Auto-configuration of Critical Network Infrastructure

Until the turn of the millennia, many electricity, water and gas supply plant operators used analogue serial cabling to communicate between highly customised systems to control and manage their plants. Since then, cost reductions and increased flexibility have become possible through the use of COTS (Commodity-Off-The- Shelf) equipment. These have radically changed communication between critical infrastructure devices, but have also introduced risks to the domain; one example being the major incident at a German steel mill in 2014 [14]. Donna F. Dodson, Chief of CyberSecurity at NIST has stated that “There’s an increase in free tools available focusing on industrial control systems. And greater hacker interest.” A common strategy to mitigate these risks is the extensive use of firewalls. Firewalls are not as simple as they appear. Efficient and reliable firewall security requires expertise in arcane, vendor-dependent configuration languages [15] and even then, configuration errors are common [97, 128, 129]. It is easy to complain about short-term thinking in firewall designers, but, at a deeper level the problem is that current approaches conflate multiple concerns: i.e., they incorporate network, protocol and hardware dependent details into security policy, in an unsystematised manner. In this thesis we tackle this problem. We begin by building a mathematically rigorous foundation for the design of security policies that separates divergent concerns. The formal foundations allow security administrators to reason about their network security; for instance to (i) show that certain types of traffic flows are impossible; and (ii) compare their security to industry best practices to check it complies and so on. In particular, we design our policy framework with Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks in mind; these networks control the distributed assets of many critical infrastructure plants. In doing so, we consider the requirements of a security policy specification that are general in nature as well as specific to a SCADA network context. An example requirement is verifiability: a property that increases transparency in the framework and provides security administrators assurance of expected security outcome. Lack of verifiability in current firewall configuration platforms contribute to the broken-by-design networks found in practice. Moreover, we apply design principles derived from real SCADA case studies [97] and industry best-practices [21,117], to develop simple policy specification features that are easy to administer correctly. We demonstrate the use of these specification features through a prototype implementation that creates secure-by-design networks. In enabling security by design, we (i) prevent policy emergence: i.e., implicit definition of policy as a result of many small decisions with complex interactions; and (ii) support rigorous verification: from policy consistency and best-practice compliance checks to pre-deployment verification, we only allow deploying policies that deliver the expected security outcome; and (iii) protect proactively: security can’t be purely reactive, placing pre-verified security controls prior to a cyber attack can prevent significant, expensive damage to system infrastructure.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Mathematical Sciences, 201

Frugal Innovation for Supply Chain Sustainability in SMEs: Multi-method Research Design

In this study we attempt to establish the missing links between supply chain sustainability and frugal innovation. Our study motivations stem from two facets of the emerging markets: firstly, the institutional barriers and secondly, the resource constraints. We argue that there is a synergy in the concepts of frugal innovation and sustainability in supply chains and there is a need to further explore this synergy. Furthermore, we claim that even in the wake of many success stories in the frugal innovative supply chain management practices from emerging markets such as India, there are very few, if any, attempts made to understand the implications of a sustainability oriented frugal innovations in the particular context. To address this gap we develop a model to establish the linkage between sustainable supply chains and frugal innovations. Our proposed conceptual framework depicts the hierarchy and interlinks of the identified enablers in developing sustainability oriented frugal innovative capabilities in supply chains. Furthermore, we have empirically validated our theoretical framework using survey data. We observed that most of the interpretive links are supported. These findings extend the understanding of frugal innovation for supply chain sustainability using multi-method research design, while also providing theoretically guidance to managers in the development of frugal innovation capability to achieve sustainability in supply chain in resource constrained environment

How frugal innovation shape global sustainable supply chains during the pandemic crisis: Lessons from the COVID-19

Purpose- The COVID‐19 crisis has created enormous strain in global supply chains. The disruption has caused severe shortages of critical items, including Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) (e.g. face masks), ventilators, and diagnostics. The failure of industry to meet the sudden demand for these necessary items has caused a severe humanitarian crisis. These situations, resulting from the COVID19, crisis have led to the informal growth of frugal innovation in sustainable global supply chains. In this paper we provide a detailed overview of drivers of frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains, following lessons acquired from emerging countries' attempt to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic. Design/Methodology/Approach- We utilized a focused group approach to identify the drivers and we further validated them using existing literature published in international peer-reviewed journals and reports. We adopted total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) to analyze the complex relationships among identified drivers. Findings- We present a theoretical framework to explain how the drivers are interlinked. We have developed our framework through a synthesis of the TISM modeling and MICMAC analysis. We observed that government financial support, policies & regulations, under the mediating effect of leadership and the moderating effect of national culture and international rules & regulations, has a significant effect on the adoption of emerging technology, volunteering initiatives, and values & ethics. Further, emerging technology, volunteering initiative, and values & ethics have a significant effect on supply chain talent and frugal engineering. These results provide some useful theoretical insights that may help in further investigating the role of frugal innovations in other contexts. Originality/ value- We find that outcomes of the methodical contributions and the resulting managerial insights can be categorized into four levels. Industry and researchers alike can use our study in order to develop the decision-support systems guiding frugal-oriented sustainable global supply chains amid the COVID-19 pandemic and in recovering them thereafter. Suggestions for future research directions are offered and discussed

