The Key Authority - Secure Key Management in Hierarchical Public Key Infrastructures

We model a private key`s life cycle as a finite state machine. The states are the key`s phases of life and the transition functions describe tasks to be done with the key. Based on this we define and describe the key authority, a trust center module, which potentiates the easy enforcement of secure management of private keys in hierarchical public key infrastructures. This is done by assembling all trust center tasks concerning the crucial handling of private keys within one centralized module. As this module resides under full control of the trust center`s carrier it can easily be protected by well-known organizational and technical measures.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Training of Crisis Mappers and Map Production from Multi-sensor Data: Vernazza Case Study (Cinque Terre National Park, Italy)

This aim of paper is to presents the development of a multidisciplinary project carried out by the cooperation between Politecnico di Torino and ITHACA (Information Technology for Humanitarian Assistance, Cooperation and Action). The goal of the project was the training in geospatial data acquiring and processing for students attending Architecture and Engineering Courses, in order to start up a team of "volunteer mappers". Indeed, the project is aimed to document the environmental and built heritage subject to disaster; the purpose is to improve the capabilities of the actors involved in the activities connected in geospatial data collection, integration and sharing. The proposed area for testing the training activities is the Cinque Terre National Park, registered in the World Heritage List since 1997. The area was affected by flood on the 25th of October 2011. According to other international experiences, the group is expected to be active after emergencies in order to upgrade maps, using data acquired by typical geomatic methods and techniques such as terrestrial and aerial Lidar, close-range and aerial photogrammetry, topographic and GNSS instruments etc.; or by non conventional systems and instruments such us UAV, mobile mapping etc. The ultimate goal is to implement a WebGIS platform to share all the data collected with local authorities and the Civil Protectio

The adoption of ICT in Malaysian public hospitals: the interoperability of electronic health records and health information systems

There have been a number of researches that investigated ICT adoption in Malaysian healthcare. With the small number of hospitals that adopt ICT in their daily clinical and administrative operations, the possibility to enable data exchange across 131 public hospitals in Malaysia is still a long journey. In addition to those studies, this research was framed under six objectives, which aim to critically review existing literature on the subject matter, identify barriers of ICT adoption in Malaysia, understand the administrative context during the pre and post-ICT adoption, and recommend possible solutions to the Ministry of Health of Malaysia (MoHM) in its efforts to implement interoperable electronic health records (EHR) and health information systems (HTIS). Specifically, this research aimed to identify the factors that had significant impacts to the processes of implementing interoperable EHR and HTIS by the MoHM. Furthermore, it also aimed to propose relevant actors who should involve in the implementation phases. These factors and actors were used to develop a model for implementing interoperable EHR and HTIS in Malaysia. To gather the needed data, series of interviews were conducted with three groups of participants. They were ICT administrators of MoHM, ICT and medical record administrators of three hospitals, and physicians of three hospitals. To ensure the interview feedback was representing the context of EHR and HTIS implementation in Malaysia, two hospital categories were selected, which included the hospitals with HTIS and non-HTIS hospitals. The government documents were then used to triangulate the feedback to ensure dependability, credibility, transferability and conformity of the findings. Two techniques were used to analyse the data, which were thematic analysis and theme matching. These two techniques were modified from its original method, known as pattern matching. The originality of this research was presented in the findings and methods to transform them into solutions and provide recommendation to the MoHM. In general, the results showed that the technological factors contributed less to the success of the implementation of interoperable EHR and HTIS compared to the managerial and administrative factors. Four main practical and social contributions were identified from this research, which included synchronisation of managerial elements, political determination and change management transformation, optimisation of use of existing legacy system (Patient Management System) and finally the roles of actors. Nevertheless, the findings of this research would be more dependable and transferable if more participants had been willing to participate especially among the physicians and those who managed the ICT adoptions under the MoHM

Internet of Things-aided Smart Grid: Technologies, Architectures, Applications, Prototypes, and Future Research Directions

Traditional power grids are being transformed into Smart Grids (SGs) to address the issues in existing power system due to uni-directional information flow, energy wastage, growing energy demand, reliability and security. SGs offer bi-directional energy flow between service providers and consumers, involving power generation, transmission, distribution and utilization systems. SGs employ various devices for the monitoring, analysis and control of the grid, deployed at power plants, distribution centers and in consumers' premises in a very large number. Hence, an SG requires connectivity, automation and the tracking of such devices. This is achieved with the help of Internet of Things (IoT). IoT helps SG systems to support various network functions throughout the generation, transmission, distribution and consumption of energy by incorporating IoT devices (such as sensors, actuators and smart meters), as well as by providing the connectivity, automation and tracking for such devices. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on IoT-aided SG systems, which includes the existing architectures, applications and prototypes of IoT-aided SG systems. This survey also highlights the open issues, challenges and future research directions for IoT-aided SG systems