Development of a smart tourism information chatbot for Mauritius

Due to the current COVID-19 situation worldwide, the tourism industry has been heavily impacted worldwide. Chatbots help to minimise the spread of the virus, by limiting physical interaction, whilst help to promote the industry and make available tourism information in an accessible familiar manner. This paper aims to analyse the various aspects of the tourism industry and identify the gaps that need to be addressed in order to improve the customer experiences in Mauritius. The aim was deploy a tourism information chatbot that will provide the necessary information and recommendations to tourists coming to Mauritius and attract potential tourists plan their next trip in a few steps, using off-the-shelf technologies. The main advantage of the developed Chatbot is that is built on off the shelf technologies (Rasa, Telegram, etc), but with the ability to be further extended with APIs. Thus the chatbot developed exhibits a number of innovations for a Tourism chatbot, such as Google search, weather acquisition based on location and COVID-19 statistics

Developing an effective regulatory framework for virtual currencies in Mauritius

It is widely accepted that virtual currencies have the potential of revolutionising the global finance sector. The potential of bitcoin has been recognised by corporate organisations and governments. With the continuing growth of bitcoin as a cryptocurrency, its regulatory regime has become crucial in determining the fate of this novel system of exchange. The global economic crisis and pandemic situation of 2020 is turning industries towards adoption of digital and virtual currencies. Although bitcoins have been regarded as the pioneer of decentralized peer to peer virtual currencies, there remains uncertainties in various countries as to whether they should embrace, devise new regulations or completely outlaw the digital currency. It has been recognised that Mauritius has the potential of acting as a Financial Technology (Fintech) hub for the African and surrounding regions through the rapid development and adoption of technology.For this to become possible, the current regulatory framework of Mauritius must be updated to reflect the continuing innovating changes in this area. So far, Mauritius has not yet implemented any specific regulations to address the use of Blockchain, bitcoins and cryptocurrencies in its jurisdiction. The only related legal framework currently being used in this area is the Regulatory Sandbox Licensing Scheme implemented by the Board of Investment Mauritius ("BOI"). It offers the possibility for investors to conduct their businesses in an area where there exists no legal framework or inadequate provisions under existing Mauritian legislation. In this research paper, the different regulatory frameworks of United States,Canada and China will be assessed to serve as a comparative analysis to examine the nature of their regulatory regimes.These jurisdictions have been chosen as they have been in the forefront of bringing significant regulatory changes, which has not been the case in any countries in Africa or Indian Ocean. These will be used to address the question as to whether there are any existing legal frameworks from other jurisdictions that can be customised or adapted for incorporation into the jurisdiction of Mauritius

Improving wireless charging energy efficiency of mobile phones: analysis of key practices

As human beings became dependent on mobile phones, the relationship of these devices with the natural environment became more significant to study. Mobile phones require energy to operate and this is stored within connected batteries. Recently, there has been a shift in the way batteries of mobile phones are charged, namely, from wired to wireless charging. Being regarded as a transformational technology in the mobile world, many smartphone manufacturers have been investing in this technology. However, current wireless charging mechanisms meant for mobile phones are recognized to be slow and energy inefficient as compared to wired charging. Such inefficiency can in turn worsen the adverse impacts that mobile phones already have on the environment. This paper addresses the energy inefficiency issue during wireless charging of mobile phones by comparing different charging practices in order to identify opportunities for energy savings

Cyber deception against DDoS attack using moving target defence framework in SDN IOT-EDGE networks

Software Defined Networking (SDN) networking paradigm advancements are advantageous, but they have also brought new security concerns. The Internet of Things (IoT) Edge Computing servers provide closer access to cloud services and is also a point of target for availability attacks. The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks on SDN IoT-Edge Computing caused by botnet of IoT hosts has compromised major services and is still an impending concern due to the Work From Home virtual office shift attributed by Covid19 pandemic. The effectiveness of a Moving Target Defense (MTD) technique based on SDN for combating DDoS attacks in IoT-Edge networks was investigated in this study with a test scenario based on a smart building. An MTD Reactive and Proactive Network Address Shuffling Mechanism was developed, tested, and evaluated with results showing successful defence against UDP, TCP SYN, and LAND DDoS attacks; preventing IoT devices from being botnet compromised due to the short-lived network address; and ensuring reliable system performance

Creation and detection of hardware trojans using non-invasive off-the-shelf technologies

As a result of the globalisation of the semiconductor design and fabrication processes, integrated circuits are becoming increasingly vulnerable to malicious attacks. The most concerning threats are hardware trojans. A hardware trojan is a malicious inclusion or alteration to the existing design of an integrated circuit, with the possible effects ranging from leakage of sensitive information to the complete destruction of the integrated circuit itself. While the majority of existing detection schemes focus on test-time, they all require expensive methodologies to detect hardware trojans. Off-the-shelf approaches have often been overlooked due to limited hardware resources and detection accuracy. With the advances in technologies and the democratisation of open-source hardware, however, these tools enable the detection of hardware trojans at reduced costs during or after production. In this manuscript, a hardware trojan is created and emulated on a consumer FPGA board. The experiments to detect the trojan in a dormant and active state are made using off-the-shelf technologies taking advantage of different techniques such as Power Analysis Reports, Side Channel Analysis and Thermal Measurements. Furthermore, multiple attempts to detect the trojan are demonstrated and benchmarked. Our simulations result in a state-of-the-art methodology to accurately detect the trojan in both dormant and active states using off-the-shelf hardwar

