- Design, Operation and Optimization of Smart Cyber-Physical Systems
Decentralized Operations for Cyber-Physical Systems
Context: One of our fundamental focus of research is the design and development of algorithms and framework to enable decentralized operations in large scale cyber-physical systems. We note that a number of these systems require multiple entities and stakeholders to participate and as such the systems are vulnerable to data and operational disruptions, which are common in centralized architectures. These challenges have led to increasing focus on SCC platforms that provide participants the capability to not only exchange data and services in a decentralized and perhaps anonymous manner, but also provide them with the capability to preserve an immutable and auditable record of all transactions in the system. Such transactive platforms are actively being suggested for use in Healthcare, Smart Energy Systems, and Smart Transportation Systems. These platforms can provide support for privacy-preserving and anonymizing techniques, such as differential privacy, fully homomorphic encryption, and mixing. Further, the immutable nature of records and event chronology in these platforms provides high rigor and auditability. Lastly, the decentralized nature of these platforms ensures that any adversary needs to compromise a large number of node to take control of the system. Blockchains form a key component of these platforms because they enable participants to reach a consensus on any state variable in the system, without relying on a trusted third party or trusting each other. Distributed consensus not only solves the trust issue, but also provides fault-tolerance since consensus is always reached on the correct state as long as the number of faulty nodes is below a threshold. Further, blockchains also enable performing computation in a distributed and trustworthy manner in the form of smart contracts. However, while the distributed integrity of a blockchain ledger presents unique opportunities, it also introduces new assurance challenges that must be addressed before protocols and implementations can live up to their potential.
As such, one of the fundamental focus of our research is the use of Blockchain for decentralization of operation in large scale multistake holder cyber-physical systems. Examples of this type of system include smart cities, transactive energy, and IoT. The current form of these systems allows large scale stakeholders to participate, for example in the case of power systems bulk energy markets between power plants and power distribution companies, and in the case of IoT the various internet providers make agreements with each other to allow access to each other’s networks.
Background: Our work in multi-stakeholder systems has spanned the last 4 years. With the advent of blockchain based technology there was substantial interest in applying to not only financial systems but also enabling contracts between stakeholders. To explore this direction the Smart and Resilient Computing for Physical Environments Lab (SCOPE) has been working to explore these distributed contract based market systems to enable transactive energy as well as the outsourcing of compute tasks to nodes with surplus capacity. We are thankful to Siemens Corporate Technology and the National Science Foundation (NSF) for sponsoring our efforts.
Innovation: To confront issues of privacy, efficiency, and safety in MSCPS, we have developed a platform for transactive energy system microgrids3. The availability of distributed energy resources (DER) in communities have presented novel opportunities, as these resources are located closer to loads and can significantly reduce transmission losses and carbon emissions, relative to traditional power sources. However, their intermittent and variable nature often results in spikes in the overall demand on distribution system operators (DSO). To manage these challenges, there has been a surge of interest in building decentralized control schemes, where a pool of DERs combined with energy storage devices can exchange energy locally to smooth fluctuations in net demand. Building a decentralized market for transactive microgrids is challenging because even though a decentralized system provides resilience, it also must satisfy the requirements of privacy, efficiency, safety, and security, which are often in conflict with each other. As such, existing implementations of decentralized markets often focus on resilience and safety but compromise on privacy.
Research Products: Our platform, called TRANSAX, enables participants to trade in an energy futures market, which improves efficiency by finding feasible matches for energy trades, enabling DSOs to plan their energy needs better. TRANSAX provides privacy to participants by anonymizing their trading activity using a distributed mixing service, while also enforcing constraints that limit trading activity based on safety requirements, such as keeping planned energy flow below line capacity. We show that TRANSAX can satisfy the seemingly conflicting requirements of efficiency, safety, and privacy. We also provide an analysis of how much trading efficiency is lost. Trading efficiency is improved through the problem formulation which accounts for temporal flexibility, and system efficiency is improved using a hybrid-solver architecture. We also describe a testbed to run experiments and demonstrate its performance using simulation results. To demonstrate the feasibility of our platform, we perform experiments with dozens of embedded devices and energy production and consumption profiles from a real dataset.
In the context of TES we developed SolidWorx, a platform for enabling participants to trade in futures market. To improve efficiency we reduce the amount of computation that is performed using the smart contract by implementing a hybrid-solver pattern which relies on off-chain solvers to match the offers posted to the system. We only use the smart contract to verify that the solutions are valid.
To enable trusted computations between mistrusting parties in the edge-cloud environment while minimizing the additional computation overhead, we have developed a platform for outsourcing computations. The existing efforts to construct such a platform, particularly those using blockchain, focus on ensuring global consensus on the results of the computation, but there are many cases where this is not required. Our platform, called MODiCuM, does not execute any of the outsourced computation as part of the smart contract, but instead uses the contract to hold the participants accountable. This effectively replaces the trusted third party required for general trusted two-party computation with the distributed ledger and smart contract.
Publications in this area
G. Pettet, A. Mukhopadhyay, M. Kochenderfer, and A. Dubey, Hierarchical Planning for Resource Allocation in Emergency Response Systems, in Proceedings of the 12th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, ICCPS 2021, Nashville, TN, USA, 2021.
@inproceedings{iccps2021,
author = {Pettet, Geoffrey and Mukhopadhyay, Ayan and Kochenderfer, Mykel and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {Hierarchical Planning for Resource Allocation in Emergency Response Systems},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 12th {ACM/IEEE} International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, {ICCPS} 2021, Nashville, TN, USA},
year = {2021},
tag = {ai4cps,decentralization,incident},
keywords = {emergency},
project = {smart-cities,smart-emergency-response}
}
A classical problem in city-scale cyber-physical systems (CPS) is resource allocation under uncertainty. Spatial-temporal allocation of resources is optimized to allocate electric scooters across urban areas, place charging stations for vehicles, and design efficient on-demand transit. Typically, such problems are modeled as Markov (or semi-Markov) decision processes. While online, offline, and decentralized methodologies have been used to tackle such problems, none of the approaches scale well for large-scale decision problems. We create a general approach to hierarchical planning that leverages structure in city-level CPS problems to tackle resource allocation under uncertainty. We use emergency response as a case study and show how a large resource allocation problem can be split into smaller problems. We then create a principled framework for solving the smaller problems and tackling the interaction between them. Finally, we use real-world data from a major metropolitan area in the United States to validate our approach. Our experiments show that the proposed approach outperforms state-of-the-art approaches used in the field of emergency response.
S. Eisele, T. Eghtesad, K. Campanelli, P. Agrawal, A. Laszka, and A. Dubey, Safe and Private Forward-Trading Platform for Transactive Microgrids, ACM Trans. Cyber-Phys. Syst., vol. 5, no. 1, Jan. 2021.
