DevOps for Trustworthy Smart IoT Systems

ENACT is a research project funded by the European Commission under its H2020 program. The project consortium consists of twelve industry and research member organisations spread across the whole EU. The overall goal of the ENACT project was to provide a novel set of solutions to enable DevOps in the realm of trustworthy Smart IoT Systems. Smart IoT Systems (SIS) are complex systems involving not only sensors but also actuators with control loops distributed all across the IoT, Edge and Cloud infrastructure. Since smart IoT systems typically operate in a changing and often unpredictable environment, the ability of these systems to continuously evolve and adapt to their new environment is decisive to ensure and increase their trustworthiness, quality and user experience. DevOps has established itself as a software development life-cycle model that encourages developers to continuously bring new features to the system under operation without sacrificing quality. This book reports on the ENACT work to empower the development and operation as well as the continuous and agile evolution of SIS, which is necessary to adapt the system to changes in its environment, such as newly appearing trustworthiness threats

Trust-Based Service Selection

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is an architectural style that builds enterprise solutions based on services. In SOA, the lack of trust between different parties affects the adoption of such architecture. Trust is as significant a factor for successful online interactions as it is in real life communities, and consequently, it is an important factor that is used as a criterion for service selection. In the context of online services and SOA, the literature shows that the field of trust is not mature. Trust definition and the consideration of the essentials of trust aspects do not reflect the true nature of trust online. This thesis proposes a trust-based service selection solution, which requires establishing trust for services and supporting service selection based on trust. This work considers building trust for service providers besides rating services, an area that is neglected in the literature. This work follows progressive steps to arrive at a solution. First, this work develops a trust definition and identifies trust principles, which cover different aspects of trust. Next, SOA is extended to build a trust-based SOA that supports trust-based service selection. In particular, a new component, the trust mediator, which is responsible for trust establishment is added to the architecture. Accordingly, a trust mediator framework is built according to the trust definition and principles to identify its main components. Subsequently, this work identifies the trust information, or metrics, for services and service providers. Accordingly, trust models are built to evaluate trust rates for the applicable metrics, services, and service providers. Moreover, this work addresses the trust bootstrapping challenge. The proposed trust bootstrapping approach addresses different challenges in the literature such as whitewashing and cold start. This approach is implemented through experiments, evaluations, and scenarios

DevOps for Trustworthy Smart IoT Systems

ENACT is a research project funded by the European Commission under its H2020 program. The project consortium consists of twelve industry and research member organisations spread across the whole EU. The overall goal of the ENACT project was to provide a novel set of solutions to enable DevOps in the realm of trustworthy Smart IoT Systems. Smart IoT Systems (SIS) are complex systems involving not only sensors but also actuators with control loops distributed all across the IoT, Edge and Cloud infrastructure. Since smart IoT systems typically operate in a changing and often unpredictable environment, the ability of these systems to continuously evolve and adapt to their new environment is decisive to ensure and increase their trustworthiness, quality and user experience. DevOps has established itself as a software development life-cycle model that encourages developers to continuously bring new features to the system under operation without sacrificing quality. This book reports on the ENACT work to empower the development and operation as well as the continuous and agile evolution of SIS, which is necessary to adapt the system to changes in its environment, such as newly appearing trustworthiness threats

Civil society and the 'commanding heights' the civil economy: past, present, future

Civil society associations can run businesses and they can run organisations that aim to influence businesses. Together, these two sorts of association help to grow a civil economy. This paper, written for the Commission of Inquiry into the Future of Civil Society in the UK and Ireland, reviews the history of the civil economy and looks ahead to how it may come to have a greater influence in the future

Predicting Licensing Examination Performance With Cognitive Style And Reactive Behavior Pattern Assessments

Candidates for Florida real estate sales associate licensure responded to a two-part questionnaire based on William A. Long’s Reactive Behavior Patterns Theory and Robert J. Sternberg’s Triarchic Theory of Intelligence. Examination scores were converted to a dichotomous pass/fail variable based on the Florida Real Estate Commission-mandated cut-off score of 75 correctly answered questions out of 100. The candidates’ responses to the questionnaire comprising the Long-Dziuban Inventory and the Cognitive Strengths Task List based on Sternberg’s theory, were crosstabulated with pass/fail to identify differential passing proportions, if any, based on reactive behavior pattern and/or cognitive strength. An ANOVA procedure was used with the raw scores to determine whether statistically significant differences in mean exam scores existed between the four Long Types and the three Cognitive Types adapted from Sternberg’s theory. The data were subjected to similar analyses to ascertain whether the ancillary traits described by Long were predictive of exam performance. A crosstabulation of Long Type by Cognitive (Sternberg) Type was performed to find out if any significant relationships existed between the several dimensions of the Long-Dziuban Inventory and the Cognitive Strengths Task List. The results revealed a moderate statistically significant relationship between exam performance and cognitive strength, with analytical types and creative types having the greatest exam success. Tenuous relationships were identified between exam performance and the Long types and traits and between the Long-based and the Sternbergbased components of the research instrument. Although the results of this study did not establish definitive relationships between the Long and Sternberg constructs, by combining them into a measure of cognitive style, it forged a framework for future research into the relationship between licensing examination performance and cognitive styles. Within this framework are the components of a predictive model potentially useful for identifying not only real estate licensing exam performance but also for identifying persons likely to succeed in the real estate industry

