Design for energy-efficient and reliable fog-assisted healthcare IoT systems

Cardiovascular disease and diabetes are two of the most dangerous diseases as they are the leading causes of death in all ages. Unfortunately, they cannot be completely cured with the current knowledge and existing technologies. However, they can be effectively managed by applying methods of continuous health monitoring. Nonetheless, it is difficult to achieve a high quality of healthcare with the current health monitoring systems which often have several limitations such as non-mobility support, energy inefficiency, and an insufficiency of advanced services. Therefore, this thesis presents a Fog computing approach focusing on four main tracks, and proposes it as a solution to the existing limitations. In the first track, the main goal is to introduce Fog computing and Fog services into remote health monitoring systems in order to enhance the quality of healthcare. In the second track, a Fog approach providing mobility support in a real-time health monitoring IoT system is proposed. The handover mechanism run by Fog-assisted smart gateways helps to maintain the connection between sensor nodes and the gateways with a minimized latency. Results show that the handover latency of the proposed Fog approach is 10%-50% less than other state-of-the-art mobility support approaches. In the third track, the designs of four energy-efficient health monitoring IoT systems are discussed and developed. Each energy-efficient system and its sensor nodes are designed to serve a specific purpose such as glucose monitoring, ECG monitoring, or fall detection; with the exception of the fourth system which is an advanced and combined system for simultaneously monitoring many diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Results show that these sensor nodes can continuously work, depending on the application, up to 70-155 hours when using a 1000 mAh lithium battery. The fourth track mentioned above, provides a Fog-assisted remote health monitoring IoT system for diabetic patients with cardiovascular disease. Via several proposed algorithms such as QT interval extraction, activity status categorization, and fall detection algorithms, the system can process data and detect abnormalities in real-time. Results show that the proposed system using Fog services is a promising approach for improving the treatment of diabetic patients with cardiovascular disease

Intelligent Circuits and Systems

ICICS-2020 is the third conference initiated by the School of Electronics and Electrical Engineering at Lovely Professional University that explored recent innovations of researchers working for the development of smart and green technologies in the fields of Energy, Electronics, Communications, Computers, and Control. ICICS provides innovators to identify new opportunities for the social and economic benefits of society.　 This conference bridges the gap between academics and R&D institutions, social visionaries, and experts from all strata of society to present their ongoing research activities and foster research relations between them. It provides opportunities for the exchange of new ideas, applications, and experiences in the field of smart technologies and finding global partners for future collaboration. The ICICS-2020 was conducted in two broad categories, Intelligent Circuits & Intelligent Systems and Emerging Technologies in Electrical Engineering

Using a GIS technology to plan an agroforestry sustainable system in Sardinia

This study was conducted with the aim to quantify the spread of livestock agroforestry in a Mediterranean ecosystem (island of Sardinia, Italy) and evaluate its sustainability in terms of grazing impact. By using GIS software ArcMap 10.2.2, the map of Sardinia vegetal landscape, obtained by information of Sardinia nature map based on the classification of habitat according to CORINE-Biotopes system, have been overplayed with the map of livestock grazing impact map CAIA developed by INTREGA (spin-off ENEA), to obtain for Meriagos (local agro-silvo-pastoral systems; classified “Dehesa 84.6” according to CORINE-Biotopes system), bushlands and woodlands, the surfaces under grazing and evaluate the extension of overgrazing for each of them

