Profiling with Big Data: Identifying Privacy Implication for Individuals, Groups and Society

User profiling using big data raises critical issues regarding personal data and privacy. Until recently, privacy studies were focused on the control of personal data; due to big data analysis, however, new privacy issues have emerged with unidentified implications. This paper identifies and investigates privacy threats that stem from data-driven profiling using a multi-level approach: individual, group and society, to analyze the privacy implications stemming from the generation of new knowledge used for automated predictions and decisions. We also argue that mechanisms are required to protect the privacy interests of groups as entities, independently of the interests of their individual members. Finally, this paper discusses privacy threats resulting from the cumulative effect of big data profiling

Self-Learning Production Control using Algorithms of Artificial Intelligence

Manufacturing companies are facing an increasingly turbulent market - a market defined by products growing in complexity and shrinking product life cycles. This leads to a boost in planning complexity accompanied by higher error sensitivity. In practice, IT systems and sensors integrated into the shop floor in the context of Industry 4.0 are used to deal with these challenges. However, while existing research provides solutions in the field of pattern recognition or recommended actions, a combination of the two approaches is neglected. This leads to an overwhelming amount of data without contributing to an improvement of processes. To address this problem, this study presents a new platform-based concept to collect and analyze the high-resolution data with the use of self-learning algorithms. Herby, patterns can be identified and reproduced, allowing an exact prediction of the future system behavior. Artificial intelligence maximizes the automation of the reduction and compensation of disruptive factors

Simulating California reservoir operation using the classification and regression-tree algorithm combined with a shuffled cross-validation scheme

The controlled outflows from a reservoir or dam are highly dependent on the decisions made by the reservoir operators, instead of a natural hydrological process. Difference exists between the natural upstream inflows to reservoirs and the controlled outflows from reservoirs that supply the downstream users. With the decision maker's awareness of changing climate, reservoir management requires adaptable means to incorporate more information into decision making, such as water delivery requirement, environmental constraints, dry/wet conditions, etc. In this paper, a robust reservoir outflow simulation model is presented, which incorporates one of the well-developed data-mining models (Classification and Regression Tree) to predict the complicated human-controlled reservoir outflows and extract the reservoir operation patterns. A shuffled cross-validation approach is further implemented to improve CART's predictive performance. An application study of nine major reservoirs in California is carried out. Results produced by the enhanced CART, original CART, and random forest are compared with observation. The statistical measurements show that the enhanced CART and random forest overperform the CART control run in general, and the enhanced CART algorithm gives a better predictive performance over random forest in simulating the peak flows. The results also show that the proposed model is able to consistently and reasonably predict the expert release decisions. Experiments indicate that the release operation in the Oroville Lake is significantly dominated by SWP allocation amount and reservoirs with low elevation are more sensitive to inflow amount than others

Instantaneous modelling and reverse engineering of data-consistent prime models in seconds!

A theoretical framework that supports automated construction of dynamic prime models purely from experimental time series data has been invented and developed, which can automatically generate (construct) data-driven models of any time series data in seconds. This has resulted in the formulation and formalisation of new reverse engineering and dynamic methods for automated systems modelling of complex systems, including complex biological, financial, control, and artificial neural network systems. The systems/model theory behind the invention has been formalised as a new, effective and robust system identification strategy complementary to process-based modelling. The proposed dynamic modelling and network inference solutions often involve tackling extremely difficult parameter estimation challenges, inferring unknown underlying network structures, and unsupervised formulation and construction of smart and intelligent ODE models of complex systems. In underdetermined conditions, i.e., cases of dealing with how best to instantaneously and rapidly construct data-consistent prime models of unknown (or well-studied) complex system from small-sized time series data, inference of unknown underlying network of interaction is more challenging. This article reports a robust step-by-step mathematical and computational analysis of the entire prime model construction process that determines a model from data in less than a minute

Artificial neural networks and physical modeling for determination of baseline consumption of CHP plants

An effective modeling technique is proposed for determining baseline energy consumption in the industry. A CHP plant is considered in the study that was subjected to a retrofit, which consisted of the implementation of some energy-saving measures. This study aims to recreate the post-retrofit energy consumption and production of the system in case it would be operating in its past configuration (before retrofit) i.e., the current consumption and production in the event that no energy-saving measures had been implemented. Two different modeling methodologies are applied to the CHP plant: thermodynamic modeling and artificial neural networks (ANN). Satisfactory results are obtained with both modeling techniques. Acceptable accuracy levels of prediction are detected, confirming good capability of the models for predicting plant behavior and their suitability for baseline energy consumption determining purposes. High level of robustness is observed for ANN against uncertainty affecting measured values of variables used as input in the models. The study demonstrates ANN great potential for assessing baseline consumption in energyintensive industry. Application of ANN technique would also help to overcome the limited availability of on-shelf thermodynamic software for modeling all specific typologies of existing industrial processes