Urban Anomaly Analytics: Description, Detection, and Prediction

Urban anomalies may result in loss of life or property if not handled properly. Automatically alerting anomalies in their early stage or even predicting anomalies before happening is of great value for populations. Recently, data-driven urban anomaly analysis frameworks have been forming, which utilize urban big data and machine learning algorithms to detect and predict urban anomalies automatically. In this survey, we make a comprehensive review of the state-of-the-art research on urban anomaly analytics. We first give an overview of four main types of urban anomalies, traffic anomaly, unexpected crowds, environment anomaly, and individual anomaly. Next, we summarize various types of urban datasets obtained from diverse devices, i.e., trajectory, trip records, CDRs, urban sensors, event records, environment data, social media and surveillance cameras. Subsequently, a comprehensive survey of issues on detecting and predicting techniques for urban anomalies is presented. Finally, research challenges and open problems as discussed.Peer reviewe

Disruption analytics in urban metro systems with large-scale automated data

Urban metro systems are frequently affected by disruptions such as infrastructure malfunctions, rolling stock breakdowns and accidents. Such disruptions give rise to delays, congestion and inconvenience for public transport users, which in turn, lead to a wider range of negative impacts on the social economy and wellbeing. This PhD thesis aims to improve our understanding of disruption impacts and improve the ability of metro operators to detect and manage disruptions by using large-scale automated data. The crucial precondition of any disruption analytics is to have accurate information about the location, occurrence time, duration and propagation of disruptions. In pursuit of this goal, the thesis develops statistical models to detect disruptions via deviations in trains’ headways relative to their regular services. Our method is a unique contribution in the sense that it is based on automated vehicle location data (data-driven) and the probabilistic framework is effective to detect any type of service interruptions, including minor delays that last just a few minutes. As an important research outcome, the thesis delivers novel analyses of the propagation progress of disruptions along metro lines, thus enabling us to distinguish primary and secondary disruptions as well as recovery interventions performed by operators. The other part of the thesis provides new insights for quantifying disruption impacts and measuring metro vulnerability. One of our key messages is that in metro systems there are factors influencing both the occurrence of disruptions and their outcomes. With such confounding factors, we show that causal inference is a powerful tool to estimate unbiased impacts on passenger demand and journey time, which is also capable of quantifying the spatial-temporal propagation of disruption impacts within metro networks. The causal inference approaches are applied to empirical studies based on the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway (MTR). Our conclusions can assist researchers and practitioners in two applications: (i) the evaluation of metro performance such as service reliability, system vulnerability and resilience, and (ii) the management of future disruptions.Open Acces

IEEE Access Special Section Editorial: Big Data Technology and Applications in Intelligent Transportation

During the last few years, information technology and transportation industries, along with automotive manufacturers and academia, are focusing on leveraging intelligent transportation systems (ITS) to improve services related to driver experience, connected cars, Internet data plans for vehicles, traffic infrastructure, urban transportation systems, traffic collaborative management, road traffic accidents analysis, road traffic flow prediction, public transportation service plan, personal travel route plans, and the development of an effective ecosystem for vehicles, drivers, traffic controllers, city planners, and transportation applications. Moreover, the emerging technologies of the Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud computing have provided unprecedented opportunities for the development and realization of innovative intelligent transportation systems where sensors and mobile devices can gather information and cloud computing, allowing knowledge discovery, information sharing, and supported decision making. However, the development of such data-driven ITS requires the integration, processing, and analysis of plentiful information obtained from millions of vehicles, traffic infrastructures, smartphones, and other collaborative systems like weather stations and road safety and early warning systems. The huge amount of data generated by ITS devices is only of value if utilized in data analytics for decision-making such as accident prevention and detection, controlling road risks, reducing traffic carbon emissions, and other applications which bring big data analytics into the picture

Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence for Critical Infrastructures Security