Sustained competitive advantage using Industry 4.0 strategies: a case of UK infrastructure sector

This thesis is submitted in line with fulfilling the requirements for the degree of Doctoral of Philosophy (PhD) for the University of Wolverhampton.Globally, technological development is growing rapidly where nations around the world are becoming more digital and data driven to shift into the fourth industrial revolution (Industry 4.0). The United Kingdom is on the route to follow these footsteps as their government have set plans to digitise and automate industries to achieve the goal of better efficiency and productivity thus, improving the economy. Despite the efforts from the UK Government enforcing a mandate in a minimum Level 2 BIM (Building Information Model) for all public sector projects over the contract is over 12 months and worth £10,000,000 or more, organisations within the infrastructure sector are still witnessing challenges in incorporating industry 4.0 agenda within their projects and processes. Additionally, there is a scarcity of literature and research on the implementation of industry 4.0 strategies within the UK infrastructure sector to increase productivity and improve organisations competitiveness. Consequently, this research aims to conduct an evaluation of the UK infrastructure sector and their implementation of industry 4.0 strategies to improve processes and competitiveness. This research uses a qualitative approach, and 21 interviews were conducted from five large UK infrastructure sector organisations and eight small to medium sized organisations within the sector. Purposive sampling was adopted in the early stages of research which was turned into snowball sampling further in the research. The data collection method adopted was semi structured interviews where the interviews data were analysed through thematic analysis to gain a wider perspective of the interview data. To accomplish the aim of the research, the following systematic approaches were adopted; TISM (Total Interpretive Structural Model), Fuzzy MICMAC (Fuzzy Matrice d’Impacts Croises-Multiplication Applique an Classment), GTMA (Graph Theoretic and matrix Approach), and the Maturity Model. This research outputs a framework and a developed readiness tool. The results have suggested that the infrastructure sector have identified four key change processes that are vital for industry 4.0 strategies: People, Processes, Strategies, and Tools/Technology. The UK infrastructure sector is behind in complying with the laws set by the UK government despite organisations providing the required tools for implementation. It has been found that competitiveness has been one of the main key drivers for organisations implementing industry 4.0 initiatives. Software and hardware challenges were highlighted as the main challenges for industry 4.0 initiatives implementation within the infrastructure sector. The results of this research study highlight useful intuitions that would be beneficial to the UK infrastructure sector and the decision makers within their organisations to adopt and implement industry 4.0 initiatives to provide value to organisations productivity and efficiency

Semantic Networks for Hybrid Processes.

Simulation models are often used in parallel with a physical system to facilitate control, diagnosis and monitoring. Model based methods for control, diagnosis and monitoring form the basis for the popular sobriquets `intelligent', `smart' or `cyber-physical'. We refer to a configuration where a model and a physical system are run in parallel as a emph{hybrid process}. Discrepancies between the model and the process may be caused by a fault in the process or an error in the model. In this work we focus on correcting modeling errors and provide methods to correct or update the model when a discrepancy is observed between a model and process operating in parallel. We then show that some of the methods developed for model adaptation and diagnosis can be used for control systems design. There are five main contributions. The first contribution is an analysis of the practical considerations and limitations of a networked implementation of a hybrid process. The analysis considers both the delay and jitter in a packet switching network as well as limits on the accuracy of clocks used to synchronize the model and process. The second contribution is a semantic representation of hybrid processes which enables improvements to the accuracy and scope of algorithms used to update the model. We demonstrate how model uncertainty can be balanced against signal uncertainty and how the structure of interconnections between model components can be automatically reconfigured if needed. The third contribution is a diagnostic approach to isolate model components responsible for a discrepancy between model and process, for a structure preserving realization of a system of ODEs. The fourth contribution is an extension of the diagnostic strategy to include larger graphs with cycles, model uncertainty and measurement noise. The method uses graph theoretic tools to simplify the graph and make the problem more tractable and robust to noise. The fifth contribution is a simulation of a distributed control system to illustrate our contributions. Using a coordinated network of electric vehicle charging stations as an example, a consensus based decentralized charging policy is implemented using semantic modeling and declarative descriptions of the interconnection network.PhDMechanical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/99903/1/danand_1.pd

