Andrea Melis

CrowdSensing for smart mobility through a service-oriented architecture

Crowdsensing is a powerful approach to build representations of specific aspects of reality which are of interest for citizens in smart cities, and in particular for people with special needs. In this work, we present an application of the microservice paradigm to create a mobility services platform. By exposing each part of the process as a microservice, we achieve the ability of developing applications as orchestration of available components. Moreover, we leverage the possibility of sharing data between different applications in a controlled environment.

A Service-Oriented Approach to Crowdsensing for Accessible Smart Mobility Scenarios

This work presents an architecture to help designing and deploying smart mobility applications. The proposed solution builds on the experience already matured by the authors in different fields: crowdsourcing and sensing done by users to gather data related to urban barriers and facilities, computation of personalized paths for users with special needs, and integration of open data provided by bus companies to identify the actual accessibility features and estimate the real arrival time of vehicles at stops. In terms of functionality, the first “monolithic” prototype fulfilled the goal of composing the aforementioned pieces of information to support citizens with reduced mobility (users with disabilities and/or elderly people) in their urban movements. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented architecture that exploits the microservices orchestration paradigm to enable the creation of new services and to make the management of the various data sources easier and more effective. The proposed platform exposes standardized interfaces to access data, implements common services to manage metadata associated with them, such as trustworthiness and provenance, and provides an orchestration language to create complex services, naturally mapping their internal workflow to code. The manuscript demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach by means of some case studies.

Integrating Personalized and Accessible Itineraries in MaaS Ecosystems Through Microservices

Mobility is a crucial sector for the livability of urban spaces, both in terms of accessibility for people with disabilities, and in terms of enjoyability by people with different interests. The deep transformation mobility is undergoing, heading towards commoditization of the full spectrum of transportation services, can lead to efficient solutions based on the same principle for all these needs. This paper shows how the approach based on the flexible orchestration of microservices allows to build applications that are, at the same time, more easily suited to the specific needs of different user categories, and more seamlessly integrated in the Mobility as a Service approach to smart mobility.

Public Transportation, IoT, Trust and Urban Habits

The technological compound known as Internet of Things is enabling massive transformations in many fields. In this paper, we deal with one emerging scenario, Mobility as a Service, where the interplay between technical, regulatory and social aspects is intense. We advocate the need for interdisciplinary research, taking into account the different facets of a system which, in summary, aims at improving the quality of urban life by collecting personal data, tracking citizens’ movements, correlating them with many other sources of information, and making the results widely available.

Data security issues in MaaS-enabling platforms

Mobility as a Service takes the concept of XaaS to transportation: a MaaS provider shall merge transport options from different mobility providers, seamlessly handling the whole experience of traveling, from providing information, to travel planning, and payments handling. To effectively support the creation of a market of MaaS providers, we envision the creation of ICT infrastructures based on microservices, a modern and renowned development model that fosters the creation of an ecosystem of reusable components. The flexibility of such platforms is their key advantage, yet it poses many security issues. In this paper, we look at these problems through the lens of our experience on one of such platforms, called SMAll. We classify the most relevant vulnerabilities related to data reliability, integrity, and authenticity, and we investigate directions for their mitigation.

I want to ride my bicycle: A microservice-based use case for a MaaS architecture

This work presents a use case on multimodal urban paths in a smart mobility context. The proposed solution builds on the experience already matured and developed by the authors in different fields: crowdsourcing and sensing done by users to gather data related to urban barriers and facilities, computation of personalized paths for users with special needs, and integration of open data provided by bus companies to identify the actual accessibility features and estimate the real arrival time of vehicles at stops. In terms of functionality, the first “monolithic” prototype fulfilled the goal of composing the aforementioned pieces of information to support citizens with reduced mobility (users with disabilities and/or elderly people) in their urban movements. In this paper, we describe a service-oriented architecture that exploits the microservices orchestration paradigm to enable the creation of new services and to make the management of the various data sources easier and more effective. The manuscript demonstrates the effectiveness of the approach showing a successful use case of a service that take into account multimodal paths, by involving cyclists, bicycle lanes, and bike sharing services in a urban environments. Such a use case take into account the users interface and interaction mechanisms, which are strongly affected by the context of use.

Insider Threats in Emerging Mobility-as-a-Service Scenarios

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applies the everything-as-a-service paradigm of Cloud Computing to transportation: a MaaS provider offers to its users the dynamic composition of solutions of different travel agencies into a single, consistent interface. Traditionally, transits and data on mobility belong to a scattered plethora of operators. Thus, we argue that the economic model of MaaS is that of federations of providers, each trading its resources to coordinate multi-modal solutions for mobility. Such flexibility comes with many security and privacy concerns, of which insider threat is one of the most prominent. In this paper, we follow a tiered structure — from individual operators to markets of federated MaaS providers — to classify the potential threats of each tier and propose the appropriate countermeasures, in an effort to mitigate the problems.

A Microservice Architecture Use Case for Persons with Disabilities

Applications supporting the independent living of people with disabilities are usually built in a monolithic fashion for a specific purpose. On the other hand, a crucial sector for the livability of urban spaces such as mobility is undergoing a deep transformation, heading towards flexible composition of standardized services. This paper shows how this approach allows to build better applications for people with specific needs, making them seamlessly integrated in the most modern approach to smart mobility.

Discovering the City: Crowdsourcing and Personalized Urban Paths Across Cultural Heritage

Travel planners and mobile applications related to cultural heritage can play an interesting role in the development of smart cities, when they are integrated each other, engaging the user in touristic and entertainment activities, letting him/her be a source of cultural resources. This paper focuses on a microservices-based architecture, defined with the aim of providing support in computing personalized urban paths across cultural heritage places and in sharing multimedia resources about points of interest. A prototype of mobile application has been implemented on the basis of such architecture, showing the feasibility of the proposed approach thanks to personas and related scenarios.

Cloud-of-Things meets Mobility-as-a-Service: An insider threat perspective

Abstract Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) applies the everything-as-a-service paradigm of Cloud Computing to transportation: a MaaS provider offers to its users the dynamic composition of solutions of different travel agencies into a single, consistent interface. Traditionally, transits and data on mobility belong to a scattered plethora of operators. Thus, we argue that the economic model of MaaS is that of federations of providers, each trading its resources to coordinate multi-modal solutions for mobility. Such flexibility comes with many security and privacy concerns, of which insider threat is one of the most prominent. In this paper, we revise and extend previous work where we classified the potential threats of individual operators and markets of federated MaaS providers, proposing appropriate countermeasures to mitigate the problems. In addition, we consider the emerging case of Cloud-of-Things (CoT) for mobility, i.e., networks of ubiquitous, pervasive devices that provide real-time data on objects and people. Automation and pervasiveness of CoT make an additional attack surface for insiders. In an effort to limit such phenomenon, we present an overlay networking architecture, based on gossip protocols, that lets users share information on mobility with each other. A peculiarity of the architecture is that it both constrains the quality and quantity of data obtainable by insiders, optimizing the routing of requests to involve only users that are able to answer them.