Tools and Technologies for eParticipation and eVoting, Trust and Security: provisions and instruments, eDemocracy and eParticipation Challenges, Risk Assessment, Cryptographic Protocol, Security Architecture
Abstract: eVoting is considered to be one of the most challenging domains of modern eGovernment and one of the main vehicles for increasing eParticipation among citizens. One of the main obstacles for its wide adoptionis the reluctance of citizens to participate in electronic voting procedures. This reluctance can be partially attributed to the low penetration of technology among citizens. However, the main reason behind this reluctance is the lack of trust which stems from the belief of citizens that systems implementing an eVoting process will violate their privacy. The departure point of this approach is that the emergence of such a belief can be considerably facilitated by designing and building systems in a way that evidence about the system’s properties is produced during the design process. In this way, the designers can demonstrate the respect in privacy using this evidence that can be understood and checked by the specialist and the informed layman. These tools and models should provide sufficient evidence that the target system handles privacy concerns and requirements that can remove enough of the fears towards eVoting. This paper presents the efforts of the authors‘ organization, the Computer Technology Institute and Press “Diophantus” (CTI), towards the design and implementation of an eVoting system, called PNYKA, with demonstrable security properties. This system was based on a trust-centered engineering approach for building general security critical systems. The authors‘ approach is pragmatic rather than theoretical in that it sidesteps the controversy that besets the nature of trust in information systems and starts with a working definition of trust as people’s positive attitude towards a system that transparently and demonstrably performs its operations, respecting their privacy. The authors also discuss the social side of eVoting, i.e. how one can help boost its acceptance by large social groups targeting the whole population of the country. The authors view eVoting as an innovation that must be diffused to a population and then employ a theoretical model that studies diffusion of innovation in social network, delineating structural properties of the network that help diffuse the innovation fast. Furthermore, the authors explain how CTI’s current situation empowers CTI to realize its vision to implement a privacy preserving, discussion and public consultation forum in Greece. This forum will link, together, all Greek educational institutes in order to provide a privacy preserving discussion and opinion gathering tool useful in decision making within the Greek educational system.
Abstract: Smart cities are becoming a vibrant application domain for a number of science fields. As such, service providers and stakeholders are beginning to integrate co-creation aspects into current implementations to shape the future smart city solutions. In this context, holistic solutions are required to test such aspects in real city-scale IoT deployments, considering the complex city ecosystems. In this work, we discuss OrganiCity¢s implementation of an Experimentation-as-a-Service framework, presenting a toolset that allows developing, deploying and evaluating smart city solutions in a one-stop shop manner. This is the first time such an integrated toolset is offered in the context of a large-scale IoT infrastructure, which spans across multiple European cities. We discuss the design and implementation of the toolset, presenting our view on what Experimentation-as-a-Service should provide, and how it is implemented. We present initial feedback from 25 experimenter teams that have utilized this toolset in the OrganiCity project, along with a discussion on two detailed actual use cases to validate our approach. Learnings from all experiments are discussed as well as architectural considerations for platform scaling. Our feedback from experimenters indicates that Experimentation-as-a-Service is a viable and useful approach.
Abstract: The use of Augmented Reality (AR) technologies is currently being investigated in numerous and diverse application domains. In this work, we discuss the ways in which we are integrating AR into educational in-class activities for the GAIA project, aiming to enhance existing tools that target behavioral changes towards energy efficiency in schools. We combine real-time IoT data from a sensing infrastructure inside a fleet of school buildings with AR software running on tablets and smartphones, as companions to a set of educational lab activities aimed at promoting energy awareness in a STEM context. We also utilize this software as a means to ease access to IoT data and simplify device maintenance. We report on the design and current status of our implementation, describing functionality in the context of our target applications, while also relaying our experiences from the use of such technologies in this application domain.
Abstract: The use of maker community tools and IoT technologies inside classrooms is spreading to an ever-increasing number of education and science fields. GAIA is a European research project focused on achieving behavior change for sustainability and energy awareness in schools. In this work, we report on how a large IoT deployment in a number of educational buildings and real-world data from this infrastructure, are utilized to support a “maker” lab kit activity inside the classroom. We also provide some insights to the integration of these activities in the school curriculum, along with a discussion on feedback produced through a series of workshop activities in a number of schools in Greece. Moreover, we discuss the application of the lab kit framework towards implementing an interactive installation. We also report on how the lab kit is paired with a serious game and an augmented reality app for smartphones and tablets, supporting the in-class activities. Our initial evaluation results show a very positive first reaction by the school community.
