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Internet of Everything

Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

An increasing number of software systems are considered Software Intensive Systems of Systems (SiSoS), which consist of dozens of constituent systems. Systems are interconnected using private or public networks, which can be prime target for security attacks. Hence, securing SiSoS is a huge challenge and an emerging areas of research and development. SoS can have several applications domains that can range from smart cities, to defence systems, and industrial control systems. Modeling of and reasoning of security-sensitive architecture of software intensive systems is a challenging piece of work but several modelling approaches and tooling support have been developed. However, there has been no signifiant effort to develop appropriate modelling approach and associated infrastructure for modeling security-senstive architecture of SoS. Led by our collaboratives in France, we have recently developed an approach and tool support for supporting seccutiry-senstive architecture design and analysis .Read More »Modeling Security-Sensitive Architecture of Systems-of-Systems

Talk at NEC & IDC Event on Smarter and Safer Societies

Smart Cities initiatives can mean different things to different people and solutions providers. However, there is no doubt that a smart city solution should not only focus on providing the core service but should also contribute to the safety of the users of a service. That is why quite a lot of smart cities solutions are being presented from safety perspective as well – smart cities ought to be safer cities. I was honoured to be invited to present our initiative on Smart Cities R&D and innovation at an event co-organised by NEC and IDC – the event was titled, “Smarter and Safer Society – How ICT makes Government and Enterprise work smarter ”. It was a great get together where different speakers and panelists were enthusiastically presenting their visions, understanding, and observations about smart cities initiatives and solutions. I really enjoyed the talks, dialogues between panelist and audience. I spoke about our initiative on setting up an interdisciplinary centre for research, development, and innovation that can lead to citizen-inspired socio-technical solutions for making a city smarter. Here are the presentation that I used for supporting the talk and following is the abstract of my talk.
Read More »Talk at NEC & IDC Event on Smarter and Safer Societies

Systemization of Knowledge about Architecting Cloud-Based Systems

We have been expanding our research on engineering systems with/for Cloud based infrastructures. One of the key challenges of engineering cloud-based systems is designing and evaluating appropriate architectures. Being a relatively new area, knowledge about designing and evaluating cloud-based systems is scarce and but growing. We observed the need of systematically identifying and synthesizing the knowledge about the architectural challenges and solutions for cloud-based systems. For this goal, we used systematic literature review, a well known method of Evidence Based Software Engineering.

I am very glad to share that after several months rigours and tireless efforts, we have published our work in a premier Software Engineering journal, Software: Practice and Experience. The paper can be found on this link and the abstract of the paper is below:Read More »Systemization of Knowledge about Architecting Cloud-Based Systems

Smart Cities: Cyber Security and Privacy

Whilst the “Smart City” phenomenon is increasingly becoming a popular term among almost all circles of everyday life, the real progress on conceiving, devising, deploying and evolving services for “Smart City” remains slow. Governments, councils, and private sectors appear to be finding different ways of capitalising on the popularity and potential of “Smart City” phenomenon to address the challenges of increasing urbanisation. However, citizens and civil rights groups remain skeptical about the potential privacy violations of the data that need to be captured and analysed for providing the “Smart City” services and the security aspects those services in the face of persistent cyber attacks. And these two concerns are some of the biggest issues in the success of a “Smart City” initiative. Recently, our “Smart City” initiative was covered by the Guardian news paper and the ABC News and both of the media venues focused on the privacy issues involved in the “Smart City” projects.

Read More »Smart Cities: Cyber Security and Privacy

NEC Announces Collaboration with University of Adelaide on Smart Cities

We are very glad that NEC Corporation has signed a memorandum of understanding to collaborate with us on smart city related projects. This is a really exciting update as the MoU will enable researchers from our centre, Australian Centre for Smart Cities, to work closely with NEC team in Adelaide and elsewhere on challenging research and development projects for innovation in the area of Smart Cities. Australian Centre for Smart Cities has been forming close ties with several industrial, governmental, councils, and businesses for exploring the possibilities of joint efforts for developing knowledge, capacity, and services that can help accelerate the smart cities initiatives at the state and national levels. I’m copying one particular quote of the NEC Executive Director here as its indicates their confidence in our Centre’s ability to carry out excellent research and development in smart cities domain.

“We look forward to working closely with the University of Adelaide to find innovative answers to the challenges that demand a Smart Cities approach to urban living. The combination of the University of Adelaide’s research excellence and NEC’s global and local expertise in technologies that are essential for Smart Cities will open up new opportunities in the field,” said Mike Barber, Executive Director at NEC Australia.”Read More »NEC Announces Collaboration with University of Adelaide on Smart Cities