Modern critical infrastructures can be considered as large scale Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Therefore, when designing, implementing, and operating systems for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), the boundaries between physical security and cybersecurity are blurred. Emerging systems for Critical Infrastructures Security and Protection must therefore consider integrated approaches that emphasize the interplay between cybersecurity and physical security techniques. Hence, there is a need for a new type of integrated security intelligence i.e., Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence (CPTI). This book presents novel solutions for integrated Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence for infrastructures in various sectors, such as Industrial Sites and Plants, Air Transport, Gas, Healthcare, and Finance. The solutions rely on novel methods and technologies, such as integrated modelling for cyber-physical systems, novel reliance indicators, and data driven approaches including BigData analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some of the presented approaches are sector agnostic i.e., applicable to different sectors with a fair customization effort. Nevertheless, the book presents also peculiar challenges of specific sectors and how they can be addressed. The presented solutions consider the European policy context for Security, Cyber security, and Critical Infrastructure protection, as laid out by the European Commission (EC) to support its Member States to protect and ensure the resilience of their critical infrastructures. Most of the co-authors and contributors are from European Research and Technology Organizations, as well as from European Critical Infrastructure Operators. Hence, the presented solutions respect the European approach to CIP, as reflected in the pillars of the European policy framework. The latter includes for example the Directive on security of network and information systems (NIS Directive), the Directive on protecting European Critical Infrastructures, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Cybersecurity Act Regulation. The sector specific solutions that are described in the book have been developed and validated in the scope of several European Commission (EC) co-funded projects on Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), which focus on the listed sectors. Overall, the book illustrates a rich set of systems, technologies, and applications that critical infrastructure operators could consult to shape their future strategies. It also provides a catalogue of CPTI case studies in different sectors, which could be useful for security consultants and practitioners as well

Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence for Critical Infrastructures Security

Modern critical infrastructures can be considered as large scale Cyber Physical Systems (CPS). Therefore, when designing, implementing, and operating systems for Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), the boundaries between physical security and cybersecurity are blurred. Emerging systems for Critical Infrastructures Security and Protection must therefore consider integrated approaches that emphasize the interplay between cybersecurity and physical security techniques. Hence, there is a need for a new type of integrated security intelligence i.e., Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence (CPTI). This book presents novel solutions for integrated Cyber-Physical Threat Intelligence for infrastructures in various sectors, such as Industrial Sites and Plants, Air Transport, Gas, Healthcare, and Finance. The solutions rely on novel methods and technologies, such as integrated modelling for cyber-physical systems, novel reliance indicators, and data driven approaches including BigData analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI). Some of the presented approaches are sector agnostic i.e., applicable to different sectors with a fair customization effort. Nevertheless, the book presents also peculiar challenges of specific sectors and how they can be addressed. The presented solutions consider the European policy context for Security, Cyber security, and Critical Infrastructure protection, as laid out by the European Commission (EC) to support its Member States to protect and ensure the resilience of their critical infrastructures. Most of the co-authors and contributors are from European Research and Technology Organizations, as well as from European Critical Infrastructure Operators. Hence, the presented solutions respect the European approach to CIP, as reflected in the pillars of the European policy framework. The latter includes for example the Directive on security of network and information systems (NIS Directive), the Directive on protecting European Critical Infrastructures, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), and the Cybersecurity Act Regulation. The sector specific solutions that are described in the book have been developed and validated in the scope of several European Commission (EC) co-funded projects on Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP), which focus on the listed sectors. Overall, the book illustrates a rich set of systems, technologies, and applications that critical infrastructure operators could consult to shape their future strategies. It also provides a catalogue of CPTI case studies in different sectors, which could be useful for security consultants and practitioners as well

Artificial Intelligence-based Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles

