424,361 research outputs found
Short-Term Forecasting of Passenger Demand under On-Demand Ride Services: A Spatio-Temporal Deep Learning Approach
Short-term passenger demand forecasting is of great importance to the
on-demand ride service platform, which can incentivize vacant cars moving from
over-supply regions to over-demand regions. The spatial dependences, temporal
dependences, and exogenous dependences need to be considered simultaneously,
however, which makes short-term passenger demand forecasting challenging. We
propose a novel deep learning (DL) approach, named the fusion convolutional
long short-term memory network (FCL-Net), to address these three dependences
within one end-to-end learning architecture. The model is stacked and fused by
multiple convolutional long short-term memory (LSTM) layers, standard LSTM
layers, and convolutional layers. The fusion of convolutional techniques and
the LSTM network enables the proposed DL approach to better capture the
spatio-temporal characteristics and correlations of explanatory variables. A
tailored spatially aggregated random forest is employed to rank the importance
of the explanatory variables. The ranking is then used for feature selection.
The proposed DL approach is applied to the short-term forecasting of passenger
demand under an on-demand ride service platform in Hangzhou, China.
Experimental results, validated on real-world data provided by DiDi Chuxing,
show that the FCL-Net achieves better predictive performance than traditional
approaches including both classical time-series prediction models and neural
network based algorithms (e.g., artificial neural network and LSTM). This paper
is one of the first DL studies to forecast the short-term passenger demand of
an on-demand ride service platform by examining the spatio-temporal
correlations.Comment: 39 pages, 10 figure
Intelligent service orchestration in edge cloud networks
The surge in data traffic is challenging for network infrastructure owners coping with stringent service requirements (e.g., high bandwidth, ultralow latency) as well as shrinking per-gigabyte revenues. Network softwarization and edge computing are powerful candidates to mitigate these issues. In parallel, there is an increasing demand for network virtualization and container-based services. In this study, we investigate the management of software defined networking (SDN)-based transport network and edge cloud service orchestration. To this end, we use a machine learning (ML)-based design to manage both transport and edge cloud resources of a mobile network effectively. To generate and use real-world data inside our ML platform, we use the Graphical Network Simulator-3 (GNS3) emulator environment. Our emulation results indicate that almost all of the trained ML models can accurately select the correct edge clouds (ECs) (i.e., with high test accuracy) under the considered two scenarios when transport and EC network parameters are considered in comparison to models trained via only transport or cloud-based parameters. At the end of the article, we also provide an evolved architecture where the proposed ML platform can be embedded in an end-to-end mobile network architecture and H2020 5Growth project's baseline management platform.This work has been partially funded by the EU H2020 5Growth Project (grant no. 856709), by MINECO grant TEC2017-88373-R (5G-REFINE), and Generalitat de Catalunya grant 2017 SGR, 1195
A multi-functional simulation platform for on-demand ride service operations
On-demand ride services or ride-sourcing services have been experiencing fast
development in the past decade. Various mathematical models and optimization
algorithms have been developed to help ride-sourcing platforms design
operational strategies with higher efficiency. However, due to cost and
reliability issues (implementing an immature algorithm for real operations may
result in system turbulence), it is commonly infeasible to validate these
models and train/test these optimization algorithms within real-world ride
sourcing platforms. Acting as a useful test bed, a simulation platform for
ride-sourcing systems will be very important to conduct algorithm
training/testing or model validation through trails and errors. While previous
studies have established a variety of simulators for their own tasks, it lacks
a fair and public platform for comparing the models or algorithms proposed by
different researchers. In addition, the existing simulators still face many
challenges, ranging from their closeness to real environments of ride-sourcing
systems, to the completeness of different tasks they can implement. To address
the challenges, we propose a novel multi-functional and open-sourced simulation
platform for ride-sourcing systems, which can simulate the behaviors and
movements of various agents on a real transportation network. It provides a few
accessible portals for users to train and test various optimization algorithms,
especially reinforcement learning algorithms, for a variety of tasks, including
on-demand matching, idle vehicle repositioning, and dynamic pricing. In
addition, it can be used to test how well the theoretical models approximate
the simulated outcomes. Evaluated on real-world data based experiments, the
simulator is demonstrated to be an efficient and effective test bed for various