@article{eisele2020Safe,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Eghtesad, Taha and Campanelli, Keegan and Agrawal, Prakhar and Laszka, Aron and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {Safe and Private Forward-Trading Platform for Transactive Microgrids},
year = {2021},
issue_date = {January 2021},
publisher = {Association for Computing Machinery},
address = {New York, NY, USA},
volume = {5},
number = {1},
tag = {decentralization, power},
issn = {2378-962X},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3403711},
doi = {10.1145/3403711},
journal = {ACM Trans. Cyber-Phys. Syst.},
month = jan,
articleno = {8},
numpages = {29},
keywords = {privacy, cyber-physical system, decentralized application, smart contract, transactive energy, Smart grid, distributed ledger, blockchain}
}
Transactive microgrids have emerged as a transformative solution for the problems faced by distribution system operators due to an increase in the use of distributed energy resources and rapid growth in renewable energy generation. Transactive microgrids are tightly coupled cyber and physical systems, which require resilient and robust financial markets where transactions can be submitted and cleared, while ensuring that erroneous or malicious transactions cannot destabilize the grid. In this paper, we introduce TRANSAX, a novel decentralized platform for transactive microgrids. TRANSAX enables participants to trade in an energy futures market, which improves efficiency by finding feasible matches for energy trades, reducing the load on the distribution system operator. TRANSAX provides privacy to participants by anonymizing their trading activity using a distributed mixing service, while also enforcing constraints that limit trading activity based on safety requirements, such as keeping power flow below line capacity. We show that TRANSAX can satisfy the seemingly conflicting requirements of efficiency, safety, and privacy, and we demonstrate its performance using simulation results.
S. Eisele, T. Eghtesad, N. Troutman, A. Laszka, and A. Dubey, Mechanisms for Outsourcing Computation via a Decentralized Market, in 14TH ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event Based Systems, 2020.
@inproceedings{eisele2020mechanisms,
title = {Mechanisms for Outsourcing Computation via a Decentralized Market},
author = {Eisele, Scott and Eghtesad, Taha and Troutman, Nicholas and Laszka, Aron and Dubey, Abhishek},
year = {2020},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
booktitle = {14TH ACM International Conference on Distributed and Event Based Systems},
keywords = {transactive},
category = {selectiveconference}
}
As the number of personal computing and IoT devices grows rapidly, so does the amount of computational power that is available at the edge. Since many of these devices are often idle, there is a vast amount of computational power that is currently untapped, and which could be used for outsourcing computation. Existing solutions for harnessing this power, such as volunteer computing (e.g., BOINC), are centralized platforms in which a single organization or company can control participation and pricing. By contrast, an open market of computational resources, where resource owners and resource users trade directly with each other, could lead to greater participation and more competitive pricing. To provide an open market, we introduce MODiCuM, a decentralized system for outsourcing computation. MODiCuM deters participants from misbehaving-which is a key problem in decentralized systems-by resolving disputes via dedicated mediators and by imposing enforceable fines. However, unlike other decentralized outsourcing solutions, MODiCuM minimizes computational overhead since it does not require global trust in mediation results. We provide analytical results proving that MODiCuM can deter misbehavior, and we evaluate the overhead of MODiCuM using experimental results based on an implementation of our platform.
M. Wilbur, C. Samal, J. P. Talusan, K. Yasumoto, and A. Dubey, Time-dependent Decentralized Routing using Federated Learning, in 2020 IEEE 23nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC), 2020.
@inproceedings{wilbur2020decentralized,
title = {Time-dependent Decentralized Routing using Federated Learning},
author = {Wilbur, Michael and Samal, Chinmaya and Talusan, Jose Paolo and Yasumoto, Keiichi and Dubey, Abhishek},
booktitle = {2020 IEEE 23nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing (ISORC)},
year = {2020},
tag = {decentralization,transit},
organization = {IEEE}
}
Recent advancements in cloud computing have
driven rapid development in data-intensive smart city applications
by providing near real time processing and storage
scalability. This has resulted in efficient centralized route planning
services such as Google Maps, upon which millions of
users rely. Route planning algorithms have progressed in line
with the cloud environments in which they run. Current state
of the art solutions assume a shared memory model, hence
deployment is limited to multiprocessing environments in data
centers. By centralizing these services, latency has become the
limiting parameter in the technologies of the future, such as
autonomous cars. Additionally, these services require access
to outside networks, raising availability concerns in disaster
scenarios. Therefore, this paper provides a decentralized route
planning approach for private fog networks. We leverage recent
advances in federated learning to collaboratively learn shared
prediction models online and investigate our approach with a
simulated case study from a mid-size U.S. city.
J. P. V. Talusan, M. Wilbur, A. Dubey, and K. Yasumoto, Route Planning Through Distributed Computing by Road Side Units, IEEE Access, vol. 8, pp. 176134–176148, 2020.
@article{wilburaccess2020,
author = {{Talusan}, J. P. V. and {Wilbur}, M. and {Dubey}, A. and {Yasumoto}, K.},
journal = {IEEE Access},
title = {Route Planning Through Distributed Computing by Road Side Units},
year = {2020},
tag = {decentralization,transit},
volume = {8},
number = {},
pages = {176134-176148}
}
Cities are embracing data-intensive applications to maximize their constrained transportation networks. Platforms such as Google offer route planning services to mitigate the effect of traffic congestion. These use remote servers that require an Internet connection, which exposes data to increased risk of network failures and latency issues. Edge computing, an alternative to centralized architectures, offers computational power at the edge that could be used for similar services. Road side units (RSU), Internet of Things (IoT) devices within a city, offer an opportunity to offload computation to the edge. To provide an environment for processing on RSUs, we introduce RSU-Edge, a distributed edge computing system for RSUs. We design and develop a decentralized route planning service over RSU-Edge. In the service, the city is divided into grids and assigned an RSU. Users send trip queries to the service and obtain routes. For maximum accuracy, tasks must be allocated to optimal RSUs. However, this overloads RSUs, increasing delay. To reduce delays, tasks may be reallocated from overloaded RSUs to its neighbors. The distance between the optimal and actual allocation causes accuracy loss due to stale data. The problem is identifying the most efficient allocation of tasks such that response constraints are met while maintaining acceptable accuracy. We created the system and present an analysis of a case study in Nashville, Tennessee that shows the effect of our algorithm on route accuracy and query response, given varying neighbor levels. We find that our system can respond to 1000 queries up to 57.17% faster, with only a model accuracy loss of 5.57% to 7.25% compared to using only optimal grid allocation.
S. Eisele, C. Barreto, A. Dubey, X. Koutsoukos, T. Eghtesad, A. Laszka, and A. Mavridou, Blockchains for Transactive Energy Systems: Opportunities, Challenges, and Approaches, IEEE Computer, 2020.
@article{eisele2020Blockchains,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Barreto, Carlos and Dubey, Abhishek and Koutsoukos, Xenofon and Eghtesad, Taha and Laszka, Aron and Mavridou, Anastasia},
title = {Blockchains for Transactive Energy Systems: Opportunities, Challenges, and Approaches},
journal = {IEEE Computer},
year = {2020},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power}
}
The emergence of blockchains and smart contracts have renewed interest in electrical cyber-physical systems, especially in the area of transactive energy systems. However, despite recent advances, there remain significant challenges that impede the practical adoption of blockchains in transactive energy systems, which include implementing complex market mechanisms in smart contracts, ensuring safety of the power system, and protecting residential consumers’ privacy. To address these challenges, we present TRANSAX, a blockchain-based transactive energy system that provides an efficient, safe, and privacy-preserving market built on smart contracts. Implementation and deployment of TRANSAX in a verifiably correct and efficient way is based on VeriSolid, a framework for the correct-by-construction development of smart contracts, and RIAPS, a middleware for resilient distributed power systems
G. Pettet, A. Mukhopadhyay, M. Kochenderfer, Y. Vorobeychik, and A. Dubey, On Algorithmic Decision Procedures in Emergency Response Systems in Smart and Connected Communities, in Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, AAMAS 2020, Auckland, New Zealand, 2020.
