Blockchain-based Continuous Timestamps Tracking System: Towards Ownership Information Believability

Ownership information of high value assets such as property is often concealed and fragmented, adversely affecting information believability. Following the design science research approach, we conceptualize believability as a data quality dimension that supports ownership traceability. We then investigate how blockchain technology might improve information believability in ownership traceability systems. We represent and address our findings via the development of a blockchain-based continuous timestamps tracking system model, framework and implementation for property ownership. A use case of banking transactional data for property ownership traceability is introduced to illustrate our workflow and system design. The proposed system takes advantage of blockchain technology such as traceability and irreversibility to support information believability in the design, management, and use of information systems

Decentralized recommender system for ambient intelligence of tourism destinations serious game using known and unknown rating approach

Tourism destinations serious game (TDSG) requires the ability to respond to players through recommendations for selecting appropriate tourist destinations for them as potential tourists. This research utilizes ambient intelligence technology to regulate the response visualized through a choice of serious game scenarios. This research uses the Multi-Criteria Recommender System (MCRS) to produce recommendations for selecting tourist destinations as a reference for selecting scenario visualizations. Recommender systems require a decentralized, distributed, and secure data-sharing concept to distribute data and assignments between nodes. We propose using the Ethereum blockchain platform to handle data circulation between parts of the system and implement decentralized technology. We also use the known and unknown rating (KUR) approach to improve the system’s ability to generate recommendations for players who can provide rating values or those who cannot. This study uses the tourism theme of Batu City, Indonesia, so we use personal characteristics (PC) and rating of destinations attribute (RDA) data for tourists in that city. The test results show that the blockchain can handle decentralized data- sharing well to ensure PC and RDA data circulation between nodes. MCRS has produced rec- ommendations for players based on the KUR approach, indicating that the known rating has better accuracy than the unknown rating. Furthermore, the player can choose and run the tour visualization through game scenarios that appear based on the recommendation ranking results

Decentralized recommender system for ambient intelligence of tourism destinations serious game using known and unknown rating approach

Tourism destinations serious game (TDSG) requires the ability to respond to players through recommendations for selecting appropriate tourist destinations for them as potential tourists. This research utilizes ambient intelligence technology to regulate the response visualized through a choice of serious game scenarios. This research uses the Multi-Criteria Recommender System (MCRS) to produce recommendations for selecting tourist destinations as a reference for selecting scenario visualizations. Recommender systems require a decentralized, distributed, and secure data-sharing concept to distribute data and assignments between nodes. We propose using the Ethereum blockchain platform to handle data circulation between parts of the system and implement decentralized technology. We also use the known and unknown rating (KUR) approach to improve the system’s ability to generate recommendations for players who can provide rating values or those who cannot. This study uses the tourism theme of Batu City, Indonesia, so we use personal characteristics (PC) and rating of destinations attribute (RDA) data for tourists in that city. The test results show that the blockchain can handle decentralized data- sharing well to ensure PC and RDA data circulation between nodes. MCRS has produced rec- ommendations for players based on the KUR approach, indicating that the known rating has better accuracy than the unknown rating. Furthermore, the player can choose and run the tour visualization through game scenarios that appear based on the recommendation ranking results

Emerging and Established Trends to Support Secure Health Information Exchange

This work aims to provide information, guidelines, established practices and standards, and an extensive evaluation on new and promising technologies for the implementation of a secure information sharing platform for health-related data. We focus strictly on the technical aspects and specifically on the sharing of health information, studying innovative techniques for secure information sharing within the health-care domain, and we describe our solution and evaluate the use of blockchain methodologically for integrating within our implementation. To do so, we analyze health information sharing within the concept of the PANACEA project that facilitates the design, implementation, and deployment of a relevant platform. The research presented in this paper provides evidence and argumentation toward advanced and novel implementation strategies for a state-of-the-art information sharing environment; a description of high-level requirements for the transfer of data between different health-care organizations or cross-border; technologies to support the secure interconnectivity and trust between information technology (IT) systems participating in a sharing-data “community”; standards, guidelines, and interoperability specifications for implementing a common understanding and integration in the sharing of clinical information; and the use of cloud computing and prospectively more advanced technologies such as blockchain. The technologies described and the possible implementation approaches are presented in the design of an innovative secure information sharing platform in the health-care domain

A Reference Architecture and a Software Platform for Engineering Internet of Things Search Engines