Personalized data analytics for internet-of-things-based health monitoring

The Internet-of-Things (IoT) has great potential to fundamentally alter the delivery of modern healthcare, enabling healthcare solutions outside the limits of conventional clinical settings. It can offer ubiquitous monitoring to at-risk population groups and allow diagnostic care, preventive care, and early intervention in everyday life. These services can have profound impacts on many aspects of health and well-being. However, this field is still at an infancy stage, and the use of IoT-based systems in real-world healthcare applications introduces new challenges. Healthcare applications necessitate satisfactory quality attributes such as reliability and accuracy due to their mission-critical nature, while at the same time, IoT-based systems mostly operate over constrained shared sensing, communication, and computing resources. There is a need to investigate this synergy between the IoT technologies and healthcare applications from a user-centered perspective. Such a study should examine the role and requirements of IoT-based systems in real-world health monitoring applications. Moreover, conventional computing architecture and data analytic approaches introduced for IoT systems are insufficient when used to target health and well-being purposes, as they are unable to overcome the limitations of IoT systems while fulfilling the needs of healthcare applications. This thesis aims to address these issues by proposing an intelligent use of data and computing resources in IoT-based systems, which can lead to a high-level performance and satisfy the stringent requirements. For this purpose, this thesis first delves into the state-of-the-art IoT-enabled healthcare systems proposed for in-home and in-hospital monitoring. The findings are analyzed and categorized into different domains from a user-centered perspective. The selection of home-based applications is focused on the monitoring of the elderly who require more remote care and support compared to other groups of people. In contrast, the hospital-based applications include the role of existing IoT in patient monitoring and hospital management systems. Then, the objectives and requirements of each domain are investigated and discussed. This thesis proposes personalized data analytic approaches to fulfill the requirements and meet the objectives of IoT-based healthcare systems. In this regard, a new computing architecture is introduced, using computing resources in different layers of IoT to provide a high level of availability and accuracy for healthcare services. This architecture allows the hierarchical partitioning of machine learning algorithms in these systems and enables an adaptive system behavior with respect to the user's condition. In addition, personalized data fusion and modeling techniques are presented, exploiting multivariate and longitudinal data in IoT systems to improve the quality attributes of healthcare applications. First, a real-time missing data resilient decision-making technique is proposed for health monitoring systems. The technique tailors various data resources in IoT systems to accurately estimate health decisions despite missing data in the monitoring. Second, a personalized model is presented, enabling variations and event detection in long-term monitoring systems. The model evaluates the sleep quality of users according to their own historical data. Finally, the performance of the computing architecture and the techniques are evaluated in this thesis using two case studies. The first case study consists of real-time arrhythmia detection in electrocardiography signals collected from patients suffering from cardiovascular diseases. The second case study is continuous maternal health monitoring during pregnancy and postpartum. It includes a real human subject trial carried out with twenty pregnant women for seven months

Professional competency of modern specialist: means of formation, development and improvement

The modern scientific and methodical approaches to the study and analysis of professional competence that are in line with the state requirements for reforming education and the tendencies of introducing a competent approach as one of the key factors of today's vocational education are analyzed. The emphasis is placed on the fact that implementation of the competence approach should include the use of professional training of real professional tasks with the orientation of future professionals to analyze the results of their own professional activities and decisions. The basic principles of professional training of future managers of economic security are determined. It has been established that the professional training of future managers of economic security should be carried out on a modular basis

Insights from the Inventory of Smart Grid Projects in Europe: 2012 Update

By the end of 2010 the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house science service, launched the first comprehensive inventory of smart grid projects in Europe1. The final catalogue was published in July 2011 and included 219 smart grid and smart metering projects from the EU-28 member states, Switzerland and Norway. The participation of the project coordinators and the reception of the report by the smart grid community were extremely positive. Due to its success, the European Commission decided that the project inventory would be carried out on a regular basis so as to constantly update the picture of smart grid developments in Europe and keep track of lessons learnt and of challenges and opportunities. For this, a new on-line questionnaire was launched in March 2012 and information on projects collected up to September 2012. At the same time an extensive search of project information on the internet and through cooperation links with other European research organizations was conducted. The resulting final database is the most up to date and comprehensive inventory of smart grids and smart metering projects in Europe, including a total of 281 smart grid projects and 90 smart metering pilot projects and rollouts from the same 30 countries that were included in the 2011 inventory database. Projects surveyed were classified into three categories: R&D, demonstration or pre-deployment) and deployment, and for the first time a distinction between smart grid and smart metering projects was made. The following is an insight into the 2012 report.JRC.F.3-Energy securit