tasks related to on-demand ride service operations
Triangulum City Dashboard: An Interactive Data Analytic Platform for Visualizing Smart City Performance
Cities are becoming smarter by incorporating hardware technology, software systems, and network infrastructure that provide Information Technology (IT) systems with real-time awareness of the real world. What makes a “smart city” functional is the combined use of advanced infrastructure technologies to deliver its core services to the public in a remarkably efficient manner. City dashboards have drawn increasing interest from both city operators and citizens. Dashboards can gather, visualize, analyze, and inform regional performance to support the sustainable development of smart cities. They provide useful tools for evaluating and facilitating urban infrastructure components and services. This work proposes an interactive web-based data visualization and data analytics toolkit supported by big data aggregation tools. The system proposed is a cloud-based prototype that supports visualization and real-time monitoring of city trends while processing and displaying large data sets on a standard web browser. However, it is capable of supporting online analysis processing by answering analytical queries and producing graphics from multiple resources. The aim of this platform is to improve communication between users and urban service providers and to give citizens an overall view of the city’s state. The conceptual framework and architecture of the proposed platform are explored, highlighting design challenges and providing insight into the development of smart cities. Moreover, results and the potential statistical analysis of important city services offered by the system are introduced. Finally, we present some challenges and opportunities identified through the development of the city data platform.publishedVersio
Towards Cross-Provider Analysis of Transparency Information for Data Protection
Transparency and accountability are indispensable principles for modern data
protection, from both, legal and technical viewpoints. Regulations such as the
GDPR, therefore, require specific transparency information to be provided
including, e.g., purpose specifications, storage periods, or legal bases for
personal data processing. However, it has repeatedly been shown that all too
often, this information is practically hidden in legalese privacy policies,
hindering data subjects from exercising their rights. This paper presents a
novel approach to enable large-scale transparency information analysis across
service providers, leveraging machine-readable formats and graph data science
methods. More specifically, we propose a general approach for building a
transparency analysis platform (TAP) that is used to identify data transfers
empirically, provide evidence-based analyses of sharing clusters of more than
70 real-world data controllers, or even to simulate network dynamics using
synthetic transparency information for large-scale data-sharing scenarios. We
provide the general approach for advanced transparency information analysis, an
open source architecture and implementation in the form of a queryable analysis
platform, and versatile analysis examples. These contributions pave the way for
more transparent data processing for data subjects, and evidence-based
enforcement processes for data protection authorities. Future work can build
upon our contributions to gain more insights into so-far hidden data-sharing
practices.Comment: technical repor
Agricultural LoRA sensor network applied to soil moisture monitoring for fertigation-based production
Mestrado de dupla diplomação com a Université Libre de TunisThe global water crisis is one of the serious threats that human being is facing and especially
farmers due to a variety of environment issues. This growing trend of water scarcity led to the
existence of the efficiency of irrigation systems for agricultural proposes using electronic
sensors and performance systems to precise the amount of water for the growth of plants.
However, currently, some automation attempts led to a sub-optimal solution as they do not
take into account the vegetative development state of the plants and the small differences in
environmental conditions present inside greenhouses. In this project, the work is based on
developping a monitoring system based on measurement nodes for real-time monitoring
temperature, and humidity. Open-source hardware and sensors was use to create the
measurement nodes using LoRa WAN a wireless sensor network. The aim of this work is to
create a network of sensors inside a greenhouse in order to obtain regularly updated
information. The data is going to be useful since is easy to utilize by the farmers directly from
a platform. Measurement node, communicating in real-time through LoRa, will transmit data
to the gateway which will then be displayed on a dashboard.The classic internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks which carries a vast
range of information resources and services in which HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol) is
the first protocol used to transfer hypertext data, from server to the end customer. The classic
internet is thus based on the internet of data.