@inproceedings{Pettet2020,
author = {Pettet, Geoffrey and Mukhopadhyay, Ayan and Kochenderfer, Mykel and Vorobeychik, Yevgeniy and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {On Algorithmic Decision Procedures in Emergency Response Systems in Smart and Connected Communities},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 19th Conference on Autonomous Agents and MultiAgent Systems, {AAMAS} 2020, Auckland, New Zealand},
year = {2020},
tag = {ai4cps, decentralization,incident},
category = {selectiveconference},
keywords = {emergency, performance},
project = {smart-emergency-response,smart-cities},
timestamp = {Wed, 17 Jan 2020 07:24:00 +0200}
}
Emergency Response Management (ERM) is a critical problem faced by communities across the globe. Despite its importance, it is common for ERM systems to follow myopic and straight-forward decision policies in the real world. Principled approaches to aid decision-making under uncertainty have been explored in this context but have failed to be accepted into real systems. We identify a key issue impeding their adoption — algorithmic approaches to emergency response focus on reactive, post-incident dispatching actions, i.e. optimally dispatching a responder after incidents occur. However, the critical nature of emergency response dictates that when an incident occurs, first responders always dispatch the closest available responder to the incident. We argue that the crucial period of planning for ERM systems is not post-incident, but between incidents. However, this is not a trivial planning problem - a major challenge with dynamically balancing the spatial distribution of responders is the complexity of the problem. An orthogonal problem in ERM systems is to plan under limited communication, which is particularly important in disaster scenarios that affect communication networks. We address both the problems by proposing two partially decentralized multi-agent planning algorithms that utilize heuristics and the structure of the dispatch problem. We evaluate our proposed approach using real-world data, and find that in several contexts, dynamic re-balancing the spatial distribution of emergency responders reduces both the average response time as well as its variance.
J. P. Talusan, M. Wilbur, A. Dubey, and K. Yasumoto, On Decentralized Route Planning Using the Road Side Units as Computing Resources, in 2020 IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing (ICFC), 2020.
@inproceedings{rsuicfc2020,
author = {Talusan, Jose Paolo and Wilbur, Michael and Dubey, Abhishek and Yasumoto, Keiichi},
title = {On Decentralized Route Planning Using the Road Side Units as Computing Resources},
booktitle = {2020 IEEE International Conference on Fog Computing (ICFC)},
year = {2020},
tag = {decentralization,transit},
organization = {IEEE},
category = {selectiveconference},
keywords = {transit, middleware}
}
Residents in cities typically use third-party platforms such as Google Maps for route planning services. While providing near real-time processing, these state of the art centralized deployments are limited to multiprocessing environments in data centers. This raises privacy concerns, increases risk for critical data and causes vulnerability to network failure. In this paper, we propose to use decentralized road side units (RSU) (owned by the city) to perform route planning. We divide the city road network into grids, each assigned an RSU where traffic data is kept locally, increasing security and resiliency such that the system can perform even if some RSUs fail. Route generation is done in two steps. First, an optimal grid sequence is generated, prioritizing shortest path calculation accuracy but not RSU load. Second, we assign route planning tasks to the grids in the sequence. Keeping in mind RSU load and constraints, tasks can be allocated and executed in any non-optimal grid but with lower accuracy. We evaluate this system using Metropolitan Nashville road traffic data. We divided the area into 500 grids, configuring load and neighborhood sizes to meet delay constraints while maximizing model accuracy. The results show that there is a 30 percent decrease in processing time with a decrease in model accuracy of 99 percent to 92.3 percent, by simply increasing the search area to the optimal grid’s immediate neighborhood.
C. Barreto, T. Eghtesad, S. Eisele, A. Laszka, A. Dubey, and X. Koutsoukos, Cyber-Attacks and Mitigation in Blockchain Based Transactive Energy Systems, in 3rd IEEE International Conference on IndustrialCyber-Physical Systems (ICPS 2020), 2020.
@inproceedings{barretocyber2020,
author = {Barreto, Carlos and Eghtesad, Taha and Eisele, Scott and Laszka, Aron and Dubey, Abhishek and Koutsoukos, Xenofon},
title = {Cyber-Attacks and Mitigation in Blockchain Based Transactive Energy Systems},
booktitle = {3rd IEEE International Conference on IndustrialCyber-Physical Systems (ICPS 2020)},
year = {2020},
category = {selectiveconference},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {cps-reliability},
tag = {decentralization,power}
}
Power grids are undergoing major changes due to the rapid adoption of intermittent renewable energy resources and the increased availability of energy storage devices. These trends drive smart-grid operators to envision a future where peer-to-peer energy trading occurs within microgrids, leading to the development of Transactive Energy Systems. Blockchains have garnered significant interest from both academia and industry for their potential application in decentralized TES, in large part due to their high level of resilience. In this paper, we introduce a novel class of attacks against blockchain based TES, which target the gateways that connect market participants to the system. We introduce a general model of blockchain based TES and study multiple threat models and attack strategies. We also demonstrate the impact of these attacks using a testbed based on GridLAB-D and a private Ethereum network. Finally, we study how to mitigate these attack.
A. Laszka, A. Mavridou, S. Eisele, E. Statchtiari, and A. Dubey, VeriSolid for TRANSAX: Correct-by-Design Ethereum Smart Contracts for Energy Trading, in First International Summer School on Security and Privacy for Blockchains and Distributed Ledger Technologies, BDLT 2019, Vienna, Austria, 2019.
@inproceedings{LaszkaVerisolid2019,
author = {Laszka, Aron and Mavridou, Anastasia and Eisele, Scott and Statchtiari, Emmanouela and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {VeriSolid for TRANSAX: Correct-by-Design Ethereum Smart Contracts for Energy Trading},
booktitle = {First International Summer School on Security and Privacy for Blockchains and Distributed Ledger Technologies, BDLT 2019, Vienna, Austria},
year = {2019},
month = sep,
category = {workshop},
file = {:LaszkaVerisolid2019Poster.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {blockchain, transactive},
project = {cps-blockchains,transactive-energy},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power}
}
The adoption of blockchain based platforms is rising rapidly. Their popularity is explained by their ability to maintain a distributed public ledger, providing reliability, integrity, and auditability with- out a trusted entity. Recent platforms, e.g., Ethereum, also act as distributed computing platforms and enable the creation of smart contracts, i.e., software code that runs on the platform and automatically executes and enforces the terms of a contract. Since smart contracts can perform any computation, they allow the develop- ment of decentralized applications, whose execution is safeguarded by the security properties of the underlying platform. Due to their unique advantages, blockchain based platforms are envisioned to have a wide range of applications, ranging from financial to the Internet-of-Things.
However, the trustworthiness of the platform guarantees only that a smart contract is executed correctly, not that the code of the contract is correct. In fact, a large number of contracts deployed in practice suffer from software vulnerabilities, which are often introduced due to the semantic gap between the assumptions that contract writers make about the underlying
execution semantics and the actual semantics of smart contracts. A recent automated analysis of 19,336 smart contracts deployed in practice found that 8,333 of them suffered from at least one security issue. Although this study was based on smart contracts deployed on the public Ethereum blockchain, the analyzed security issues were largely plat- form agnostic.
