4,639 research outputs found
The Role of the Internet of Things in Network Resilience
Disasters lead to devastating structural damage not only to buildings and
transport infrastructure, but also to other critical infrastructure, such as
the power grid and communication backbones. Following such an event, the
availability of minimal communication services is however crucial to allow
efficient and coordinated disaster response, to enable timely public
information, or to provide individuals in need with a default mechanism to post
emergency messages. The Internet of Things consists in the massive deployment
of heterogeneous devices, most of which battery-powered, and interconnected via
wireless network interfaces. Typical IoT communication architectures enables
such IoT devices to not only connect to the communication backbone (i.e. the
Internet) using an infrastructure-based wireless network paradigm, but also to
communicate with one another autonomously, without the help of any
infrastructure, using a spontaneous wireless network paradigm. In this paper,
we argue that the vast deployment of IoT-enabled devices could bring benefits
in terms of data network resilience in face of disaster. Leveraging their
spontaneous wireless networking capabilities, IoT devices could enable minimal
communication services (e.g. emergency micro-message delivery) while the
conventional communication infrastructure is out of service. We identify the
main challenges that must be addressed in order to realize this potential in
practice. These challenges concern various technical aspects, including
physical connectivity requirements, network protocol stack enhancements, data
traffic prioritization schemes, as well as social and political aspects
Next Generation Cloud Computing: New Trends and Research Directions
The landscape of cloud computing has significantly changed over the last
decade. Not only have more providers and service offerings crowded the space,
but also cloud infrastructure that was traditionally limited to single provider
data centers is now evolving. In this paper, we firstly discuss the changing
cloud infrastructure and consider the use of infrastructure from multiple
providers and the benefit of decentralising computing away from data centers.
These trends have resulted in the need for a variety of new computing
architectures that will be offered by future cloud infrastructure. These
architectures are anticipated to impact areas, such as connecting people and
devices, data-intensive computing, the service space and self-learning systems.
Finally, we lay out a roadmap of challenges that will need to be addressed for
realising the potential of next generation cloud systems.Comment: Accepted to Future Generation Computer Systems, 07 September 201
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Information security behaviour of smartphone users: an empirical study on the students of University of Dhaka, Bangladesh
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to understand the information security behaviour of the students of the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh in the use of smartphones. Bangladesh is well known as one of the largest and fastest growing mobile phone market of the world, and the University of Dhaka is also the largest student’s assembly in the country in terms of using smartphones. Besides, the rising use of smartphones are also likely to be typical of other sub-continent countries.
Design/methodology/approach: To gain an understanding of the information security behaviours of the students of University of Dhaka, Bangladesh, a quantitative survey method was deployed in revealing the approaches of the students towards avoidance of various security risks. A total of 356 students participated in the study, although eight of the participants did not carry out the full survey because they do not use smartphones. The collected data was analyzed with suitable statistical methods.
Findings: The findings of the study reveal that students of University of Dhaka possess a moderately secure behaviour in terms of avoiding harmful behaviours, utilizing useful phone settings and add-on utilities and disaster recovery. This study also shows that the students do not behave securely in all aspects of using different security features in the same way, and it also varies somewhat according to gender, and between Faculties and Institutions. The university library is recommended as the focus for instruction and guidance on best practice in smartphone use by students.
Research limitations/implications: The study does not include any other universities of Bangladesh except University of Dhaka due to the shortage of time. A further study can be conducted to gain an understanding in a greater extent by including students of the other universities and perhaps also other countries. Originality/value – This is the first paper in Bangladesh relating the study of information security behavior regarding the use of smartphone among the student of University of Dhaka. This study will help to raise information security awareness among the students and encourage the authorities to adopt appropriate strategies and policies to resolve information security risks in the use of smartphones. Specially, the university library can take some initiatives in this case, like providing advice, seminars, workshops, lectures etc. in order to make the students aware about security issues
Smartphone-Based Self Rescue System for Disaster Rescue
Recent ubiquitous earthquakes have been leading to mass destruction of electrical power and cellular infrastructures, and deprive the innocent lives across the world. Due to the wide-area earthquake disaster, unavailable power and communication infrastructure, limited man-power and resources, traditional rescue operations and equipment are inefficient and time-consuming, leading to the golden hours missed. With the increasing proliferation of powerful wireless devices, like smartphones, they can be assumed to be abundantly available among the disaster victims and can act as valuable resources to coordinate disaster rescue operations. In this paper, we propose a smartphone-based self-rescue system, also referred to as RescueMe, to assist the operations of disaster rescue and relief. The basic idea of RescueMe is that a set of smartphones carried by survivors trapped or buried under the collapsed infrastructure forms into a one-hop network and sends out distress signals in an energy-efficient manner to nearby rescue crews to assist rescue operations. We evaluate the proposed approach through extensive simulation experiments and compare its performance with the existing scheme TeamPhone. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can significantly reduce the schedule vacancy of broadcasting distress signals and improve the discovery probability with very little sacrifice of network lifetime, and indicate a potentially viable approach to expedite disaster rescue and relief operations
How Mobile Devices are Transforming Disaster Relief and Public Safety
With its growing usage, mobile technology is greatly improving disaster relief and public safety efforts. Countries around the world face threats from natural disasters, climate change, civil unrest, terrorist attacks, and criminal activities, among others. Mobile devices, tablets, and smart phones enable emergency providers and the general public to manage these challenges and mitigate public safety concerns.In this paper, part of the Brookings Mobile Economy Project, we focus on how mobile technology provides an early warning system, aids in emergency coordination, and improves public communications. In particular, we review how mobile devices assist with public safety, disaster planning, and crisis response. We explain how these devices are instrumental in the design and functioning of integrated, multi-layered communications networks. We demonstrate how they have helped save lives and ameliorate human suffering throughout the world
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