not hold in some applications. Therefore, in this paper, we make the following contributions: (i) We introduce a new model, called Markovian Dynamic DCOPs (MD-DCOPs), where the DCOP in the next time step is a function of the value assignments in the current time step; (ii) We introduce two distributed reinforcement learning algorithms, the Distributed RVI Q-learning algorithm and the Distributed R-learning algorithm, that balance exploration and exploitation to solve MD-DCOPs in an online manner; and (iii) We empirically evaluate them against an existing multi-arm bandit DCOP algorithm on dynamic DCOPs

Distributed Constraint Optimization:Privacy Guarantees and Stochastic Uncertainty

Distributed Constraint Satisfaction (DisCSP) and Distributed Constraint Optimization (DCOP) are formal frameworks that can be used to model a variety of problems in which multiple decision-makers cooperate towards a common goal: from computing an equilibrium of a game, to vehicle routing problems, to combinatorial auctions. In this thesis, we independently address two important issues in such multi-agent problems: 1) how to provide strong guarantees on the protection of the privacy of the participants, and 2) how to anticipate future, uncontrollable events. On the privacy front, our contributions depart from previous work in two ways. First, we consider not only constraint privacy (the agents' private costs) and decision privacy (keeping the complete solution secret), but also two other types of privacy that have been largely overlooked in the literature: agent privacy, which has to do with protecting the identities of the participants, and topology privacy, which covers information about the agents' co-dependencies. Second, while previous work focused mainly on quantitatively measuring and reducing privacy loss, our algorithms provide stronger, qualitative guarantees on what information will remain secret. Our experiments show that it is possible to provide such privacy guarantees, while still scaling to much larger problems than the previous state of the art. When it comes to reasoning under uncertainty, we propose an extension to the DCOP framework, called DCOP under Stochastic Uncertainty (StochDCOP), which includes uncontrollable, random variables with known probability distributions that model uncertain, future events. The problem becomes one of making "optimal" offline decisions, before the true values of the random variables can be observed. We consider three possible concepts of optimality: minimizing the expected cost, minimizing the worst-case cost, or maximizing the probability of a-posteriori optimality. We propose a new family of StochDCOP algorithms, exploring the tradeoffs between solution quality, computational and message complexity, and privacy. In particular, we show how discovering and reasoning about co-dependencies on common random variables can yield higher-quality solutions

Coordinating Logistics Operations with Privacy Guarantees

Several logistics service providers serve a certain number of customers, geographically spread over an area of operations. They would like to coordinate their operations so as to minimize overall cost. At the same time, they would like to keep information about their costs, constraints and preferences private, thus precluding conventional negotiation. We show how AI techniques, in particular Distributed Constraint Optimization (DCOP), can be integrated with cryptographic techniques to allow such coordination without revealing agents' private information. The problem of assigning customers to companies is formulated as a DCOP, for which we propose two novel, privacy-preserving algorithms. We compare their performances and privacy properties on a set of Vehicle Routing Problem benchmarks

Diagnostic distribué de systèmes respectant la confidentialité

Dans cette thèse, nous nous intéressons à diagnostiquer des systèmes intrinsèquement distribués (comme les systèmes pairs-à-pairs) où chaque pair n'a accès qu'à une sous partie de la description d'un système global. De plus, en raison d'une politique d'accès trop restrictive, il sera pourra qu'aucun pair ne puisse expliquer le comportement du système global. Dans ce contexte, le challenge du diagnostic distribué est le suivant: expliquer le comportement global d'un système distribué par un ensemble de pairs ayant chacun une vision limitée, tout comme l'aurait fait un unique pair diagnostiqueur ayant, lui, une vision globale du système.D'un point de vue théorique, nous montrons que tout nouveau système, logiquement équivalent au système pair-à-pairs initialement observé, garantit que tout diagnostic local d'un pair pourra être prolongé par un diagnostic global (dans ce cas, le nouveau système est dit correct pour le diagnostic distribué).Nous montrons aussi que si ce nouveau système est structuré (c-à-d: il contient un arbre couvrant pour lequel tous les pairs contenant une même variable forme un graphe connecté) alors il garantit que tout diagnostic global pourra être retrouvé à travers un ensemble de diagnostics locaux des pairs (dans ce cas le nouveau système est dit complet pour le diagnostic distribué).Dans un souci de représentation succincte et afin de respecter la politique de confidentialité du vocabulaire de chacun des pairs, nous présentons un nouvel algorithme Token Elimination (TE), qui décompose le système de pairs initial vers un système structuré.Nous montrons expérimentalement que TE produit des décompositions de meilleurs qualité (c-à-d: de plus petites largeurs arborescentes) que les méthodes envisagées dans un contexte distribué. À partir du système structuré construit par TE, nous transformons chaque description locale en une Forme Normale Disjonctive (FND) globalement cohérente.Nous montrons que ce dernier système garantit effectivement un diagnostic distribué correct et complet. En plus, nous exhibons un algorithme capable de vérifier efficacement que tout diagnostic local fait partie d'un diagnostic minimal global, faisant du système structuré de FNDs un système compilé pour le diagnostic distribué.In this thesis, we focus on diagnosing inherently distributed systems such as peer-to-peer, where each peer has access to only a sub-part of the description of an overall system.In addition, due to a too restrictive access control policy, it can be possible that neither peer nor supervisor is able to explain the behaviour of the overall system.The goal of distributed diagnosis is to explain the behaviour of a distributed system by a set of peers (each having a limited local view) as a single diagnosis engine having a global view of the overall system.First, we show that any new system logically equivalent to the initially observed peer-to-peer setting ensures that all diagnosis of a peer may be extended to a global diagnosis (in this case the new system ensures correctness of the distributed diagnosis).Moreover, we prove that if the new system is structured (i.e.it contains a spanning tree for which all peers containing the same variable form a connected graph) then it ensures that any global diagnosis can be found through a set of local diagnoses (in this case the new system ensures the completeness of the distributed diagnoses).For a succinct representation and in order to comply with the privacy policy of the vocabulary of each peer, we present a new algorithm Token Elimination (TE), which decomposes the original peer system to a structured one.We experimentally show that TE produces better quality decompositions (i.e. smaller tree widths) than proposed methods in a distributed context.From the structured system built by TE, we transform each local description into globally consistent DNF.We demonstrate that the latter system is correct and complete for the distributed diagnosis.Finally, we present an algorithm that can effectively check that any local diagnosis is part of a global minimal diagnosis, turning the structured system of DNFs into a compiled system for distributed diagnosis.PARIS11-SCD-Bib. électronique (914719901) / SudocSudocFranceF