Maruf Pasha

Big Data in the construction industry

Existing works for Big Data Analytics/Engineering in the construction industry are discussed.It is highlighted that the adoption of Big Data is still at nascent stageOpportunities to employ Big Data technologies in construction sub-domains are highlighted.Future works for Big Data technologies are presented.Pitfalls of Big Data technologies in the construction industry are also pointed out. The ability to process large amounts of data and to extract useful insights from data has revolutionised society. This phenomenon-dubbed as Big Data-has applications for a wide assortment of industries, including the construction industry. The construction industry already deals with large volumes of heterogeneous data; which is expected to increase exponentially as technologies such as sensor networks and the Internet of Things are commoditised. In this paper, we present a detailed survey of the literature, investigating the application of Big Data techniques in the construction industry. We reviewed related works published in the databases of American Association of Civil Engineers (ASCE), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Association of Computing Machinery (ACM), and Elsevier Science Direct Digital Library. While the application of data analytics in the construction industry is not new, the adoption of Big Data technologies in this industry remains at a nascent stage and lags the broad uptake of these technologies in other fields. To the best of our knowledge, there is currently no comprehensive survey of Big Data techniques in the context of the construction industry. This paper fills the void and presents a wide-ranging interdisciplinary review of literature of fields such as statistics, data mining and warehousing, machine learning, and Big Data Analytics in the context of the construction industry. We discuss the current state of adoption of Big Data in the construction industry and discuss the future potential of such technologies across the multiple domain-specific sub-areas of the construction industry. We also propose open issues and directions for future work along with potential pitfalls associated with Big Data adoption in the industry.

Identifying an OpenID anti-phishing scheme for cyberspace

OpenID is widely being used for user centric identity management in many Web applications. OpenID provides Web users with the ability to manage their identities through third party identity providers while remaining independent of the subject that actually uses the identities to authenticate individuals. Starting from the early stages of its inception, OpenID has received a large amount of acceptance and use in the current Web community because of its flexibility and ease of use. However, in addition to its benefits and flexibilities, OpenID faces its own share of vulnerabilities and threats, which have made its future and large-scale use in cyberspace questionable. OpenID Phishing is one such attack that has received much attention and that requires a comprehensive solution. This paper aims at identifying and discussing a solution to OpenID Phishing by proposing a user authentication scheme that allows OpenID providers to identify a user using publicly known entities. The research will help in next-generation cyber security innovations by reducing the authentication dependency on user credentials, that is, login name/password. The authentication scheme is also validated through detailed descriptions of use cases and prototype implementation. Copyright

A framework to address inconstant user requirements in cloud SLAs management

Dynamically managing service level agreements (SLAs) is a non-trivial issue for both active media technology users and providers. Cloud computing is considered as one of the significant components of the rapidly emerging active media in the current era. As the technology grows rapidly, cloud computing requirements and techniques also change over time, while the current cloud SLA management methods are rigorous in terms of SLA contents updates with the technology innovation and user requirement change. In other words, public SLAs are used as templates, and when issuing a new SLA, it is necessary to map its requirements to all public SLAs. In addition, updating any consumer’s SLA requires a cumbersome process of remapping their changed requirements to all public SLAs. This paper proposes a cloud computing SLA management mechanism based on the real options analysis concept to manage cloud SLAs in a dynamic manner. At the beginning, or when issuing a new SLA, the proposed framework receives a new user’s requirements and maps these to all public SLAs, while executes only the most appropriate SLA based on options analysis and records/marks the other related solutions (SLAs) for future analysis to address any further change due to internal/external factor. This also provides a mechanism to effectively counter uncertainty parameters triggering dynamic change in cloud SLA management. The framework was deployed using Web SLA and Java followed by an experimental study to evaluate the efficacy and scalability of the proposed framework. The results show that the proposed framework provides efficient and scalable cloud SLA management mechanism.

A framework for cloud forensics evidence collection and analysis using security information and event management

A primary feature of cloud computing is the provision of a variety of transparent services with efficient resource utilization. However, there are concerns with cloud computing in terms of the users data privacy and security, especially in evidence collection for forensics analysis, because the tangible resources and hardware are out of reach for users who own the data. This paper presents a framework using security information and event management SIEM, to address the issue of efficient evidence collection for crime investigation, such as that for cloud forensics, with respect to the cloud service provider. Indeed, evidence could be shared with cloud users when required. SIEM can be considered as a major player in terms of evidence collection in a virtualized environment. The proposed mechanism using SIEM focuses on passive attacks and provides a solution from the cloud administrator or service providers point of view. The proposed framework can help in performing detailed cloud forensics in terms of efficient evidence building for crime investigations. Copyright

