Secure Development of Big Data Ecosystems

A Big Data environment is a powerful and complex ecosystem that helps companies extract important information from data to make the best business and strategic decisions. In this context, due to the quantity, variety, and sensitivity of the data managed by these systems, as well as the heterogeneity of the technologies involved, privacy and security especially become crucial issues. However, ensuring these concerns in Big Data environments is not a trivial issue, and it cannot be treated from a partial or isolated perspective. It must be carried out through a holistic approach, starting from the definition of requirements and policies, and being present in any relevant activity of its development and deployment. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a methodological approach for integrating security and privacy in Big Data development based on main standards and common practices. In this way, we have defined a development process for this kind of ecosystems that considers not only security in all the phases of the process but also the inherent characteristics of Big Data. We describe this process through a set of phases that covers all the relevant stages of the development of Big Data environments, which are supported by a customized security reference architecture (SRA) that defines the main components of this kind of systems along with the key concepts of security

Natural resources conservation management and strategies in agriculture

This paper suggests a holistic framework for assessment and improvement of management strategies for conservation of natural resources in agriculture. First, it incorporates an interdisciplinary approach (combining Economics, Organization, Law, Sociology, Ecology, Technology, Behavioral and Political Sciences) and presents a modern framework for assessing environmental management and strategies in agriculture including: specification of specific “managerial needs” and spectrum of feasible governance modes (institutional environment; private, collective, market, and public modes) of natural resources conservation at different level of decision-making (individual, farm, eco-system, local, regional, national, transnational, and global); specification of critical socio-economic, natural, technological, behavioral etc. factors of managerial choice, and feasible spectrum of (private, collective, public, international) managerial strategies; assessment of efficiency of diverse management strategies in terms of their potential to protect diverse eco-rights and investments, assure socially desirable level of environmental protection and improvement, minimize overall (implementing, third-party, transaction etc.) costs, coordinate and stimulate eco-activities, meet preferences and reconcile conflicts of individuals etc. Second, it presents evolution and assesses the efficiency of diverse management forms and strategies for conservation of natural resources in Bulgarian agriculture during post-communist transformation and EU integration (institutional, market, private, and public), and evaluates the impacts of EU CAP on environmental sustainability of farms of different juridical type, size, specialization and location. Finally, it suggests recommendations for improvement of public policies, strategies and modes of intervention, and private and collective strategies and actions for effective environmental protection

A Critical Scan of Four Key Topics for the Philanthropic Sector: A study by the Rockefeller Foundation and Accenture Development Partnerships

The study aims to identify problem areas in the developing and developed world, as well as areas of dynamism and convergence that will, over the next five to 10 years, present opportunities to make a greater impact in the development sector. The study, which made use of a consultative process, investigates four key topics central to human wellbeing. These are: natural ecosystems, health, livelihoods, and urban environments. In each of the four identified topic areas there is a greater need to foster innovation and shift paradigms in order to expand opportunity for the vulnerable and those living in poverty, and strengthen their resilience

A gap analysis of Internet-of-Things platforms

We are experiencing an abundance of Internet-of-Things (IoT) middleware solutions that provide connectivity for sensors and actuators to the Internet. To gain a widespread adoption, these middleware solutions, referred to as platforms, have to meet the expectations of different players in the IoT ecosystem, including device providers, application developers, and end-users, among others. In this article, we evaluate a representative sample of these platforms, both proprietary and open-source, on the basis of their ability to meet the expectations of different IoT users. The evaluation is thus more focused on how ready and usable these platforms are for IoT ecosystem players, rather than on the peculiarities of the underlying technological layers. The evaluation is carried out as a gap analysis of the current IoT landscape with respect to (i) the support for heterogeneous sensing and actuating technologies, (ii) the data ownership and its implications for security and privacy, (iii) data processing and data sharing capabilities, (iv) the support offered to application developers, (v) the completeness of an IoT ecosystem, and (vi) the availability of dedicated IoT marketplaces. The gap analysis aims to highlight the deficiencies of today's solutions to improve their integration to tomorrow's ecosystems. In order to strengthen the finding of our analysis, we conducted a survey among the partners of the Finnish IoT program, counting over 350 experts, to evaluate the most critical issues for the development of future IoT platforms. Based on the results of our analysis and our survey, we conclude this article with a list of recommendations for extending these IoT platforms in order to fill in the gaps.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, 3 tables, Accepted for publication in Computer Communications, special issue on the Internet of Things: Research challenges and solution

Strategic Research Agenda for organic food and farming

The TP Organics Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) was finalised in December 2009. The purpose of the Strategic Research Agenda (SRA) is to enable research, development and knowledge transfer that will deliver relevant outcomes – results that will contribute to the improvement of the organic sector and other low external input systems. The document has been developed through a dynamic consultative process that ran from 2008 to 2009. It involved a wide range of stakeholders who enthusiastically joined the effort to define organic research priorities. From December 2008 to February; the expert groups elaborated the first draft. The consultative process involved the active participation of many different countries. Consultation involved researchers, advisors, members of inspection/certification bodies, as well as different users/beneficiaries of the research such as farmers, processors, market actors and members of civil society organisations throughout Europe and further afield in order to gather the research needs of the whole organic sector

Laying the Foundation: An Analytical Tool for Assessing Legal and Institutional Readiness for PES

This booklet has been created as an initial resource for public sector officials interested in fostering an environment in which PES transactions can occur. While PES legal and policy readiness is likely to look very different from one country to another -- depending on legal frameworks, as well as historical and current circumstances and pressures -- understanding policy options for getting ready for PES transactions is an important first step towards assessing readiness within a specific national and subnational context.This booklet offers an analytical framework for assessing legal and institutional readiness for PES transactions. It is divided into three sections based on timing and the order of addressing issues, with an eye to what will be most important to investors and buyers in payment for ecosystem services agreements. Specifically, the first level of preparing for PES agreements should be ensuring that fundamental or threshold conditions are in place for buyers to feel that there is sufficient stability in place to consider entering in these business arrangements. The second level of preparedness, while important for well-functioning PES, may be developed adaptively as needs and options become clearer via PES experience on the ground. Finally, level three includes non-urgent aspects that may be important to streamline or scale up PES, depending on the particular circumstances