Implementing Blockchain in Public Sectors in MENA Countries: Opportunities and Challenges

Governments all around the world are expanding their study and use of Blockchain technology Blockchains have the potential to improve many aspects of the public sector.  This research discusses opportunities and challenges in using blockchain in the public sectors of MENA countries.  Their public sectors may use it to safeguard sensitive documents and streamline interactions with residents and solve record-keeping challenges and improve the capabilities of the present public systems.  Instability and corruption have weakened public and market trust in MENA countries. Moreover, public data in the region is housed in a disjointed bureau and division. The process of acquiring and transferring assets, whether physical goods or financial instruments, often entails multiple transactions and a long paper trail. We argued that as blockchain needs a minimal digital trace, integrity, and immutability, it is particularly fit for the public sectors in the MENA region. A blockchain would keep detailed records of the exchanged assets as well as every step of the transaction.  All important information about each person or corporation would be maintained in a separate ledger inside an encrypted blockchain. However, the lack of expertise and experience among the government employees, and the lack of real use cases around the world are the main barriers to implementing blockchain technology in the public sector of MENA countries

Queueing Network Modeling Patterns for Reliable and Unreliable Publish/Subscribe Protocols

International audienceMobile Internet of Things (IoT) applications are typically deployed on resource-constrained devices with intermittent network connectivity. To support the deployment of such applications, the Publish/Subscribe (pub/sub) interaction paradigm is often employed, as it decouples mobile peers in time and space. Furthermore, pub/sub middleware protocols and APIs consider the Things' hardware limitations and support the development of effective applications by providing Quality of Service (QoS) features. These features aim to enable developers to tune an application by switching different levels of response times and delivery success rates. However, the profusion of pub/sub middleware protocols coupled with intermittent network connectivity result in non-trivial application tuning. In this paper, we model the performance of middleware protocols found in IoT, which are classified within the pub/sub interaction paradigm-both reliable and unreliable underlying network layers are considered. We model reliable and unreliable protocols, by considering QoS semantics for data validity, buffer capacities as well as the intermittent availability of peers. Finally, we perform statistical analysis by varying these QoS semantics, demonstrating their significant effect on the rate of successful interactions. We showcase the application of our analysis in concrete scenarios relating to Traffic Information Management systems, that integrate both reliable and unreliable participants. The consequent PerfMP performance modeling pattern may be tailored for a variety of deployments, in order to control fine-grained QoS policies

Inferring Transportation Mode and Human Activity from Mobile Sensing in Daily Life

In this paper, we focus on simultaneous inference of transportation modes and human activities in daily life via modelling and inference from multivariate time series data, which are streamed from off-the- shelf mobile sensors (e.g. embedded in smartphones) in real-world dynamic environments. The transportation mode will be inferred from the structured hierarchical contexts associated with human activities. Through our mobile context recognition system, an ac- curate and robust solution can be obtained to infer transportation mode, human activity and their associated contexts (e.g. whether the user is in moving or stationary environment) simultaneously. There are many challenges in analysing and modelling human mobility patterns within urban areas due to the ever-changing en- vironments of the mobile users. For instance, a user could stay at a particular location and then travel to various destinations depend- ing on the tasks they carry within a day. Consequently, there is a need to reduce the reliance on location-based sensors (e.g. GPS), since they consume a significant amount of energy on smart de- vices, for the purpose of intelligent mobile sensing (i.e. automatic inference of transportation mode, human activity and associated contexts). Nevertheless, our system is capable of outperforming the simplistic approach that only considers independent classifications of multiple context label sets on data streamed from low energy sensors

Should I agree?:Delegating consent decisions beyond the individual

Obtaining meaningful user consent is increasingly problematic in a world of numerous, heterogeneous digital services. Current approaches (e.g. agreeing to Terms and Conditions) are rooted in the idea of individual control despite growing evidence that users do not (or cannot) exercise such control in informed ways. We consider an alternative approach whereby users can opt to delegate consent decisions to an ecosystem of third-parties including friends, experts, groups and AI entities. We present the results of a study that used a technology probe at a large festival to explore initial public responses to this reframing -- focusing on when and to whom users would delegate such decisions. The results reveal substantial public interest in delegating consent and identify differing preferences depending on the privacy context, highlighting the need for alternative decision mechanisms beyond the current focus on individual choice

Virtual Reality Observations: Using Virtual Reality to Augment Lab-Based Shoulder Surfing Research

Given the difficulties of studying the shoulder surfing resistance of authentication systems in a live setting, researchers often ask study participants to shoulder surf authentications by watching two-dimensional (2D) video recordings of a user authenticating. How-ever, these video recordings do not provide participants with a realistic shoulder surfing experience, creating uncertainty in the value and validity of lab-based shoulder surfing experiments. In this work, we exploit the unique characteristics of virtual reality (VR) and study the use of non-immersive/immersive VR recordings for shoulder surfing research. We conducted a user study (N=18) to explore the strengths and weaknesses of such a VR-based shoulder surfing research approach. Our results suggest that immersive VR observations result in a more realistic shoulder surfing experience, in a significantly higher sense of being part of the authentication environment, in a greater feeling of spatial presence, and in a higher level of involvement than 2D video observations without impacting participants’ observation performance. This suggests that studying shoulder surfing in VR is advantageous in many ways compared to currently used approaches, e.g., participants can freely choose their observation angle rather than being limited to a fixed observation angle as done in current methods. We discuss the strengths and weaknesses of using VR for shoulder surfing research and conclude with four recommendations to help researchers decide when (and when not) to employ VR for shoulder surfing research in the authentication research domain

Nolong.in: an android based incident notification application with push notification technology

In driving, the most important thing to be considered is safety. The incident problem can happen anytime and anywhere without anyone knowing it before, especially in Cikarang where the level of incident is quite high. It is very important for the public community to act and respond quickly at the time on and around the occurring incident. Nolong.in application is an exact solution because it can send real time notifications to its users. This response is meant to assist individuals who have been using Nolong.in to help other users who need urgent help when the time of incident in order to prevent unwanted situations. In this research, push notification method has been implemented by using Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM). The result of the research is the notification click ratio is 90.91% and the click time is 1 minute and 27 seconds. Based on the questionnaires’ results given to the community conclude that Nolong.in application is very beneficial for Gojek Cikarang community's safety