Designing Data Spaces

This open access book provides a comprehensive view on data ecosystems and platform economics from methodical and technological foundations up to reports from practical implementations and applications in various industries. To this end, the book is structured in four parts: Part I “Foundations and Contexts” provides a general overview about building, running, and governing data spaces and an introduction to the IDS and GAIA-X projects. Part II “Data Space Technologies” subsequently details various implementation aspects of IDS and GAIA-X, including eg data usage control, the usage of blockchain technologies, or semantic data integration and interoperability. Next, Part III describes various “Use Cases and Data Ecosystems” from various application areas such as agriculture, healthcare, industry, energy, and mobility. Part IV eventually offers an overview of several “Solutions and Applications”, eg including products and experiences from companies like Google, SAP, Huawei, T-Systems, Innopay and many more. Overall, the book provides professionals in industry with an encompassing overview of the technological and economic aspects of data spaces, based on the International Data Spaces and Gaia-X initiatives. It presents implementations and business cases and gives an outlook to future developments. In doing so, it aims at proliferating the vision of a social data market economy based on data spaces which embrace trust and data sovereignty

Consumers, Sellers-Advisors, and the Psychology of Trust

Every day, consumers ask sellers for advice. Because they do not or cannot know better, consumers rely on that advice in making financial decisions of varying significance. Sellers, motivated by strong and often conflicting self-interests, are well-positioned to lead consumers to make decisions that are profitable for sellers and may be harmful to the consumers themselves. Short of imposing fraud liability in extreme situations, the law neither protects the trust consumers place in “seller-advisors,” nor alerts them to the incentives motivating the advice that sellers give. This Article makes several contributions to the literature. First, it identifies and defines the seller-advisor. Sellers and advisors are usually regarded separately by the law; therefore, consumers interacting with them are protected by different rules. As a result, a false dichotomy has arisen between (1) a doctrine of caveat emptor, subject to liability for fraud and applying to consumers interacting with sellers, and (2) fiduciary duties protecting consumers interacting with advisors. This Article is the first attempt to study consumer trust in the many common transactions that fall somewhere in the space between. Second, in reporting the results of an original psychology experiment, this Article offers empirical evidence of how consumers’ decision making is influenced by the trust they place in seller-advisors. Finally, it explores how consumer trust in seller-advisors arises and how it can be manipulated in an effort to understand how legal policy should respond to both the ubiquity of seller-advisors and the consequences of consumer reliance on, and vulnerability to, their advice

Consumers, Seller-Advisors, and the Psychology of Trust

Every day, consumers ask sellers for advice. Because they do not or cannot know better, consumers rely on that advice in making financial decisions of varying significance. Sellers, motivated by strong and often conflicting self-interests, are well-positioned to lead consumers to make decisions that are profitable for sellers and may be harmful to the consumers themselves. Short of imposing fraud liability in extreme situations, the law neither protects the trust consumers place in “seller-advisors,” nor alerts them to the incentives motivating the advice that sellers give. This Article makes several contributions to the literature. First, it identifies and defines the seller-advisor. Sellers and advisors are usually regarded separately by the law; therefore, consumers interacting with them are protected by different rules. As a result, a false dichotomy has arisen between (1) a doctrine of caveat emptor, subject to liability for fraud and applying to consumers interacting with sellers, and (2) fiduciary duties protecting consumers interacting with advisors. This Article is the first attempt to study consumer trust in the many common transactions that fall somewhere in the space between. Second, in reporting the results of an original psychology experiment, this Article offers empirical evidence of how consumers’ decision making is influenced by the trust they place in seller-advisors. Finally, it explores how consumer trust in seller-advisors arises and how it can be manipulated in an effort to understand how legal policy should respond to both the ubiquity of seller-advisors and the consequences of consumer reliance on, and vulnerability to, their advice

Do We Need Help Using Yelp? Regulating Advertising on Mediated Reputation Systems

Yelp, Angie’s List, Avvo, and similar entities enable consumers to access an incredibly useful trove of information about peer experiences with businesses and their goods and services. These “mediated reputation systems,” gatherers and disseminators of consumer peer opinions, are more trusted by consumers than traditional commercial channels. They are omnipresent, carried everywhere on mobile devices, and used by consumers ready to transact. Though this information is valuable, a troubling conflict emerges in its presentation. Most of these reputation platforms rely heavily on advertising sales to support their business models. This reliance compels these entities to display persuasive advertising right along with their presentation of authentic peer information. Consumers expecting to access this authentic peer information must also confront a persuasive message. The revenue lifeblood for these platforms comes from the very businesses under peer review. This Article argues that the power of peer information provides an exceptionally credible context for persuasive advertising. Accordingly, advertising on reputation platforms should trigger more rigorous regulation in the form of disclosure requirements and prioritized enforcement

Description and Experience of the Clinical Testbeds

This deliverable describes the up-to-date technical environment at three clinical testbed demonstrator sites of the 6WINIT Project, including the adapted clinical applications, project components and network transition technologies in use at these sites after 18 months of the Project. It also provides an interim description of early experiences with deployment and usage of these applications, components and technologies, and their clinical service impact