The Internet of Things (IoT) is here. Enabled by advances in the wireless networking and the miniaturization of embedded computers, billions of physical things have been connecting to the Internet and offering their ability to sense and react to the real-world phenomena. These abilities form the content of IoT, which enable applications such as smart-city, smartbuilding, assisted living, and supply chain automation. The Internet of Things Search Engines (IoTSE) support human users and software systems to detect and retrieve IoT content for realizing the stated applications. Due to the diversity and sensitivity of IoT content, the literature has suggested that IoTSE will emerge as a large number of small instances, each of which monitors a specific IoT infrastructure and specializes in querying a particular type of IoT content. Various internal activities (i.e., components), as well as the logical and physical arrangement of those activities (i.e., architectural patterns), will overlap between IoTSE instances. The emergence of a large number of IoTSE instances, which possess overlapping operations and architecture, highlights the need for leveraging prior components and architectural patterns in engineering IoTSE instances. However, as an IoTSE reference architecture and a software infrastructure to guide and support such reuse-centric IoTSE engineering have not existed, a majority of IoTSE instances have been engineered from scratch. This thesis aims at proposing the reference architecture and the software infrastructure to support leveraging prior components and architectural patterns in engineering IoTSE instances. The key contributions of this thesis include a reference architecture that describes the constituting components and architectural patterns of an IoTSE instance, and software infrastructure that supports utilizing the reference architecture in developing reusable, composable IoTSE components and engineering IoTSE instances from those components. In order to propose the IoTSE reference architecture, we conducted a systematic and extensive survey of over one decade of IoTSE research and development effort from both an academic and an industrial perspective. We identified commonalities among diverse classes of IoTSE instances and compiled this knowledge into a reference architecture, which defines 18 components, 13 composition patterns, and 6 deployment patterns. We assessed the reference architecture by mapping it onto two IoTSE prototypes that represent the most common types of IoTSE in the literature and possess the more complicated architecture compared to other types. In order to develop the software infrastructure, we first proposed a kernel-based approach to IoTSE engineering, which was inspired by the design of modern operating systems. In this approach, IoTSE instances operate as a collection of independently developed IoTSE components that are plugged into a shared kernel. This kernel provides essential utilities to run IoTSE components and control their interactions to fulfill the functionality of an IoTSE instance. The kernel also provides templates that simplify the development of IoTSE components that are interoperable and compliant with the proposed reference architecture. In a case study, which involves engineering an IoTSE prototype, the kernel managed to reduce the amount of new source line of code to just 30%. The kernel-based approach supports engineering a majority of prominent IoTSE types detected in the literature. To enhance its support for emerging classes of IoTSE and prepare for future features in the reuse-centric IoTSE engineering, we proposed a platform-based approach to IoTSE engineering that extends the kernel-based approach. The platform-based approach revolves around an Internet of Things Search Engine Platform – ISEP – that supports developing interoperable IoTSE components, accumulating those components, and allowing search engine operators to engineer IoTSE instance from them using any valid architectural pattern defined in the reference architecture, without modifying the implementation of the components. In a case study, the platform-based approach enabled engineering complex IoTSE instances entirely from the components of simpler ones. Both the ability to engineer various IoTSE instances from a set of components and the engineering of new IoTSE instances entirely from accumulated components are unprecedented in the IoTSE literature. Future research can focus on devising mechanisms that leverage the architecture and the infrastructure proposed in this thesis to accumulate the knowledge generated in the process of engineering IoTSE instances and use it to introduce automation gradually to IoTSE engineering. Eventually, when the automation is proven to be trustworthy and reliable, machines might compose and deploy IoTSE instances in real-time to adapt to the incoming queries and the state of the computing infrastructure. By achieving this degree of automation, we will have realized a search engine for the Internet of Things.Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, School of Computer Science, 201

CRiBAC: Community-centric role interaction based access control model

As one of the most efficient solutions to complex and large-scale problems, multi-agent cooperation has been in the limelight for the past few decades. Recently, many research projects have focused on context-aware cooperation to dynamically provide complex services. As cooperation in the multi-agent systems (MASs) becomes more common, guaranteeing the security of such cooperation takes on even greater importance. However, existing security models do not reflect the agents' unique features, including cooperation and context-awareness. In this paper, we propose a Community-based Role interaction-based Access Control model (CRiBAC) to allow secure cooperation in MASs. To do this, we refine and extend our preliminary RiBAC model, which was proposed earlier to support secure interactions among agents, by introducing a new concept of interaction permission, and then extend it to CRiBAC to support community-based cooperation among agents. We analyze potential problems related to interaction permissions and propose two approaches to address them. We also propose an administration model to facilitate administration of CRiBAC policies. Finally, we present the implementation of a prototype system based on a sample scenario to assess the proposed work and show its feasibility. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Edge AI for Internet of Energy: Challenges and Perspectives

The digital landscape of the Internet of Energy (IoE) is on the brink of a revolutionary transformation with the integration of edge Artificial Intelligence (AI). This comprehensive review elucidates the promise and potential that edge AI holds for reshaping the IoE ecosystem. Commencing with a meticulously curated research methodology, the article delves into the myriad of edge AI techniques specifically tailored for IoE. The myriad benefits, spanning from reduced latency and real-time analytics to the pivotal aspects of information security, scalability, and cost-efficiency, underscore the indispensability of edge AI in modern IoE frameworks. As the narrative progresses, readers are acquainted with pragmatic applications and techniques, highlighting on-device computation, secure private inference methods, and the avant-garde paradigms of AI training on the edge. A critical analysis follows, offering a deep dive into the present challenges including security concerns, computational hurdles, and standardization issues. However, as the horizon of technology ever expands, the review culminates in a forward-looking perspective, envisaging the future symbiosis of 5G networks, federated edge AI, deep reinforcement learning, and more, painting a vibrant panorama of what the future beholds. For anyone vested in the domains of IoE and AI, this review offers both a foundation and a visionary lens, bridging the present realities with future possibilities