Security vulnerabilities in smart contracts present a serious issue for two main reasons. Firstly, smart-contract bugs cannot be patched. By design, once a contract is deployed, its func- tionality cannot be altered even by its creator. Secondly, once a faulty or malicious transaction is recorded, it cannot be removed from the blockchain (“code is law” principle). The only way to roll back a transaction is by performing a hard fork of the blockchain, which requires consensus among the stakeholders and undermines the trustworthiness of the platform. In light of this, it is crucial to ensure that a smart contract is se- cure before deploying it and trusting it with significant amounts of cryptocurrency. To this end, we present the VeriSolid framework for the formal verification and generation of contracts that are specified using a transition-system based model with rigorous operational semantics. VeriSolid provides an end-to-end design framework, which combined with a Solidity code generator, allows the correct- by-design development of Ethereum smart contracts. To the best of our knowledge, VeriSolid is the first framework to promote a model- based, correctness-by-design approach for
blockchain-based smart contracts. Properties established at any step of the VeriSolid design flow are preserved in the resulting smart contracts, guaranteeing their correctness. VeriSolid fully automates the process of verifica- tion and code generation, while enhancing usability by providing easy-to-use graphical editors for the specification of transition sys- tems and natural-like language templates
for the specification of formal properties. By performing verification early at design time, VeriSolid provides a cost-effective approach since fixing bugs later in the development process can be very expensive. Our verification approach can detect typical vulnerabilities, but it may also detect any violation of required properties. Since our tool applies verifi- cation at a high-level, it can provide meaningful
feedback to the developer when a property is not satisfied, which would be much harder to do at bytecode level. We present the application of VeriSolid on smart contracts used in Smart Energy Systems such as transactive energy platforms. In particular, we used VeriSolid to design and generate the smart contract that serves as the core of the TRANSAX blockchain-based platform for trading energy futures.
The designed smart contract allows energy producers and consumers to post offers for selling and buying energy. Since optimally matching selling offers with buying offers can be very expensive computationally, the contract relies on external solvers to compute and submit solutions to the matching problem, which are then checked by the contract.
Using VeriSolid, we defined a set of safety properties and we were able to detect bugs after performing analysis with the NuSMV model checker.
Y. Zhang, S. Eisele, A. Dubey, A. Laszka, and A. K. Srivastava, Cyber-Physical Simulation Platform for Security Assessment of Transactive Energy Systems, in 7th Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, MSCPES@CPSIoTWeek 2019, Montreal, QC, Canada, 2019, pp. 1–6.
@inproceedings{Zhang2019a,
author = {Zhang, Yue and Eisele, Scott and Dubey, Abhishek and Laszka, Aron and Srivastava, Anurag K.},
title = {Cyber-Physical Simulation Platform for Security Assessment of Transactive Energy Systems},
booktitle = {7th Workshop on Modeling and Simulation of Cyber-Physical Energy Systems, MSCPES@CPSIoTWeek 2019, Montreal, QC, Canada},
year = {2019},
pages = {1--6},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/cpsweek/ZhangEDLS19},
category = {workshop},
doi = {10.1109/MSCPES.2019.8738802},
file = {:Zhang2019a-Cyber_Physical_Simulation_Platform_for_Security_Assessment_of_Transactive_Energy_Systems.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {transactive-energy,cps-reliability},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:56 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/MSCPES.2019.8738802}
}
Transactive energy systems (TES) are emerging as a transformative solution for the problems that distribution system operators face due to an increase in the use of distributed energy resources and rapid growth in scalability of managing active distribution system (ADS). On the one hand, these changes pose a decentralized power system control problem, requiring strategic control to maintain reliability and resiliency for the community and for the utility. On the other hand, they require robust financial markets while allowing participation from diverse prosumers. To support the computing and flexibility requirements of TES while preserving privacy and security, distributed software platforms are required. In this paper, we enable the study and analysis of security concerns by developing Transactive Energy Security Simulation Testbed (TESST), a TES testbed for simulating various cyber attacks. In this work, the testbed is used for TES simulation with centralized clearing market, highlighting weaknesses in a centralized system. Additionally, we present a blockchain enabled decentralized market solution supported by distributed computing for TES, which on one hand can alleviate some of the problems that we identify, but on the other hand, may introduce newer issues. Future study of these differing paradigms is necessary and will continue as we develop our security simulation testbed.
P. Zhang, D. C. Schmidt, J. White, and A. Dubey, Chapter Seven - Consensus mechanisms and information security technologies, in Advances in Computers, vol. 115, Oreilly, 2019, pp. 181–209.
@inbook{Zhang2019,
pages = {181--209},
title = {Chapter Seven - Consensus mechanisms and information security technologies},
publisher = {Oreilly},
year = {2019},
tag = {decentralization},
author = {Zhang, Peng and Schmidt, Douglas C. and White, Jules and Dubey, Abhishek},
volume = {115},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/ac/0034SWD19},
booktitle = {Advances in Computers},
doi = {10.1016/bs.adcom.2019.05.001},
file = {:Zhang2019-Chapter_Seven-Consensus_mechanisms_and_information_security_technologies.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {blockchain},
project = {cps-blockchains},
timestamp = {Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adcom.2019.05.001}
}
Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) helps maintain and distribute predefined types of information and data in a decentralized manner. It removes the reliance on a third-party intermediary, while securing information exchange and creating shared truth via transaction records that are hard to tamper with. The successful operation of DLT stems largely from two computer science technologies: consensus mechanisms and information security protocols. Consensus mechanisms, such as Proof of Work (PoW) and Raft, ensure that the DLT network collectively agrees on contents stored in the ledger. Information security protocols, such as encryption and hashing, protect data integrity and safeguard data against unauthorized access.
The most popular incarnation of DLT has been used in cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, through public blockchains, which requires the application of more robust consensus protocols across the entire network. An example is PoW, which has been employed by Bitcoin, but which is also highly energy inefficient. Other forms of DLT include consortium and private blockchains where networks are configured within federated entities or a single organization, in which case less energy intensive consensus protocols (such as Raft) would suffice. This chapter surveys existing consensus mechanisms and information security technologies used in DLT.
A. Mavridou, A. Laszka, E. Stachtiari, and A. Dubey, VeriSolid: Correct-by-Design Smart Contracts for Ethereum, in Financial Cryptography and Data Security - 23rd International Conference, FC 2019, Frigate Bay, St. Kitts and Nevis, Revised Selected Papers, 2019, pp. 446–465.
@inproceedings{Mavridou2019,
author = {Mavridou, Anastasia and Laszka, Aron and Stachtiari, Emmanouela and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {VeriSolid: Correct-by-Design Smart Contracts for Ethereum},
booktitle = {Financial Cryptography and Data Security - 23rd International Conference, {FC} 2019, Frigate Bay, St. Kitts and Nevis, Revised Selected Papers},
year = {2019},
pages = {446--465},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/fc/MavridouLSD19},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1007/978-3-030-32101-7\_27},
file = {:Mavridou2019-VeriSolid_Correct_by_Design_Smart_Contracts_for_Ethereum.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {blockchain},
project = {cps-blockchains},
timestamp = {Mon, 14 Oct 2019 14:51:20 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-32101-7\_27}
}
The adoption of blockchain based distributed ledgers is growing fast due to their ability to provide reliability, integrity, and auditability without trusted entities. One of the key capabilities of these emerging platforms is the ability to create self-enforcing smart contracts. However, the development of smart contracts has proven to be error-prone in practice, and as a result, contracts deployed on public platforms are often riddled with security vulnerabilities. This issue is exacerbated by the design of these platforms, which forbids updating contract code and rolling back malicious transactions. In light of this, it is crucial to ensure that a smart contract is secure before deploying it and trusting it with significant amounts of cryptocurrency. To this end, we introduce the VeriSolid framework for the formal verification of contracts that are specified using a transition-system based model with rigorous operational semantics. Our model-based approach allows developers to reason about and verify contract behavior at a high level of abstraction. VeriSolid allows the generation of Solidity code from the verified models, which enables the correct-by-design development of smart contracts.