Smart data management with BIM for Architectural Heritage

In the last years smart buildings topic has received much attention as well as Building Information Modelling (BIM) and interoperability as independent fields. Linking these topics is an essential research target to help designers and stakeholders to run processes more efficiently. Working on a smart building requires the use of Innovation and Communication Technology (ICT) to optimize design, construction and management. In these terms, several technologies such as sensors for remote monitoring and control, building equipment, management software, etc. are available in the market. As BIM provides an enormous amount of information in its database and theoretically it is able to work with all kind of data sources using interoperability, it is essential to define standards for both data contents and format exchange. In this way, a possibility to align research activity with Horizon 2020 is the investigation of energy saving using ICT. Unfortunately, comparing the Architecture Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry with other sectors it is clear how in the building field advanced information technology applications have not been adopted yet. However in the last years, the adoption of new methods for the data management has been investigated by many researchers. So, basing on the above considerations, the main purpose of this thesis is investigate the use of BIM methodology relating to existing buildings concerning on three main topics: • Smart data management for architectural heritage preservation; • District data management for energy reduction; • The maintenance of highrises. For these reasons, data management acquires a very important value relating to the optimization of the building process and it is considered the most important goal for this research. Taking into account different kinds of architectural heritage, the attention is focused on the existing and historical buildings that usually have characterized by several constraints. Starting from data collection, a BIM model was developed and customized in function of its objectives, and providing information for different simulation tests. Finally, data visualization was investigated through the Virtual Reality(VR) and Augmented Reality (AR). Certainly, the creation of a 3D parametric model implies that data is organized according to the use of individual users that are involved in the building process. This means that each 3D model can be developed with different Levels of Detail/Development (LODs) basing on the goal of the data source. Along this thesis the importance of LODs is taken into account related to the kind of information filled in a BIM model. In fact, basing on the objectives of each project a BIM model can be developed in a different way to facilitate the querying data for the simulations tests.\ud The three topics were compared considering each step of the building process workflow, highlighting the main differences, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of BIM methodology. In these terms, the importance to set a BIM template before the modelling step was pointed out, because it provides the possibility to manage information in order to be collected and extracted for different purposes and by specific users. Moreover, basing on the results obtained in terms of the 3D parametric model and in terms of process, a proper BIM maturity level was determined for each topic. Finally, the value of interoperability was arisen from these tests considering that it provided the opportunity to develop a framework for collaboration, involving all parties of the building industry

Security and trust in cloud computing and IoT through applying obfuscation, diversification, and trusted computing technologies