The Lord Mayor of Parramatta’s Visit to Discuss Smart City

Parramatta City Council is one of the very few councils that started initiatives on smart cities related projects. Paraconnect is considered an innovative initiative that has been driving through community involvement. When we started our research and development centre on Smart city, Australian Centre for Smart Cities, paraconnect was one of the few projects that we found very appealing and relevant for study. Hence, it was a privilege to receive the Lord Mayor of Parramatta city council along with his delegates to discuss our centre’s objectives, scope and directions. The delegate was visiting Adelaide to learning about different initiatives on smart city in South Australia, particularly the Adelaide Smart City initiates, with which we are proud to be associated as I serve on the steering committee of the initiative to represent the University of Adelaide. The paramatta city council delegate briefed us about their vision of the city of paramatta and different initiatives that are already underway to contribute to the achievement of the vision. We briefed the delegates about our centre’s vision, objectives, and some selected projects that are being carried out in close collaboration with the internal and external stakeholders. we also briefed the delegates about different smart cities initiatives around the world and how those initiatives have been providing us inspiration and collaboration. We were very happy find that sustainability and carbon neutrality were among the top priorities of the paramatta city council’s initiatives on smart city. Read More »The Lord Mayor of Parramatta’s Visit to Discuss Smart City

Smart Campus: Model Driven Security for Systems of Systems

Socio-technical systems underpinning smart and connected cities are good examples of systems of systems – where each constituent system act and behave independents but these systems are connected with each other and provide each other different services. Security is one of the key aspects of systems of systems, e.g., smart city systems or smart campus systems. It is extremely complex and challenging undertaking to model and analyse a secure systems of systems. Model Driven Engineering (MDE) is expected to bring much needed support to bring effectiveness and efficiency in terms of automating some of the tedious and error-prone tasks. To support a MDE approach to secure smart cities systems, we need appropriate meta-models and suitable tools that can convert the meta-models in graphical editors that can support the modelling and analysis of secure smart cities applications. In collaboration with researchers from France, we have been working on a project aimed at developing graphical editors and model cases of secure systems in a smart cities, or smart campus. Apart from senior researchers from Adelaide and France, Zi Yang Pang has been working on summer scholarship on this project. The project has the following goals and scope and we are hoping to apply the meta-model language for secure smart cities systems very soon and afterwards we plan to extend the tools to provide end-to-end support. Read More »Smart Campus: Model Driven Security for Systems of Systems

Envisioning Bowden Development as a Smart City

Smart City initiatives in different parts of the world are gaining momentum and such initiatives are inspiring governments, councils, private sectors, and citizens everywhere – As the Lord Mayor of Amsterdam once said that Smart Cities are just like “Football teams” that every city wants to have one its own. Since starting our Smart Cities initiative at the University of Adelaide and joining the steering committee of the Adelaide city initiative, I have been observing more and more initiatives and activities about smart cities at different  levels. Last week, I was approached to make a presentation about Smart City during a workshop of It services team of Charles Sturt City council. The purpose of the workshop was to have the staff envisage Bowden, a relatively new development in Adelaide, as a smart area of quality living for people in different demographic categories. Despite being extremely snowed under with several tasks with hard deadlines, I accepted the invitation of making a short presentation on smart city and ICT driven innovation to inspire the participant before their brainstorming session on coming up with smart city services.Read More »Envisioning Bowden Development as a Smart City

Smart Campuses – Experimental Platforms for Smart Cities

Smart Cities initiatives are gaining popularity in almost every corner of the World – increasing urbanisation and myriad of socio-economic challenges are forcing governments and public sector organisations to leverage Information Communication Technologies (ICT) for conceiving and materialising innovative solutions for socio-economic challenges under a broad umbrella of Smart Cities. Since Smart Cities initiatives present significant socio-technical challenges, Smart Campuses can be leveraged as Test and Experimentation Platforms (TEPs) for devising, deploying, and evaluating theories and applications for Smart City services. That means Smart Campuses can become suitable living labs for solutions that may find their ways for smart city initiatives. For our Smart Cities initiative, we have been working on developing and implementing a few projects related to Smart Campus at the University of Adelaide, Australia. Most of our projects will be conceived and designed in close collaboration with all the key stakeholders (e.g., students, staff, and management) and leveraging our knowledge and expertise in engineering software intensive systems using Internet of Everything (IoEs), Big Data, and Cloud Computing. We have identified some of the potential benefits of building a Smart Campus below. Read More »Smart Campuses – Experimental Platforms for Smart Cities

Smart Campus: Understanding Privacy Concerns of End Users

Like Smart Cities initiatives, smart campus initiatives have also been gaining a significant attention of Universities aimed at bringing optimisation and efficiencies in the operations of Universities and contributing to the sustainability drives. Smart campuses basically utilises the similar (or same in many respects) infrastructures to provide innovative solutions to address socio-techincal challenges and improve students and staff quality of experience. Smart campuses actually can be more readily designed and built as most of the required  Information and communication technologies are usually already present in Universities. Smart campus services are also designed and provisioned using the data gathered from end users through their usage of on campus wifi and other data collection devices. The automatic data collection from the usage and movements of students and staff – however, there has been concerns with regards to the privacy of the students and staff and a term Dataveillance has been used for automatic data collection.Read More »Smart Campus: Understanding Privacy Concerns of End Users