NFC tag-based mHealth patient healthcare tracking system

Patient misdiagnosis is quite a common occurrence in hospitals around the world. It is a mistake that can happen to anyone at any time, and especially during a pandemic crisis when hospital facilities are overwhelmed with increasing number of patients. This problem could stem from improper patient identification whereby patient files are mislabelled or placed in an incorrect patient dossier. It is the responsibility of a hospital and its employees to guarantee that such mistakes do not occur. With respect to this, near-field communication (NFC) technology, which is a short ranged wireless communication technology, has been identified to have great potential to help identify patients in hospitals. This paper demonstrates a solution by designing and developing a patient healthcare management information system that sees the seamless integration of the NFC technology along with and both web and mobile technologies, to provide a holistic solution to tackle the problem of patient misidentification in a hospital environment especially during pandemics such as COVID-19.The Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) was used as evaluation method in order to quantify the proposed systems’s usability and acceptance using 5 constructs. Results showed acceptance of the system with a mean score of 4, indicating that the NFC tag-based mHealth Patient Healthcare Tracking System was found to be useful and easy to use

The effect of uncertainty in whole building simulation models for purposes of generating control strategies

Buildings consume a significant amount of energy worldwide in maintaining comfort for occupants. Building energy management systems (BEMS) are employed to ensure that the energy consumed is used efficiently. However these systems often do not adequately perform in minimising energy use. This is due to a number of reasons, including poor configuration or a lack of information such as being able to anticipate changes in weather conditions. We are now at the stage that building behaviour can be simulated, whereby simulation tools can be used to predict building conditions, and therefore enable buildings to use energy more efficiently, when integrated with BEMS. What is required though, is an accurate model of the building which can effectively represent the building processes, for building simulation. Building information modelling (BIM) is a relatively new method of representing building models, however there still remains the issue of data translation between a BIM and simulation model, which requires calibration with a measured set of data. If there a lack of information or a poor translation, a level of uncertaintly is introduced which can affect the simulation’s ability to accurate predict control strategies for BEMS. This paper explores effects of uncertainty, by making assumptions on a building model due to a lack of information. It will be shown that building model calibration as a method of addressing uncertainty is no substitute for a well defined model

Rapid prototyping of the SmartAR augmented reality control platform for multiple use cases

The technology of augmented reality (AR) is still in its infancy, but given the significant influence of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, it can be said to be the next big thing for the next generation. The goal of this study is to create, utilizing fast application development approaches, a low-cost platform that can be applied to a variety of Smart City and Smart Building use cases. The many AR use cases discussed in this paper are all implemented using the same methodology. The Node-Red platform, which is perfectly suited to the Internet of Things and online applications, was used to swiftly construct a number of augmented reality use cases for the platfor

Cyber-security internals of a Skoda Octavia vRS: a hands on approach

The convergence of information technology and vehicular technologies are a growing paradigm, allowing information to be sent by and to vehicles. This information can further be processed by the Electronic Control Unit (ECU) and the Controller Area Network (CAN) for in-vehicle communications or through a mobile phone or server for out-vehicle communication. Information sent by or to the vehicle can be life-critical (e.g. breaking, acceleration, cruise control, emergency communication, etc … ). As vehicular technology advances, in-vehicle networks are connected to external networks through 3 and 4G mobile networks, enabling manufacturer and customer monitoring of different aspects of the car. While these services provide valuable information, they also increase the attack surface of the vehicle, and can enable long and short range attacks. In this manuscript, we evaluate the security of the 2017 Skoda Octavia vRS 4x4. Both physical and remote attacks are considered, the key fob rolling code is successfully compromised, privacy attacks are demonstrated through the infotainment system, the Volkswagen Transport Protocol 2.0 is reverse engineered. Additionally, in-car attacks are highlighted and described, providing an overlook of potentially deadly threats by modifying ECU parameters and components enabling digital forensics investigation are identified

Low cost air quality monitoring: comparing the energy consumption of an arduino against a raspberry Pi based system

Air pollution is one of the great challenges facing modern cities. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 80% of people living in cities with air quality monitoring facilities are living in conditions where the quality of the air is well beyond the limits set out in the air quality guidelines. As more and more people are projected to move into urban areas by 2050, this problem is going to keep on increasing. A possible solution could be the advent of Smart Cities. One of the objectives of Smart Cities is to provide a better living environment to its inhabitants. With the Internet of Things providing easily deployable, low power, low cost air quality monitoring sensors and the resources to process the huge amount of data collected, this objective could be reached. In this paper, we propose an evaluation of the power consumption of two low cost air quality monitoring systems - one based on an Arduino and the other on a Raspberry Pi system. The air quality systems proposed are based on off-the shelf hardware and are easy to assemble and maintain. The proposed systems use Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) to transmit data while being collected through a mobile app on a smartphone. The data was collected for five days and it was found by performing an ANOVA on the power consumption that there was a significant difference in the mean energy consumption of the two systems