Cloud computing and Internet of Things (IoT) are very widely spread and commonly used technologies nowadays. The advanced services offered by cloud computing have made it a highly demanded technology. Enterprises and businesses are more and more relying on the cloud to deliver services to their customers. The prevalent use of cloud means that more data is stored outside the organization’s premises, which raises concerns about the security and privacy of the stored and processed data. This highlights the significance of effective security practices to secure the cloud infrastructure. The number of IoT devices is growing rapidly and the technology is being employed in a wide range of sectors including smart healthcare, industry automation, and smart environments. These devices collect and exchange a great deal of information, some of which may contain critical and personal data of the users of the device. Hence, it is highly significant to protect the collected and shared data over the network; notwithstanding, the studies signify that attacks on these devices are increasing, while a high percentage of IoT devices lack proper security measures to protect the devices, the data, and the privacy of the users. In this dissertation, we study the security of cloud computing and IoT and propose software-based security approaches supported by the hardware-based technologies to provide robust measures for enhancing the security of these environments. To achieve this goal, we use obfuscation and diversification as the potential software security techniques. Code obfuscation protects the software from malicious reverse engineering and diversification mitigates the risk of large-scale exploits. We study trusted computing and Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) as the hardware-based security solutions. Trusted Platform Module (TPM) provides security and trust through a hardware root of trust, and assures the integrity of a platform. We also study Intel SGX which is a TEE solution that guarantees the integrity and confidentiality of the code and data loaded onto its protected container, enclave. More precisely, through obfuscation and diversification of the operating systems and APIs of the IoT devices, we secure them at the application level, and by obfuscation and diversification of the communication protocols, we protect the communication of data between them at the network level. For securing the cloud computing, we employ obfuscation and diversification techniques for securing the cloud computing software at the client-side. For an enhanced level of security, we employ hardware-based security solutions, TPM and SGX. These solutions, in addition to security, ensure layered trust in various layers from hardware to the application. As the result of this PhD research, this dissertation addresses a number of security risks targeting IoT and cloud computing through the delivered publications and presents a brief outlook on the future research directions.Pilvilaskenta ja esineiden internet ovat nykyään hyvin tavallisia ja laajasti sovellettuja tekniikkoja. Pilvilaskennan pitkälle kehittyneet palvelut ovat tehneet siitä hyvin kysytyn teknologian. Yritykset enenevässä määrin nojaavat pilviteknologiaan toteuttaessaan palveluita asiakkailleen. Vallitsevassa pilviteknologian soveltamistilanteessa yritykset ulkoistavat tietojensa käsittelyä yrityksen ulkopuolelle, minkä voidaan nähdä nostavan esiin huolia taltioitavan ja käsiteltävän tiedon turvallisuudesta ja yksityisyydestä. Tämä korostaa tehokkaiden turvallisuusratkaisujen merkitystä osana pilvi-infrastruktuurin turvaamista. Esineiden internet -laitteiden lukumäärä on nopeasti kasvanut. Teknologiana sitä sovelletaan laajasti monilla sektoreilla, kuten älykkäässä terveydenhuollossa, teollisuusautomaatiossa ja älytiloissa. Sellaiset laitteet keräävät ja välittävät suuria määriä informaatiota, joka voi sisältää laitteiden käyttäjien kannalta kriittistä ja yksityistä tietoa. Tästä syystä johtuen on erittäin merkityksellistä suojata verkon yli kerättävää ja jaettavaa tietoa. Monet tutkimukset osoittavat esineiden internet -laitteisiin kohdistuvien tietoturvahyökkäysten määrän olevan nousussa, ja samaan aikaan suuri osuus näistä laitteista ei omaa kunnollisia teknisiä ominaisuuksia itse laitteiden tai niiden käyttäjien yksityisen tiedon suojaamiseksi. Tässä väitöskirjassa tutkitaan pilvilaskennan sekä esineiden internetin tietoturvaa ja esitetään ohjelmistopohjaisia tietoturvalähestymistapoja turvautumalla osittain laitteistopohjaisiin teknologioihin. Esitetyt lähestymistavat tarjoavat vankkoja keinoja tietoturvallisuuden kohentamiseksi näissä konteksteissa. Tämän saavuttamiseksi työssä sovelletaan obfuskaatiota ja diversifiointia potentiaalisiana ohjelmistopohjaisina tietoturvatekniikkoina. Suoritettavan koodin obfuskointi suojaa pahantahtoiselta ohjelmiston takaisinmallinnukselta ja diversifiointi torjuu tietoturva-aukkojen laaja-alaisen hyödyntämisen riskiä. Väitöskirjatyössä tutkitaan luotettua laskentaa ja luotettavan laskennan suoritusalustoja laitteistopohjaisina tietoturvaratkaisuina. TPM (Trusted Platform Module) tarjoaa turvallisuutta ja luottamuksellisuutta rakentuen laitteistopohjaiseen luottamukseen. Pyrkimyksenä on taata suoritusalustan eheys. Työssä tutkitaan myös Intel SGX:ää yhtenä luotettavan suorituksen suoritusalustana, joka takaa suoritettavan koodin ja datan eheyden sekä luottamuksellisuuden pohjautuen suojatun säiliön, saarekkeen, tekniseen toteutukseen. Tarkemmin ilmaistuna työssä turvataan käyttöjärjestelmä- ja sovellusrajapintatasojen obfuskaation ja diversifioinnin kautta esineiden internet -laitteiden ohjelmistokerrosta. Soveltamalla samoja tekniikoita protokollakerrokseen, työssä suojataan laitteiden välistä tiedonvaihtoa verkkotasolla. Pilvilaskennan turvaamiseksi työssä sovelletaan obfuskaatio ja diversifiointitekniikoita asiakaspuolen ohjelmistoratkaisuihin. Vankemman tietoturvallisuuden saavuttamiseksi työssä hyödynnetään laitteistopohjaisia TPM- ja SGX-ratkaisuja. Tietoturvallisuuden lisäksi nämä ratkaisut tarjoavat monikerroksisen luottamuksen rakentuen laitteistotasolta ohjelmistokerrokseen asti. Tämän väitöskirjatutkimustyön tuloksena, osajulkaisuiden kautta, vastataan moniin esineiden internet -laitteisiin ja pilvilaskentaan kohdistuviin tietoturvauhkiin. Työssä esitetään myös näkemyksiä jatkotutkimusaiheista

Enhancing Safety: the Challenge of Foresight

We live in a world where advancement in technology coupled with human’s creative and innovative mind has led to the design of safer and better performing infrastructures (nuclear power plants, chemical process plants, high speed trains, spaceplanes, etc.), which are necessary for modern society. However, due to the interconnected socio-economic and technological landscape that is rapidly evolving, safety continues to have many new challenges (known unknowns, unknown unknowns) that add onto changed variants of the old challenges (e.g. modified knowns). Additionally, governance and legislation can be slow to catch up with this dynamic pace of change. At times, overregulation can occur, resulting in a significant resource investment towards compliance for existing infrastructure operators or for aspiring start-ups that would like to enter the market, but end up struggling or even abandoning the sector. Inspired by this background, the European Safety and Reliability Data Association’s Foresight in Safety Project Group prepared the 53rd ESReDA seminar with a purpose to launch an open dialogue with stakeholders in the safety arena. Thus, by providing an open forum where experiences in foresight in safety approaches from different sectors could be shared, cross-fertilisation of ideas, such as how foresight could be mainstreamed into safety practice in a more consistent manner, could be discussed. The project group will build on this rich compendium of experiences in its future endeavours.JRC.E.7-Knowledge for Security and Migratio