Abstract: We present the conceptual basis and the initial planning for an open source management architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Although there is an abundance of open source tools serving the administrative needs of WSN deployments, there is a lack of tools or platforms for high level integrated WSN management. This is because of a variety of factors, including the lack of open source management tools, the immaturity of tools that offer manageability for WSNs, the limited high level management capabilities of sensor devices and architectures, and the lack of standardization. The current work is, to our knowledge, the first effort to conceptualize, formalize and design a remote, integrated management platform for the support of WSN research laboratories. The platform is based on the integration and extension of two innovative platforms: jWebDust, a WSN operation and management platform, and OpenRSM, an open source integrated remote systems and network management platform. The proposed system architecture can support several levels of integration (infrastructure management, functionality integration, firmware management), corresponding to different use-cases and application settings.
Abstract: This chapter aims at presenting certain important aspects of the design of lightweight, event-driven algorithmic solutions for data dissemination in wireless sensor networks that provide support for reliable, efficient and concurrency-intensive operation. We wish to emphasize that efficient solutions at several levels are needed, e.g.~higher level energy efficient routing protools and lower level power management schemes. Furthermore, it is important to combine such different level methods into integrated protocols and approaches. Such solutions must be simple, distributed and local. Two useful algorithmic design principles are randomization (to trade-off efficiency and fault-tolerance) and adaptation (to adjust to high network dynamics towards improved operation). In particular, we provide a) a brief description of the technical specifications of state-of-the-art sensor devices b) a discussion of possible models used to abstract such networks, emphasizing heterogeneity, c) some representative power management schemes, and d) a presentation of some characteristic protocols for data propagation. Crucial efficiency properties of these schemes and protocols (and their combinations, in some cases) are investigated by both rigorous analysis and performance evaluations through large scale simulations.
Abstract: The Greek School Network (GSN) is the nationwide network that connects all units of primary and secondary education in Greece. GSN offers a significant set of diverse services to more than 15.000 schools and administrative units, and more than 60.000 teachers, placing GSN second in infrastructure size nationwide. GSN has relied on the emerging power of open source software to build cutting-edge services capable of covering internal administrative and monitoring needs, end user demands, and, foremost, modern pedagogical requirements for tools and services. GSN provides a wide set of advanced services, varying from web mail to virtual classrooms and synchronous/asynchronous tele-education. This paper presents an evaluation of GSN open source services based on the opinions of users who use GSN for educational purposes, and on usage and traffic measurement statistics. The paper reaches the conclusion that open source software provides a sound technological platform that meets the needs for cutting edge educational services deployment, and innovative, competitive software production for educational networks.
Abstract: Wireless sensor networks are comprised of a vast number of devices, situated in an area of interest that self organize in a structureless network, in order to monitor/record/measure an environmental variable or phenomenon and subsequently to disseminate the data to the control center.
Here we present research focused on the development, simulation and evaluation of energy efficient algorithms, our basic goal is to minimize the energy consumption. Despite technology advances, the problem of energy use optimization remains valid since current and emerging hardware solutions fail to solve it.
We aim to reduce communication cost, by introducing novel techniques that facilitate the development of new algorithms. We investigated techniques of distributed adaptation of the operations of a protocol by using information available locally on every node, thus through local choices we improve overall performance. We propose techniques for collecting and exploiting limited local knowledge of the network conditions. In an energy efficient manner, we collect additional information which is used to achieve improvements such as forming energy efficient, low latency and fault tolerant paths to route data. We investigate techniques for managing mobility in networks where movement is a characteristic of the control center as well as the sensors. We examine methods for traversing and covering the network field based on probabilistic movement that uses local criteria to favor certain areas.
The algorithms we develop based on these techniques operate a) at low level managing devices, b) on the routing layer and c) network wide, achieving macroscopic behavior through local interactions. The algorithms are applied in network cases that differ in density, node distribution, available energy and also in fundamentally different models, such as under faults, with incremental node deployment and mobile nodes. In all these settings our techniques achieve significant gains, thus distinguishing their value as tools of algorithmic design.