On the other hand, the internet of things (IoT), is a new tool for connectivity and mobility, that
is to transform business and is helpful in daily life to connect objects. Nowadays, common
objects become active and intelligent, integrating seamlessly into a global network and can
produce and exchange useful data without the intervention of humans. It’s a network of
networks that allows us to identify and communicate digitally with the physical and virtual
world.
In the near future, the IoT will cover a wide range of applications in our daily life. The world is
experiencing a huge increase of intelligent objects, that has led cloud service companies to make
platforms known as the Internet of things platforms (IoT platform), which contain services,
statistics, libraries, analyses that facilitate communication as well as accelerate and reduce the
cost of product development of IoT applications
Zero-touch realization of Pervasive Artificial Intelligence-as-a-service in 6G networks
The vision of the upcoming 6G technologies, characterized by ultra-dense
network, low latency, and fast data rate is to support Pervasive AI (PAI) using
zero-touch solutions enabling self-X (e.g., self-configuration,
self-monitoring, and self-healing) services. However, the research on 6G is
still in its infancy, and only the first steps have been taken to conceptualize
its design, investigate its implementation, and plan for use cases. Toward this
end, academia and industry communities have gradually shifted from theoretical
studies of AI distribution to real-world deployment and standardization. Still,
designing an end-to-end framework that systematizes the AI distribution by
allowing easier access to the service using a third-party application assisted
by a zero-touch service provisioning has not been well explored. In this
context, we introduce a novel platform architecture to deploy a zero-touch
PAI-as-a-Service (PAIaaS) in 6G networks supported by a blockchain-based smart
system. This platform aims to standardize the pervasive AI at all levels of the
architecture and unify the interfaces in order to facilitate the service
deployment across application and infrastructure domains, relieve the users
worries about cost, security, and resource allocation, and at the same time,
respect the 6G stringent performance requirements. As a proof of concept, we
present a Federated Learning-as-a-service use case where we evaluate the
ability of our proposed system to self-optimize and self-adapt to the dynamics
of 6G networks in addition to minimizing the users' perceived costs.Comment: IEEE Communications Magazin
Understanding Security Threats in Cloud
As cloud computing has become a trend in the computing world, understanding its security concerns becomes essential for improving service quality and expanding business scale. This dissertation studies the security issues in a public cloud from three aspects. First, we investigate a new threat called power attack in the cloud. Second, we perform a systematical measurement on the public cloud to understand how cloud vendors react to existing security threats. Finally, we propose a novel technique to perform data reduction on audit data to improve system capacity, and hence helping to enhance security in cloud. In the power attack, we exploit various attack vectors in platform as a service (PaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and software as a service (SaaS) cloud environments. to demonstrate the feasibility of launching a power attack, we conduct series of testbed based experiments and data-center-level simulations. Moreover, we give a detailed analysis on how different power management methods could affect a power attack and how to mitigate such an attack. Our experimental results and analysis show that power attacks will pose a serious threat to modern data centers and should be taken into account while deploying new high-density servers and power management techniques. In the measurement study, we mainly investigate how cloud vendors have reacted to the co-residence threat inside the cloud, in terms of Virtual Machine (VM) placement, network management, and Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Specifically, through intensive measurement probing, we first profile the dynamic environment of cloud instances inside the cloud. Then using real experiments, we quantify the impacts of VM placement and network management upon co-residence, respectively. Moreover, we explore VPC, which is a defensive service of Amazon EC2 for security enhancement, from the routing perspective. Advanced Persistent Threat (APT) is a serious cyber-threat, cloud vendors are seeking solutions to ``connect the suspicious dots\u27\u27 across multiple activities. This requires ubiquitous system auditing for long period of time, which in turn causes overwhelmingly large amount of system audit logs. We propose a new approach that exploits the dependency among system events to reduce the number of log entries while still supporting high quality forensics analysis. In particular, we first propose an aggregation algorithm that preserves the event dependency in data reduction to ensure high quality of forensic analysis. Then we propose an aggressive reduction algorithm and exploit domain knowledge for further data reduction. We conduct a comprehensive evaluation on real world auditing systems using more than one-month log traces to validate the efficacy of our approach
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