P. Ghosh, S. Eisele, A. Dubey, M. Metelko, I. Madari, P. Völgyesi, and G. Karsai, On the Design of Fault-Tolerance in a Decentralized Software Platform for Power Systems, in IEEE 22nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2019, Valencia, Spain, 2019, pp. 52–60.
@inproceedings{Ghosh2019,
author = {Ghosh, Purboday and Eisele, Scott and Dubey, Abhishek and Metelko, Mary and Madari, Istv{\'{a}}n and V{\"{o}}lgyesi, P{\'{e}}ter and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {On the Design of Fault-Tolerance in a Decentralized Software Platform for Power Systems},
booktitle = {{IEEE} 22nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, {ISORC} 2019, Valencia, Spain},
year = {2019},
pages = {52--60},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/isorc/GhoshEDMMVK19},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1109/ISORC.2019.00018},
file = {:Ghosh2019-On_the_Design_of_Fault-Tolerance_in_a_Decentralized_Software_Platform_for_Power_Systems.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {cps-middleware,cps-reliability},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:53 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISORC.2019.00018}
}
The vision of the ‘Smart Grid’ assumes a distributed real-time embedded system that implements various monitoring and control functions. As the reliability of the power grid is critical to modern society, the software supporting the grid must support fault tolerance and resilience in the resulting cyber-physical system. This paper describes the fault-tolerance features of a software framework called Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid (RIAPS). The framework supports various mechanisms for fault detection and mitigation and works in concert with the applications that implement the grid-specific functions. The paper discusses the design philosophy for and the implementation of the fault tolerance features and presents an application example to show how it can be used to build highly resilient systems.
M. A. Walker, D. C. Schmidt, and A. Dubey, Chapter Six - Testing at scale of IoT blockchain applications, in Advances in Computers, vol. 115, Oreilly, 2019, pp. 155–179.
@inbook{Walker2019,
pages = {155--179},
title = {Chapter Six - Testing at scale of IoT blockchain applications},
publisher = {Oreilly},
year = {2019},
author = {Walker, Michael A. and Schmidt, Douglas C. and Dubey, Abhishek},
volume = {115},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/ac/WalkerSD19},
booktitle = {Advances in Computers},
doi = {10.1016/bs.adcom.2019.07.008},
file = {:Walker2019-Chapter_Six_Testing_at_Scale_of_IoT_Blockchain_Applications.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {cps-blockchains, blockchain},
project = {cps-blockchains},
tag = {decentralization},
timestamp = {Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.adcom.2019.07.008}
}
Abstract Due to the ever-increasing adaptation of Blockchain technologies in the private, public, and business domains, both the use of Distributed Systems and the increased demand for their reliability has exploded recently, especially with their desired integration with Internet-of-Things devices. This has resulted in a lot of work being done in the fields of distributed system analysis and design, specifically in the areas of blockchain smart contract design and formal verification. However, the focus on formal verification methodologies has meant that less attention has been given toward more traditional testing methodologies, such as unit testing and integration testing. This includes a lack of full support by most, if not all, the major blockchain implementations for testing at scale, except on fully public test networks. This has several drawbacks, such as: (1) The inability to do repeatable testing under identical scenarios, (2) reliance upon public mining of blocks, which introduces unreasonable amounts of delay for a test driven development scenario that a private network could reduce or eliminate, and (3) the inability to design scenarios where parts of the network go down. In this chapter we discuss design, testing methodologies, and tools to allow Testing at Scale of IoT Blockchain Applications.
S. Eisele, P. Ghosh, K. Campanelli, A. Dubey, and G. Karsai, Demo: Transactive Energy Application with RIAPS, in IEEE 22nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2019, Valencia, Spain, May 7-9, 2019, 2019, pp. 85–86.
@inproceedings{Eisele2019,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Ghosh, Purboday and Campanelli, Keegan and Dubey, Abhishek and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {Demo: Transactive Energy Application with {RIAPS}},
booktitle = {{IEEE} 22nd International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, {ISORC} 2019, Valencia, Spain, May 7-9, 2019},
year = {2019},
pages = {85--86},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/isorc/EiseleGCDK19},
category = {poster},
doi = {10.1109/ISORC.2019.00024},
file = {:Eisele2019-Demo_Transactive_Energy_Application_with_RIAPS.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {transactive-energy},
tag = {decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:53 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISORC.2019.00024}
}
The modern electric grid is a complex, decentralized cyber-physical system requiring higher-level control techniques to balance the demand and supply of energy to optimize the overall energy usage. The concept of Transactive Energy utilizes distributed system principle to address this challenge. In this demonstration we show the usage of the distributed application management platform RIAPS in the implementation of one such Transactive Energy approach to control elements of a power system, which runs as a a simulation using the Gridlab-d simulation solver.
M. Wilbur, A. Dubey, B. Leão, and S. Bhattacharjee, A Decentralized Approach for Real Time Anomaly Detection in Transportation Networks, in IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing, SMARTCOMP 2019, Washington, DC, USA, 2019, pp. 274–282.
@inproceedings{Wilbur2019,
author = {Wilbur, Michael and Dubey, Abhishek and Le{\~{a}}o, Bruno and Bhattacharjee, Shameek},
title = {A Decentralized Approach for Real Time Anomaly Detection in Transportation Networks},
booktitle = {{IEEE} International Conference on Smart Computing, {SMARTCOMP} 2019, Washington, DC, USA},
year = {2019},
pages = {274--282},
month = jun,
tag = {ai4cps,platform,decentralization,incident,transit},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/smartcomp/WilburDLB19},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1109/SMARTCOMP.2019.00063},
file = {:Wilbur2019-A_Decentralized_Approach_for_Real_Time_Anomaly_Detection_in_Transportation_Networks.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transit, reliability},
project = {cps-reliability,smart-transit,smart-cities},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:54 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/SMARTCOMP.2019.00063}
}
H. Tu, Y. Du, H. Yu, A. Dubey, S. Lukic, and G. Karsai, Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS): A Novel Open-Source Platform for Microgrid Control, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, pp. 1–1, 2019.
@article{Tu2019,
author = {{Tu}, H. and {Du}, Y. and {Yu}, H. and Dubey, Abhishek and {Lukic}, S. and {Karsai}, G.},
title = {Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS): A Novel Open-Source Platform for Microgrid Control},
journal = {IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics},
year = {2019},
pages = {1-1},
issn = {1557-9948},
doi = {10.1109/TIE.2019.2952803},
file = {:Tu2019-Resilient_Information_Architecture_Platform_for_the_Smart_Grid(RIAPS)_A_Novel_Open-Source_Platform_for_Microgrid_Control.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {smartgrid},
project = {cps-middleware,cps-reliability,smart-energy},
tag = {decentralization,power}
}
Microgrids are seen as an effective way to achieve reliable, resilient, and efficient operation of the power distribution system. Core functions of the microgrid control system are defined by the IEEE standard 2030.7; however, the algorithms that realize these functions are not standardized, and are a topic of research. Furthermore, the corresponding controller hardware, operating system, and communication system to implement these functions vary significantly from one implementation to the next. In this paper, we introduce an open-source platform, Resilient Information Architecture Platform for the Smart Grid (RIAPS), ideally suited for implementing and deploying distributed microgrid control algorithms. RIAPS provides a design-time tool suite for development and deployment of distributed microgrid control algorithms. With support from a number of run-time platform services, developed algorithms can be easily implemented and deployed into real microgrids. To demonstrate the unique features of RIAPS, we propose and implement a distributed microgrid secondary control algorithm capable of synchronized and proportional compensation of voltage unbalance using distributed generators. Test results show the effectiveness of the proposed control and the salient features of the RIAPS platform.
