An Endorsement-Based Mobile Payment System for a Disaster Area

AINA-2015 : IEEE 29th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications , Mar 24-27, 2015 , Gwangju, KoreaA payment system in a disaster area is essential for people to buy necessities such as groceries, clothing, and medical supplies. However, existing payment systems require the needed communication infrastructures (like wired networks and cellular networks) to enable transactions, so that these systems cannot be relied on in disaster areas, where these communication infrastructures may be destroyed. In this paper, we propose a mobile payment system, adopting infrastructure less mobile adhoc networks (MANETs), which allow users to shop in disaster areas while providing secure transactions. Specifically, we propose an endorsement-based scheme to guarantee each transaction and a scheme to provide monitoring based on location information, and thus achieve transaction validity and reliability. Our mobile payment system can also prevent collusion between two parties and reset and recover attacks by any user. Security is ensured by using location-based mutual monitoring by nearby users, avoiding thereby double spending in the system

Production Efficiencies of the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation Beneficiaries A Case Study of Livestock Farmers in Kwara State, Nigeria

Livestock farmers are faced with various risks which is  because agriculture largely depends on nature. In solving this the Federal Government of Nigerian established the Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation(NAIC). The objectives are to compare the technical efficiency and output of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries of NAIC, determine the levels of production efficiency of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries, identify the determinants of production efficiency of beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries and identify the constraints encountered by the beneficiaries in the study area. The research was carried out in Kwara state, Nigeria. The target population was the livestock farmers in Kwara state. A random sampling technique was used to select 160 farmers. Eighty farmers were selected based on the beneficiaries list obtained from NAIC head office in the state and eighty non-beneficiaries were selected using snowball sampling technique. The research instrument used was questionnaire. The analytical tools employed were descriptive statistics, t-test and stochastic frontier model. The results showed that the mean technical efficiency of the beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries were 0.87 and 0.54 respectively. This shows that the beneficiaries were more efficient than non-beneficiaries which implies that their involvement in insurance were of great benefits. The major risks encountered by majority of the livestock farmers are drought, variation in yield, diseases and pests. The constraints encountered include; fear that their claims may not be paid, attitude of NAIC, strict insurance policy. Therefore, it is recommended that insurance workforce should develop strategies like awareness creation that will encourage more participation in the insurance program among farming households

MANET ベース ショウトリヒキ システム ノ タメ ノ アンゼンナ プロトコル

博第1501号甲第1501号博士(工学)奈良先端科学技術大学院大

ヒサイチ ノ タメ ノ MANET オ リヨウシタ モバイル ペイメント システム

修士(Master)工学(Engineering)奈良先端科学技術大学院大学修第6373

Monitoring-Based Method for Securing Link State Routing against Byzantine Attacks in Wireless Networks

Secure communications is essential in many areas such as disaster management and battlefield communications. To detect and prevent attacks in such applications, most existing protocols adopt a cryptography-based approach, trust-based approach (reputation of nodes), or incentive-based approach. However, such protocols still have drawbacks, such as expensive overhead, difficulty in maintaining secure key and session management, or leaving routes unsecured against Byzantine attacks. In this paper, we introduce a monitoring-based method in the link state routing protocol to secure the packets' route against Byzantine attacks. The goal of our proposed scheme is to guarantee communication among connected benign nodes in the network. Specifically, each node monitors the action of neighboring nodes and compares the optimal packet route against the packet route history. Nodes in the network create a packet history field which is used to record all activities of an intermediate node when receiving and forwarding packets. Our scheme provides mutual monitoring in which nodes in the network can validate the packet history field of other nodes and report malicious activities. Also, our scheme uses a statistical method to know if a node is dropping packets intentionally by analyzing the packet dropping behavior of each node. The proposed scheme provides protection against colluding attacks and other Byzantine attacks. The proposed monitoring-based method achieves an average of 89% to 96% packet delivery ratio when 11% to 21% active malicious links are excluded from the network

A Practical Approach to Deploying a Drone-Based Message Ferry in a Disaster Situation

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are commonly used in disaster recovery efforts to confirm the extent of the damage caused by a large-scale disaster and to ensure that adequate information about the affected area is gathered. UAV usage in a disaster situation is not limited to information gathering, but its functions further extend to network communication functions such as a communication relay, mobile base station, etc. Conversely, using UAVs as communication relays or base stations (e.g., as a temporary mobile base station) is subject to some limitations such as bad weather and limited energy, which affect the timely collection and delivery of information to and from a disaster area. Therefore, an approach to improve the information collection and delivery in a disaster area while ensuring urgent network restoration is necessary. In this paper, we introduce a practical approach to deploying a drone-based message ferry to improve the timely collection and delivery of information in a disaster situation. Specifically, a locally accessible cloud system (LACS), which we previously developed for urgent local network restoration in a disaster affected area, is attached to a drone to form a message ferry. In order to improve the information collection and delivery, the message ferry is deployed from the local headquarters (i.e., local government office or disaster response coordination center) to carry information to and from a standalone LACS installed at each disaster shelter. We measure the achievable data rate of inter-LACS data transfer (i.e., message ferry and a standalone LACS) through experiment. Thereafter, we estimate and confirm the effective transmission speed to transfer data from the local headquarters to the disaster shelters using average achievable data rate obtained from the experiment in order to extend the LACS services and functions. Our experimental results and analysis suggest that the proposed message ferry is more advantageous to transfer a large amount of data (e.g., 300 MB) at a high speed in the hundred meter to ten kilometer range