Abstract: An ad hoc mobile network is a collection of mobile hosts, with wireless communication capabilities, forming a temporary network without the aid of any established fixed infrastructure. In such networks, topological connectivity is subject to frequent, unpredictable change. Our work focuses on networks with high rate of such changes to connectivity. For such dynamically changing networks we propose protocols which exploit the co-ordinated (by the protocol) motion of a small part of the network. We show that such protocols can be designed to work correctly and efficiently even in the case of arbitrary (but not malicious) movements of the hosts not affected by the protocol. We also propose a methodology for the analysis of the expected behavior of protocols for such networks, based on the assumption that mobile hosts (those whose motion is not guided by the protocol) conduct concurrent random walks in their motion space. In particular, our work examines the fundamental problem of communication and proposes distributed algorithms for it. We provide rigorous proofs of their correctness, and also give performance analyses by combinatorial tools. Finally, we have evaluated these protocols by experimental means.
Abstract: An ad hoc mobile network is a collection of mobile hosts, with wireless communication capabilities, forming a temporary network without the aid of any established fixed infrastructure. In such networks, topological connectivity is subject to frequent, unpredictable change. Our work focuses on networks with high rate of such changes to connectivity. For such dynamically changing networks we propose protocols which exploit the co-ordinated (by the protocol) motion of a small part of the network. We show that such protocols can be designed to work correctly and efficiently even in the case of arbitrary (but not malicious) movements of the hosts not affected by the protocol. We also propose a methodology for the analysis of the expected behavior of protocols for such networks, based on the assumption that mobile hosts (those whose motion is not guided by the protocol) conduct concurrent random walks in their motion space. In particular, our work examines the fundamental problem of communication and proposes distributed algorithms for it. We provide rigorous proofs of their correctness, and also give performance analyses by combinatorial tools. Finally, we have evaluated these protocols by experimental means.
Abstract: Urban ecosystems are becoming one of the most potentially attractive scenarios for innovating new services and technologies. In parallel, city managers, urban utilities and other stakeholders are fostering the intensive use of advanced technologies aiming at improving present city performance and its sustainability. The deployment of such technology entails the generation of massive amounts of information which in many cases might become useful for other services and applications. Hence, aiming at taking advantage of such massive amounts of information and deployed technology as well as breaking the potential digital barrier that can be raised, some easy-to-use tools have to be made available to the urban stakeholders. These tools integrated in a platform, operated directly or indirectly by the city, provides a singular opportunity for exploiting the concept of connected city whilst fostering innovation in all city dimensions and making the co-creation concept a reality and eventually impacting on government policies.
Abstract: Raising awareness among young people, and especially students, on the relevance of behavior change for achieving energy savings is increasingly being considered as a key enabler towards long-term and cost-effective energy efficiency policies. However, the way to successfully apply educational interventions focused on such targets inside schools is still an open question. In this paper, we present our approach for enabling IoT-based energy savings and sustainability awareness lectures and promoting data-driven energy-saving behaviors focused on a high school audience. We present our experiences toward the successful application of sets of educational tools and software over a real-world Internet of Things (IoT) deployment. We discuss the use of gamification and competition as a very effective end-user engagement mechanism for school audiences. We also present the design of an IoT-based hands-on lab activity, integrated within a high school computer science curriculum utilizing IoT devices and data produced inside the school building, along with the Node-RED platform. We describe the tools used, the organization of the educational activities and related goals. We report on the experience carried out in both directions in a high school in Italy and conclude by discussing the results in terms of achieved energy savings within an observation period.
Abstract: The adoption of technologies like the IoT in urban environments, together with the intensive use of smartphones, is driving transformation towards smart cities. Under this perspective, Experimentation-as-a-Service within OrganiCity aims to create an experimental facility with technologies, services, and applications that simplify innovation within urban ecosystems. We discuss here tools that facilitate experimentation, implementing ways to organize, execute, and administer experimentation campaigns in a smart city context. We discuss the benefits of our framework, presenting some preliminary results. This is the first time such tools are paired with large-scale smart city infrastructures, enabling both city-scale experimentation and cross-site experimentation.
Abstract: An ad-hoc mobile network is a collection of mobile hosts, with
wireless communication capabilities, forming a temporary network
without the aid of any established fixed infrastructure.
In such networks, topological connectivity is subject to frequent,
unpredictable change. Our work focuses on networks with high
rate of such changes to connectivity. For such dynamic changing
networks we propose protocols which exploit the co-ordinated
(by the protocol) motion of a small part of the network.
We show that such protocols can be designed to work
correctly and efficiently even in the case of arbitrary (but not
malicious) movements of the hosts not affected by the protocol.