Garcı́a-Valls Marisol, A. Dubey, and V. J. Botti, Introducing the new paradigm of Social Dispersed Computing: Applications, Technologies and Challenges, Journal of Systems Architecture - Embedded Systems Design, vol. 91, pp. 83–102, 2018.
@article{GarciaValls2018,
author = {Garc{\'{\i}}a{-}Valls, Marisol and Dubey, Abhishek and Botti, Vicent J.},
title = {Introducing the new paradigm of Social Dispersed Computing: Applications, Technologies and Challenges},
journal = {Journal of Systems Architecture - Embedded Systems Design},
year = {2018},
volume = {91},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
pages = {83--102},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/jsa/Garcia-VallsDB18},
doi = {10.1016/j.sysarc.2018.05.007},
file = {:Garcia-Valls2018-Introducing_the_new_paradigm_of_Social_Dispersed_Computing_Applications_Technologies_and_Challenges.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {cps-middleware},
timestamp = {Mon, 16 Sep 2019 01:00:00 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sysarc.2018.05.007}
}
If last decade viewed computational services as a utilitythen surely this decade has transformed computation into a commodity. Computation is now progressively integrated into the physical networks in a seamless way that enables cyber-physical systems (CPS) and the Internet of Things (IoT) meet their latency requirements. Similar to the concept of “platform as a service” or “software as a service”, both cloudlets and fog computing have found their own use cases. Edge devices (that we call end or user devices for disambiguation) play the role of personal computers, dedicated to a user and to a set of correlated applications. In this new scenario, the boundaries between the network node, the sensor, and the actuator are blurring, driven primarily by the computation power of IoT nodes like single board computers and the smartphones. The bigger data generated in this type of networks needs clever, scalable, and possibly decentralized computing solutions that can scale independently as required. Any node can be seen as part of a graph, with the capacity to serve as a computing or network router node, or both. Complex applications can possibly be distributed over this graph or network of nodes to improve the overall performance like the amount of data processed over time. In this paper, we identify this new computing paradigm that we call Social Dispersed Computing, analyzing key themes in it that includes a new outlook on its relation to agent based applications. We architect this new paradigm by providing supportive application examples that include next generation electrical energy distribution networks, next generation mobility services for transportation, and applications for distributed analysis and identification of non-recurring traffic congestion in cities. The paper analyzes the existing computing paradigms (e.g., cloud, fog, edge, mobile edge, social, etc.), solving the ambiguity of their definitions; and analyzes and discusses the relevant foundational software technologies, the remaining challenges, and research opportunities.
A. Laszka, S. Eisele, A. Dubey, G. Karsai, and K. Kvaternik, TRANSAX: A Blockchain-Based Decentralized Forward-Trading Energy Exchanged for Transactive Microgrids, in 24th IEEE International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ICPADS 2018, Singapore, December 11-13, 2018, 2018, pp. 918–927.
@inproceedings{Laszka2018,
author = {Laszka, Aron and Eisele, Scott and Dubey, Abhishek and Karsai, Gabor and Kvaternik, Karla},
title = {{TRANSAX:} {A} Blockchain-Based Decentralized Forward-Trading Energy Exchanged for Transactive Microgrids},
booktitle = {24th {IEEE} International Conference on Parallel and Distributed Systems, {ICPADS} 2018, Singapore, December 11-13, 2018},
year = {2018},
pages = {918--927},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/icpads/LaszkaEDKK18},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1109/PADSW.2018.8645001},
file = {:Laszka2018-TRANSAX_A_Blockchain-Based_Decentralized_Forward-Trading_Energy_Exchanged_for_Transactive_Microgrids.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive, blockchain},
project = {transactive-energy,cps-blockchains},
tag = {decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:56 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/PADSW.2018.8645001}
}
Power grids are undergoing major changes due to rapid growth in renewable energy and improvements in battery technology. Prompted by the increasing complexity of power systems, decentralized IoT solutions are emerging, which arrange local communities into transactive microgrids. The core functionality of these solutions is to provide mechanisms for matching producers with consumers while ensuring system safety. However, there are multiple challenges that these solutions still face: privacy, trust, and resilience. The privacy challenge arises because the time series of production and consumption data for each participant is sensitive and may be used to infer personal information. Trust is an issue because a producer or consumer can renege on the promised energy transfer. Providing resilience is challenging due to the possibility of failures in the infrastructure that is required to support these market based solutions. In this paper, we develop a rigorous solution for transactive microgrids that addresses all three challenges by providing an innovative combination of MILP solvers, smart contracts, and publish-subscribe middleware within a framework of a novel distributed application platform, called Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Grid. Towards this purpose, we describe the key architectural concepts, including fault tolerance, and show the trade-off between market efficiency and resource requirements.
S. Eisele, A. Laszka, A. Mavridou, and A. Dubey, SolidWorx: A Resilient and Trustworthy Transactive Platform for Smart and Connected Communities, in IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things and Blockchains, 2018, pp. 1263–1272.
@inproceedings{Eisele2018,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Laszka, Aron and Mavridou, Anastasia and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {SolidWorx: {A} Resilient and Trustworthy Transactive Platform for Smart and Connected Communities},
booktitle = {{IEEE} International Conference on Internet of Things and Blockchains},
year = {2018},
pages = {1263--1272},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/ithings/EiseleLMD18},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1109/Cybermatics\_2018.2018.00221},
file = {:Eisele2018-SolidWorx_A_Resilient_and_Trustworthy_Transactive_Platform_for_Smart_and_Connected_Communities.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {blockchain, transactive},
project = {cps-blockchains,transactive-energy},
tag = {decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:56 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/Cybermatics\_2018.2018.00221}
}
Internet of Things and data sciences are fueling the development of innovative solutions for various applications in Smart and Connected Communities (SCC). These applications provide participants with the capability to exchange not only data but also resources, which raises the concerns of integrity, trust, and above all the need for fair and optimal solutions to the problem of resource allocation. This exchange of information and resources leads to a problem where the stakeholders of the system may have limited trust in each other. Thus, collaboratively reaching consensus on when, how, and who should access certain resources becomes problematic. This paper presents SolidWorx, a blockchain-based platform that provides key mechanisms required for arbitrating resource consumption across different SCC applications in a domain-agnostic manner. For example, it introduces and implements a hybrid-solver pattern, where complex optimization computation is handled off-blockchain while solution validation is performed by a smart contract. To ensure correctness, the smart contract of SolidWorx is generated and verified using a model-based approach.
H. Purohit, S. Nannapaneni, A. Dubey, P. Karuna, and G. Biswas, Structured Summarization of Social Web for Smart Emergency Services by Uncertain Concept Graph, in 2018 IEEE International Science of Smart City Operations and Platforms Engineering in Partnership with Global City Teams Challenge (SCOPE-GCTC), 2018, pp. 30–35.