The damaging effects of cyberattacks to an industry like the Cooperative Connected and Automated Mobility (CCAM) can be tremendous. From the least important to the worst ones, one can mention for example the damage in the reputation of vehicle manufacturers, the increased denial of customers to adopt CCAM, the loss of working hours (having direct impact on the European GDP), material damages, increased environmental pollution due e.g., to traffic jams or malicious modifications in sensors’ firmware, and ultimately, the great danger for human lives, either they are drivers, passengers or pedestrians. Connected vehicles will soon become a reality on our roads, bringing along new services and capabilities, but also technical challenges and security threats. To overcome these risks, the CARAMEL project has developed several anti-hacking solutions for the new generation of vehicles. CARAMEL (Artificial Intelligence-based Cybersecurity for Connected and Automated Vehicles), a research project co-funded by the European Union under the Horizon 2020 framework programme, is a project consortium with 15 organizations from 8 European countries together with 3 Korean partners. The project applies a proactive approach based on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning techniques to detect and prevent potential cybersecurity threats to autonomous and connected vehicles. This approach has been addressed based on four fundamental pillars, namely: Autonomous Mobility, Connected Mobility, Electromobility, and Remote Control Vehicle. This book presents theory and results from each of these technical directions

Spatio-temporal traffic anomaly detection for urban networks

Urban road networks are often affected by disruptions such as accidents and roadworks, giving rise to congestion and delays, which can, in turn, create a wide range of negative impacts to the economy, environment, safety and security. Accurate detection of the onset of traffic anomalies, specifically Recurrent Congestion (RC) and Nonrecurrent Congestion (NRC) in the traffic networks, is an important ITS function to facilitate proactive intervention measures to reduce the level of severity of congestion. A substantial body of literature is dedicated to models with varying levels of complexity that attempt to identify such anomalies. Given the complexity of the problem, however, very less effort is dedicated to the development of methods that attempt to detect traffic anomalies using spatio-temporal features. Driven both by the recent advances in deep learning techniques and the development of Traffic Incident Management Systems (TIMS), the aim of this research is to develop novel traffic anomaly detection models that can incorporate both spatial and temporal traffic information to detect traffic anomalies at a network level. This thesis first reviews the state of the art in traffic anomaly detection techniques, including the existing methods and emerging machine learning and deep learning methods, before identifying the gaps in the current understanding of traffic anomaly and its detection. One of the problems in terms of adapting the deep learning models to traffic anomaly detection is the translation of time series traffic data from multiple locations to the format necessary for the deep learning model to learn the spatial and temporal features effectively. To address this challenging problem and build a systematic traffic anomaly detection method at a network level, this thesis proposes a methodological framework consisting of (a) the translation layer (which is designed to translate the time series traffic data from multiple locations over the road network into a desired format with spatial and temporal features), (b) detection methods and (c) localisation. This methodological framework is subsequently tested for early RC detection and NRC detection. Three translation layers including connectivity matrix, geographical grid translation and spatial temporal translation are presented and evaluated for both RC and NRC detection. The early RC detection approach is a deep learning based method that combines Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM). The NRC detection, on the other hand, involves only the application of the CNN. The performance of the proposed approach is compared against other conventional congestion detection methods, using a comprehensive evaluation framework that includes metrics such as detection rates and false positive rates, and the sensitivity analysis of time windows as well as prediction horizons. The conventional congestion detection methods used for the comparison include Multilayer Perceptron, Random Forest and Gradient Boost Classifier, all of which are commonly used in the literature. Real-world traffic data from the City of Bath are used for the comparative analysis of RC, while traffic data in conjunction with incident data extracted from Central London are used for NRC detection. The results show that while the connectivity matrix may be capable of extracting features of a small network, the increased sparsity in the matrix in a large network reduces its effectiveness in feature learning compared to geographical grid translation. The results also indicate that the proposed deep learning method demonstrates superior detection accuracy compared to alternative methods and that it can detect recurrent congestion as early as one hour ahead with acceptable accuracy. The proposed method is capable of being implemented within a real-world ITS system making use of traffic sensor data, thereby providing a practically useful tool for road network managers to manage traffic proactively. In addition, the results demonstrate that a deep learning-based approach may improve the accuracy of incident detection and locate traffic anomalies precisely, especially in a large urban network. Finally, the framework is further tested for robustness in terms of network topology, sensor faults and missing data. The robustness analysis demonstrates that the proposed traffic anomaly detection approaches are transferable to different sizes of road networks, and that they are robust in the presence of sensor faults and missing data.Open Acces