Collected Papers (on Neutrosophic Theory and Applications), Volume VII

This seventh volume of Collected Papers includes 70 papers comprising 974 pages on (theoretic and applied) neutrosophics, written between 2013-2021 by the author alone or in collaboration with the following 122 co-authors from 22 countries: Mohamed Abdel-Basset, Abdel-Nasser Hussian, C. Alexander, Mumtaz Ali, Yaman Akbulut, Amir Abdullah, Amira S. Ashour, Assia Bakali, Kousik Bhattacharya, Kainat Bibi, R. N. Boyd, Ümit Budak, Lulu Cai, Cenap Özel, Chang Su Kim, Victor Christianto, Chunlai Du, Chunxin Bo, Rituparna Chutia, Cu Nguyen Giap, Dao The Son, Vinayak Devvrat, Arindam Dey, Partha Pratim Dey, Fahad Alsharari, Feng Yongfei, S. Ganesan, Shivam Ghildiyal, Bibhas C. Giri, Masooma Raza Hashmi, Ahmed Refaat Hawas, Hoang Viet Long, Le Hoang Son, Hongbo Wang, Hongnian Yu, Mihaiela Iliescu, Saeid Jafari, Temitope Gbolahan Jaiyeola, Naeem Jan, R. Jeevitha, Jun Ye, Anup Khan, Madad Khan, Salma Khan, Ilanthenral Kandasamy, W.B. Vasantha Kandasamy, Darjan Karabašević, Kifayat Ullah, Kishore Kumar P.K., Sujit Kumar De, Prasun Kumar Nayak, Malayalan Lathamaheswari, Luong Thi Hong Lan, Anam Luqman, Luu Quoc Dat, Tahir Mahmood, Hafsa M. Malik, Nivetha Martin, Mai Mohamed, Parimala Mani, Mingcong Deng, Mohammed A. Al Shumrani, Mohammad Hamidi, Mohamed Talea, Kalyan Mondal, Muhammad Akram, Muhammad Gulistan, Farshid Mofidnakhaei, Muhammad Shoaib, Muhammad Riaz, Karthika Muthusamy, Nabeela Ishfaq, Deivanayagampillai Nagarajan, Sumera Naz, Nguyen Dinh Hoa, Nguyen Tho Thong, Nguyen Xuan Thao, Noor ul Amin, Dragan Pamučar, Gabrijela Popović, S. Krishna Prabha, Surapati Pramanik, Priya R, Qiaoyan Li, Yaser Saber, Said Broumi, Saima Anis, Saleem Abdullah, Ganeshsree Selvachandran, Abdulkadir Sengür, Seyed Ahmad Edalatpanah, Shahbaz Ali, Shahzaib Ashraf, Shouzhen Zeng, Shio Gai Quek, Shuangwu Zhu, Shumaiza, Sidra Sayed, Sohail Iqbal, Songtao Shao, Sundas Shahzadi, Dragiša Stanujkić, Željko Stević, Udhayakumar Ramalingam, Zunaira Rashid, Hossein Rashmanlou, Rajkumar Verma, Luige Vlădăreanu, Victor Vlădăreanu, Desmond Jun Yi Tey, Selçuk Topal, Naveed Yaqoob, Yanhui Guo, Yee Fei Gan, Yingcang Ma, Young Bae Jun, Yuping Lai, Hafiz Abdul Wahab, Wei Yang, Xiaohong Zhang, Edmundas Kazimieras Zavadskas, Lemnaouar Zedam

Fuzzy Techniques for Decision Making 2018

Zadeh's fuzzy set theory incorporates the impreciseness of data and evaluations, by imputting the degrees by which each object belongs to a set. Its success fostered theories that codify the subjectivity, uncertainty, imprecision, or roughness of the evaluations. Their rationale is to produce new flexible methodologies in order to model a variety of concrete decision problems more realistically. This Special Issue garners contributions addressing novel tools, techniques and methodologies for decision making (inclusive of both individual and group, single- or multi-criteria decision making) in the context of these theories. It contains 38 research articles that contribute to a variety of setups that combine fuzziness, hesitancy, roughness, covering sets, and linguistic approaches. Their ranges vary from fundamental or technical to applied approaches