@inproceedings{Purohit2018,
author = {{Purohit}, H. and {Nannapaneni}, S. and Dubey, Abhishek and {Karuna}, P. and {Biswas}, G.},
title = {Structured Summarization of Social Web for Smart Emergency Services by Uncertain Concept Graph},
booktitle = {2018 IEEE International Science of Smart City Operations and Platforms Engineering in Partnership with Global City Teams Challenge (SCOPE-GCTC)},
year = {2018},
pages = {30-35},
month = apr,
tag = {decentralization,incident},
category = {workshop},
doi = {10.1109/SCOPE-GCTC.2018.00012},
file = {:Purohit2018-Structured_Summarization_of_Social_Web_for_Smart_Emergency_Services_by_Uncertain_Concept_Graph.pdf:PDF},
issn = {null},
keywords = {emergency}
}
The Web has empowered emergency services to enhance operations by collecting real-time information about incidents from diverse data sources such as social media. However, the high volume of unstructured data from the heterogeneous sources with varying degrees of veracity challenges the timely extraction and integration of relevant information to summarize the current situation. Existing work on event detection and summarization on social media relates to this challenge of timely extraction of information during an evolving event. However, it is limited in both integrating incomplete information from diverse sources and using the integrated information to dynamically infer knowledge representation of the situation that captures optimal actions (e.g., allocate available finite ambulances to incident regions). In this paper, we present a novel concept of an Uncertain Concept Graph (UCG) that is capable of representing dynamic knowledge of a disaster event from heterogeneous data sources, particularly for the regions of interest, and resources/services required. The information sources, incident regions, and resources (e.g., ambulances) are represented as nodes in UCG, while the edges represent the weighted relationships between these nodes. We then propose a solution for probabilistic edge inference between nodes in UCG. We model a novel optimization problem for the edge assignment between a service resource to a region node over time trajectory. The output of such structured summarization over time can be valuable for modeling event dynamics in the real world beyond emergency management, across different smart city operations such as transportation.
A. Laszka, A. Mavridou, and A. Dubey, Resilient and Trustworthy Transactive Platform for Smart and Connected Communities, in High Confidence Software and Systems Conference, 2018.
@conference{DubeyHCSS2018,
author = {Laszka, Aron and Mavridou, Anastasia and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {Resilient and Trustworthy Transactive Platform for Smart and Connected Communities},
booktitle = {High Confidence Software and Systems Conference},
year = {2018},
keywords = {blockchain},
project = {cps-reliability},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:54 +0200}
}
S. Eisele, G. Pettet, A. Dubey, and G. Karsai, Towards an architecture for evaluating and analyzing decentralized Fog applications, in IEEE Fog World Congress, FWC 2017, Santa Clara, CA, USA, October 30 - Nov. 1, 2017, 2017, pp. 1–6.
@inproceedings{Eisele2017,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Pettet, Geoffrey and Dubey, Abhishek and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {Towards an architecture for evaluating and analyzing decentralized Fog applications},
booktitle = {{IEEE} Fog World Congress, {FWC} 2017, Santa Clara, CA, USA, October 30 - Nov. 1, 2017},
year = {2017},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
pages = {1--6},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/fwc/EiselePDK17},
category = {workshop},
doi = {10.1109/FWC.2017.8368531},
file = {:Eisele2017-Towards_an_architecture_for_evaluating_and_analyzing_decentralized_Fog_applications.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {cps-reliability,cps-middleware},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:51 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/FWC.2017.8368531}
}
As the number of low cost computing devices at the edge of network increases, there are greater opportunities to enable novel, innovative capabilities, especially in decentralized cyber-physical systems. For example, in an urban setting, a set of networked, collaborating processors at the edge can be used to dynamically detect traffic densities via image processing and then use those densities to control the traffic flow by coordinating traffic light sequences, in a decentralized architecture. In this paper we describe a testbed and an application framework for such applications.
S. Eisele, A. Dubey, G. Karsai, and S. Lukic, Transactive energy demo with RIAPS platform, in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, ICCPS 2017, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, April 18-20, 2017, 2017, p. 91.
@inproceedings{Eisele2017a,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Dubey, Abhishek and Karsai, Gabor and Lukic, Srdjan},
title = {Transactive energy demo with {RIAPS} platform},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Cyber-Physical Systems, {ICCPS} 2017, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, April 18-20, 2017},
year = {2017},
pages = {91},
tag = {decentralization,power},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/iccps/EiseleDKL17},
category = {poster},
doi = {10.1145/3055004.3064845},
file = {:Eisele2017a-Transactive_energy_demo_with_RIAPS_platform.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {cps-reliability,cps-middleware,transactive-energy},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:57 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3055004.3064845}
}
This work presents a platform for decentralized distributed computing called Resilient Information Architecture for the Smart Grid (RIAPS) through a transactional energy and a traffic application.
A. Laszka, A. Dubey, M. Walker, and D. C. Schmidt, Providing privacy, safety, and security in IoT-based transactive energy systems using distributed ledgers, in Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on the Internet of Things, IOT 2017, Linz, Austria, October 22-25, 2017, 2017, pp. 13:1–13:8.
@inproceedings{Laszka2017,
author = {Laszka, Aron and Dubey, Abhishek and Walker, Michael and Schmidt, Douglas C.},
title = {Providing privacy, safety, and security in IoT-based transactive energy systems using distributed ledgers},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on the Internet of Things, {IOT} 2017, Linz, Austria, October 22-25, 2017},
year = {2017},
pages = {13:1--13:8},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/iot/LaszkaDWS17},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1145/3131542.3131562},
file = {:Laszka2017-Providing_privacy_safety_and_security_in_IoT-based_transactive_energy_systems_using_distributed_ledgers.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive, blockchain},
project = {cps-reliability,cps-blockchains,transactive-energy},
tag = {decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3131542.3131562}
}
Power grids are undergoing major changes due to rapid growth in renewable energy resources and improvements in battery technology. While these changes enhance sustainability and efficiency, they also create significant management challenges as the complexity of power systems increases. To tackle these challenges, decentralized Internet-of-Things (IoT) solutions are emerging, which arrange local communities into transactive microgrids. Within a transactive microgrid, “prosumers” (i.e., consumers with energy generation and storage capabilities) can trade energy with each other, thereby smoothing the load on the main grid using local supply. It is hard, however, to provide security, safety, and privacy in a decentralized and transactive energy system. On the one hand, prosumers’ personal information must be protected from their trade partners and the system operator. On the other hand, the system must be protected from careless or malicious trading, which could destabilize the entire grid. This paper describes Privacypreserving Energy of cyb
(PETra), which is a secure and safe solution for transactive microgrids that enables consumers to trade energy without sacrificing their privacy. PETra builds on distributed ledgers, such as blockchains, and provides anonymity for communication, bidding, and trading.
S. Eisele, I. Madari, A. Dubey, and G. Karsai, RIAPS: Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Decentralized Smart Systems, in 20th IEEE International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, ISORC 2017, Toronto, ON, Canada, May 16-18, 2017, 2017, pp. 125–132.
@inproceedings{Eisele2017b,
author = {Eisele, Scott and Madari, Istv{\'{a}}n and Dubey, Abhishek and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {{RIAPS:} Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Decentralized Smart Systems},
booktitle = {20th {IEEE} International Symposium on Real-Time Distributed Computing, {ISORC} 2017, Toronto, ON, Canada, May 16-18, 2017},
year = {2017},
pages = {125--132},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/isorc/EiseleMDK17},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1109/ISORC.2017.22},
file = {:Eisele2017b-RIAPS_Resilient_Information_Architecture_Platform_for_Decentralized_Smart_Systems.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {smart-transit,smart-cities},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:53 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/ISORC.2017.22}
}
The emerging Fog Computing paradigm provides an additional computational layer that enables new capabilities in real-time data-driven applications. This is especially interesting in the domain of Smart Grid as the boundaries between traditional generation, distribution, and consumer roles are blurring. This is a reflection of the ongoing trend of intelligence distribution in Smart Systems. In this paper, we briefly describe a component-based decentralized software platform called Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Smart Systems (RIAPS) which provides an infrastructure for such systems. We briefly describe some initial applications built using this platform. Then, we focus on the design and integration choices for a resilient Discovery Manager service that is a critical component of this infrastructure. The service allows applications to discover each other, work collaboratively, and ensure the stability of the Smart System.