We also propose a methodology for the analysis of the expected
behaviour of protocols for such networks, based on the assumption that mobile hosts (whose motion is not guided by
the protocol) conduct concurrent random walks in their
motion space.
Our work examines some fundamental problems such as pair-wise
communication, election of a leader and counting, and proposes
distributed algorithms for each of them. We provide their
proofs of correctness, and also give rigorous analysis by
combinatorial tools and also via experiments.
Abstract: In this paper, we describe the implementation of
applying and testing the ”Lightweight Target Tracking using
Passive Traces algorithm” [1] on a FIRE wireless sensors testbed
located in the Theoretical Computer Science/Sensors Lab in
Geneva, Switzerland. We provide information about the hardware
installation and configuration, the changes we did to the
algorithm to adapt it to a real testbed as well as the tools we
implemented to operate the network and receive feedback from
the algorithm’s operation. Finally, we discuss the performance
evaluation findings of our implementation.
Abstract: Efficient query processing in traditional database
management systems relies on statistics on base data. For centralized systems, there is a rich body of research results on such statistics, from simple aggregates to more elaborate synopses such as sketches and histograms. For Internet-scale distributed systems, on the other hand, statisticsmanagement still poses major challenges. With the work in this paper we aim to endow peer-to-peer data management over structured
overlays with the power associated with such statistical information, with emphasis on meeting the scalability challenge.
To this end, we first contribute efficient, accurate, and decentralized algorithms that can compute key aggregates such as Count, CountDistinct, Sum, and Average. We show how to construct several types of histograms, such as simple Equi-Width, Average Shifted Equi-Width, and Equi-Depth histograms. We present a full-fledged open-source implementation
of these tools for distributed statistical synopses,
and report on a comprehensive experimental performance evaluation, evaluating our contributions in terms of efficiency, accuracy, and scalability.
Abstract: In emerging pervasive scenarios, data is collected by sensing devices in streams that occur at several distributed points of observation. The size of the data typically far exceeds the storage and computational capabilities of the tiny devices that have to collect and process them. A general and challenging task is to allow (some of) the nodes of a pervasive network to collectively perform monitoring of a neighbourhood of interest by issuing continuous aggregate queries on the streams observed in its vicinity. This class of algorithms is fully decentralized and diffusive in nature: collecting all the data at a few central nodes of the network is unfeasible in networks of low capability devices or in the presence of massive data sets. Two main problems arise in this scenario: (i) the intrinsic complexity of maintaining statistics over a data stream whose size greatly exceeds the capabilities of the device that performs the computation; (ii) composing the partial outcomes computed at different points of observation into an accurate, global statistic over a neighbourhood of interest, which entails coping with several problems, last but not least the receipt of duplicate information along multiple paths of diffusion.
Streaming techniques have emerged as powerful tools to achieve the general goals described above, in the first place because they assume a computational model in which computational and storage resources are assumed to be far exceeded by the amount of data on which computation occurs. In this contribution, we review the main streaming techniques and provide a classification of the computational problems and the applications they effectively address, with an emphasis on decentralized scenarios, which are of particular interest in pervasive networks
Abstract: Today¢s students are the citizens of tomorrow, and they should have the skills and tools to understand and respond to climate change. Green Awareness in Action (GAIA) has built an IoT infrastructure within 25 schools in Europe, in order to enable lectures that target sustainability and energy efficiency, based on data produced inside school buildings. The school community has reacted very positively to this approach and has reduced energy consumption as a consequence.
Abstract: We present the conceptual basis and the initial planning for an open
source management architecture for wireless sensor networks (WSN). Although
there is an abundance of open source tools serving the administrative needs of
WSN deployments, there is a lack of tools or platforms for high level integrated
WSN management. The current work is, to our knowledge, the first effort to
conceptualize and design a remote, integrated management platform for the
support of WSN research laboratories. The platform is based on the integration
and extension of two innovative platforms: jWebDust, a WSN operation and
management platform, and OpenRSM, an open source integrated remote
systems and network management platform. The proposed system architecture
can support several levels of integration in order to cover to multiple,
qualitatively differentiated use-cases.
Abstract: In this paper we attempt to contribute to the integration of the
mathematics and the technological developments and demonstrate
their interplay in realizing the concept of a Digital Territory.