Electronic crime investigations in a virtualised environment: a forensic process and prototype for evidence collection and analysis

Abstract The constant evolution of virtualisation technologies and the availability of anti-forensic techniques and tools complicate efforts by forensic investigators to investigate a crime or a cyber security incident. Forensic collection can be complicated and requires significant efforts to investigate incidents involving contemporary technologies (e.g. crime launched from a virtual machine and there had been attempts to erase evidence after the incident). This paper presents a forensic process to collect and analyse traces of a virtual machine and its corresponding manager, recorded across multiple sources including the file system, Windows registry, history, and log files from a forensic viewpoint. To demonstrate utility of the forensic mechanism, the Virtual Machine Forensic Artefact Collector (VMFAC) prototype is developed and presented in this paper.

Framework for E-Health Systems in IoT-Based Environments

Internet of things technology consists of physical objects that are accessible via the Internet, for example, devices, vehicles, and buildings. Internet of things technology is used to connect these physical objects by utilizing the existing infrastructure of networks. A unique identifier is assigned to identify the objects in IoT environments. Internet of things technology is used to make productive decisions on the sensed data after converting it into information. IoT technology is being used in various life disciplines, such as smart health services delivery, smart traffic management, border management, and governmental control. There is no single standard for IoT technology; thus, interoperability between IoT devices that use different protocols and standards is required. This research was carried out to provide and develop a specialized framework for an IoT-based smart health system by focusing particularly on interoperability problems. Based on different technology standards and communication protocols, the specific requirements of the IoT system were analyzed and served as a basis for the design of the framework. The protocols and standards within the framework utilize existing web technologies, communication protocols, and hardware design. This approach ensures that the specific expectations of the proposed model can be fulfilled with confidence. The experiments showed that interoperability between different IoT devices, standards, and protocols in a smart health system could be achieved using a specialized gateway device and that different web technologies could be used simultaneously in constrained and Internet environments.

Forensic investigation to detect forgeries in ASF files of contemporary IP cameras

Recent years have seen tremendous increase in crime and terrorism all over the world which has necessitated continuous surveillance of public spaces, commercial entities and residential areas. CCTV cameras are an integral part of any modern surveillance system and have evolved significantly. They are a vital part of any investigation that follows a criminal or terrorism incident by providing invaluable evidence. In this paper, we show that the Advance Systems Format (ASF) file used in most IP cameras, which is also the main file containing metadata about the streaming packets, is vulnerable to forgery. This file is stored in plain text and any technically savvy person can forge it; therefore, a mechanism is needed to prevent it. To that end, we have gathered critical artifacts from an ASF file of IP cameras and carried out their forensic analysis. The analysis performed during this study demonstrates successful detection of forgery/tampering of evidence in IP cameras.

A Critical Analysis of Mobility Management Related Issues of Wireless Sensor Networks in Cyber Physical Systems

Mobility management has been a long-standing issue in mobile wireless sensor networks and especially in the context of cyber physical systems; its implications are immense. This paper presents a critical analysis of the current approaches to mobility management by evaluating them against a set of criteria which are essentially inherent characteristics of such systems on which these approaches are expected to provide acceptable performance. We summarize these characteristics by using a quadruple set of metrics. Additionally, using this set we classify the various approaches to mobility management that are discussed in this paper. Finally, the paper concludes by reviewing the main findings and providing suggestions that will be helpful to guide future research efforts in the area.

IoT-Based Smart Health Unit

The World Wide Web has made world a global village and internet of things (IoT) is making this place smarter and efficient by allowing the variety of sensors and smart objects to collect and process the information for various use. These smart objects are making healthcare system smarter and giving advantages to underdeveloped countries where basic health units do not have complete medical infrastructure. However, a specialized architecture is missing for smart health unit that can support for collecting and forwarding the health information to headquarter hospitals where live support for patient is available. In this paper, we evaluated the various IoT based health system models and their applications. To provide intelligent health services, we have proposed a smart health unit model in which the country’s basic health units are converted into smart health units and these smart health units are connected to their respective headquarter hospitals. The proposed model presents a layered approach, which includes sensor, network access and service layer that make the efficient communication possible.

Comparative Analysis of Ontology Construction Approaches from Relational Databases

Ontology provides shareable and reusable knowledge about a specific domain. Domain specific relational databases are being used for constructing ontologies due to huge amounts of data on the Web. The aim of this paper is to provide an overview along with the pros and cons of ontology construction techniques. The objective of our research is to overcome the shortcomings of existing techniques in our future work. We have done in depth analysis of various techniques for ontology construction from relational database (RDB) based on database schema analysis (meta-data, cardinality restrictions and data type information), stored data (through data mining) and also performed a comparative analysis of these techniques.