We describe the main mathematical tools that can be exploited in
the study of properties that emerge as soon as a population size
reaches a certain threshold point. Our aim is to show that
nowadays we have reached a level of mathematical and technological
maturity sufficient to model and simulate any possible world
model.
Abstract: In the near future, it is reasonable to expect that new types of systems will appear, of massive scale that will operating in a constantly changing networked environment. We expect that most such systems will have the form of a large society of tiny networked artefacts. Angluin et al. introduced the notion of "Probabilistic Population Protocols'' (PPP) in order to model the behavior of such systems where extremely limited agents are represented as finite state machines that interact in pairs under the control of an adversary scheduler. We propose to study the dynamics of Probabilistic Population Protocols, via the differential equations approach. We provide a very general model that allows to examine the continuous dynamics of population protocols and we show that it includes the model of Angluin et. al., under certain conditions, with respect to the continuous dynamics of the two models. Our main proposal here is to exploit the powerful tools of continuous nonlinear dynamics in order to examine the behavior of such systems. We also provide a sufficient condition for stability.
Abstract: The Greek School Network (GSN) is a closed nationwide
educational network that offers advanced telematic and
networking services to all primary/secondary education schools
and administration offices in Greece. The primary objective of
GSN is the provisioning of a network infrastructure for the interconnection
of school PC laboratories so that modern educational
methods and pedagogical models can be applied to the school
community. GSN has scaled in size, has reached maturity, and
is currently delivering a wide range of network and telematic
services to its users. The emerging power of open-source software
provides a sound technological basis for building cutting-edge
services, capable of meeting internal administrative and monitoring
needs, and modern pedagogical requirements for tools and
services. The current paper presents an overview of GSN and an
evaluation of its services based on the opinions of its users, and on
service utilization and traffic measurement statistics. The paper
reaches the conclusion that open-source solutions provide a sound
technological platform that can cover, to a great extent, the needs
for advanced educational services of the school community.
Abstract: Consider k particles, 1 red and k-1 white, chasing each other on the nodes of a graph G. If the red one catches one of the white, it “infects” it with its color. The newly red particles are now available to infect more white ones. When is it the case that all white will become red? It turns out that this simple question is an instance of information propagation between random walks and has important applications to mobile computing where a set of mobile hosts acts as an intermediary for the spread of information.
In this paper we model this problem by k concurrent random walks, one corresponding to the red particle and k-1 to the white ones. The infection time Tk of infecting all the white particles with red color is then a random variable that depends on k, the initial position of the particles, the number of nodes and edges of the graph, as well as on the structure of the graph.
In this work we develop a set of probabilistic tools that we use to obtain upper bounds on the (worst case w.r.t. initial positions of particles) expected value of Tk for general graphs and important special cases. We easily get that an upper bound on the expected value of Tk is the worst case (over all initial positions) expected meeting time m* of two random walks multiplied by . We demonstrate that this is, indeed, a tight bound; i.e. there is a graph G (a special case of the “lollipop” graph), a range of values k
Abstract: In this work we present a new simulation toolkit that we call TRAILS (Toolkit for Realism and Adaptivity In Large-scale Simulations), which extends the \NS simulator by adding several important functionalities and optimizing certain
critical simulator operations. The added features focus on providing the user with the necessary tools to better study wireless networks of high dynamics; in particular, to implement advanced mobility patterns, obstacle presence and disaster scenarios, and failures injection. These scenarios and patterns can dynamically change throughout the execution of the simulation based on network related parameters. Moreover, we define a set of utilities that can facilitate the use of \NS providing advanced statistics and easy-to-use logging mechanisms. This functionality is implemented in a simple and flexible architecture, that follows design patterns, object oriented and generic programming principles, maintaining a proper balance between reusability, extendability and ease of use. We evaluate the performance of TRAILS and show that it offers significant speed-ups (at least 4 times faster) regarding the execution time of \NS in certain important, common wireless settings. Our results also show that this is achieved with minimum overhead in terms of memory usage.
Abstract: The use of maker community tools and IoT technologies inside classrooms is spreading in an increasing number of education and science fields. GAIA is a European research project focused on achieving behavior change for sustainability and energy awareness in schools. In this work, we report on how a large IoT deployment in a number of educational buildings and real-world data from this infrastructure, are utilized to support a "maker" lab kit activity inside the classroom, together with a serious game. We also provide some insights to the integration of these activities in the school curriculum, along with a discussion on our feedback so far from a series of workshop activities in a number of schools. Our initial results show strong acceptance by the school community.