J. Bergquist, A. Laszka, M. Sturm, and A. Dubey, On the design of communication and transaction anonymity in blockchain-based transactive microgrids, in Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers, SERIAL@Middleware 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 11-15, 2017, 2017, pp. 3:1–3:6.
@inproceedings{Bergquist2017,
author = {Bergquist, Jonatan and Laszka, Aron and Sturm, Monika and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {On the design of communication and transaction anonymity in blockchain-based transactive microgrids},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 1st Workshop on Scalable and Resilient Infrastructures for Distributed Ledgers, SERIAL@Middleware 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 11-15, 2017},
year = {2017},
pages = {3:1--3:6},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/middleware/BergquistLSD17},
category = {workshop},
doi = {10.1145/3152824.3152827},
file = {:Bergquist2017-On_the_design_of_communication_and_transaction_anonymity_in_blockchain-based_transactive_microgrids.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {transactive-energy,cps-middleware,cps-reliability},
tag = {decentralization,platform},
timestamp = {Tue, 06 Nov 2018 16:57:13 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3152824.3152827}
}
Transactive microgrids are emerging as a transformative solution for the problems faced by distribution system operators due to an increase in the use of distributed energy resources and a rapid acceleration in renewable energy generation, such as wind and solar power. Distributed ledgers have recently found widespread interest in this domain due to their ability to provide transactional integrity across decentralized computing nodes. However, the existing state of the art has not focused on the privacy preservation requirement of these energy systems – the transaction level data can provide much greater insights into a prosumer’s behavior compared to smart meter data. There are specific safety requirements in transactive microgrids to ensure the stability of the grid and to control the load. To fulfil these requirements, the distribution system operator needs transaction information from the grid, which poses a further challenge to the privacy-goals. This problem is made worse by requirement for off-blockchain communication in these networks. In this paper, we extend a recently developed trading workflow called PETra and describe our solution for communication and transactional anonymity.
M. A. Walker, A. Dubey, A. Laszka, and D. C. Schmidt, PlaTIBART: a platform for transactive IoT blockchain applications with repeatable testing, in Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Middleware and Applications for the Internet of Things, M4IoT@Middleware 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 11, 2017, 2017, pp. 17–22.
@inproceedings{Walker2017,
author = {Walker, Michael A. and Dubey, Abhishek and Laszka, Aron and Schmidt, Douglas C.},
title = {PlaTIBART: a platform for transactive IoT blockchain applications with repeatable testing},
booktitle = {Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on Middleware and Applications for the Internet of Things, M4IoT@Middleware 2017, Las Vegas, NV, USA, December 11, 2017},
year = {2017},
pages = {17--22},
tag = {decentralization},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/middleware/WalkerDLS17},
category = {workshop},
doi = {10.1145/3152141.3152392},
file = {:Walker2017-PlaTIBART_a_platform_for_transactive_IoT_blockchain_applications_with_repeatable_testing.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {blockchain},
project = {transactive-energy,cps-middleware,cps-reliability},
timestamp = {Tue, 06 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3152141.3152392}
}
With the advent of blockchain-enabled IoT applications, there is an increased need for related software patterns, middleware concepts, and testing practices to ensure adequate quality and productivity. IoT and blockchain each provide different design goals, concepts, and practices that must be integrated, including the distributed actor model and fault tolerance from IoT and transactive information integrity over untrustworthy sources from blockchain. Both IoT and blockchain are emerging technologies and both lack codified patterns and practices for development of applications when combined. This paper describes PlaTIBART, which is a platform for transactive IoT blockchain applications with repeatable testing that combines the Actor pattern (which is a commonly used model of computation in IoT) together with a custom Domain Specific Language (DSL) and test network management tools. We show how PlaTIBART has been applied to develop, test, and analyze fault-tolerant IoT blockchain applications.
P. Völgyesi, A. Dubey, T. Krentz, I. Madari, M. Metelko, and G. Karsai, Time synchronization services for low-cost fog computing applications, in International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping, RSP 2017, Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype, October 19-20, 2017, Seoul, South Korea, 2017, pp. 57–63.
@inproceedings{Voelgyesi2017,
author = {V{\"{o}}lgyesi, P{\'{e}}ter and Dubey, Abhishek and Krentz, Timothy and Madari, Istv{\'{a}}n and Metelko, Mary and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {Time synchronization services for low-cost fog computing applications},
booktitle = {International Symposium on Rapid System Prototyping, {RSP} 2017, Shortening the Path from Specification to Prototype, October 19-20, 2017, Seoul, South Korea},
year = {2017},
tag = {platform,decentralization},
pages = {57--63},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/rsp/VolgyesiDKMMK17},
category = {selectiveconference},
doi = {10.1145/3130265.3130325},
file = {:Voelgyesi2017-Time_synchronization_services_for_low-cost_fog_computing_applications.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {cps-middleware,cps-reliability},
timestamp = {Tue, 06 Nov 2018 11:07:11 +0100},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1145/3130265.3130325}
}
This paper presents the time synchronization infrastructure for a low-cost run-time platform and application framework specifically targeting Smart Grid applications. Such distributed applications require the execution of reliable and accurate time-coordinated actions and observations both within islands of deployments and across geographically distant nodes. The time synchronization infrastructure is built on well-established technologies: GPS, NTP, PTP, PPS and Linux with real-time extensions, running on low-cost BeagleBone Black hardware nodes. We describe the architecture, implementation, instrumentation approach, performance results and present an example from the application domain. Also, we discuss an important finding on the effect of the Linux RT_PREEMPT real-time patch on the accuracy of the PPS subsystem and its use for GPS-based time references.
K. Kvaternik, A. Laszka, M. Walker, D. C. Schmidt, M. Sturm, M. Lehofer, and A. Dubey, Privacy-Preserving Platform for Transactive Energy Systems, in preprint at arxiv, 2017, vol. abs/1709.09597.
@inproceedings{Kvaternik2017,
author = {Kvaternik, Karla and Laszka, Aron and Walker, Michael and Schmidt, Douglas C. and Sturm, Monika and Lehofer, Martin and Dubey, Abhishek},
title = {Privacy-Preserving Platform for Transactive Energy Systems},
booktitle = {preprint at arxiv},
year = {2017},
volume = {abs/1709.09597},
archiveprefix = {arXiv},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/journals/corr/abs-1709-09597},
eprint = {1709.09597},
file = {:Kvaternik2017-Privacy_Preserving_Platform_for_Transactive_Energy_Systems.pdf:PDF},
journal = {CoRR},
keywords = {transactive},
project = {transactive-energy,smart-energy},
tag = {decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Tue, 12 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0100},
url = {http://arxiv.org/abs/1709.09597}
}
Transactive energy systems (TES) are emerging as a transformative solution for the problems faced by distribution system operators due to an increase in the use of distributed energy resources and a rapid acceleration in renewable energy generation. These, on one hand, pose a decentralized power system controls problem, requiring strategic microgrid control to maintain stability for the community and for the utility. On the other hand, they require robust financial markets operating on distributed software platforms that preserve privacy. In this paper, we describe the implementation of a novel, blockchain-based transactive energy system. We outline the key requirements and motivation of this platform, describe the lessons learned, and provide a description of key architectural components of this system.
W. Emfinger, A. Dubey, P. Völgyesi, J. Sallai, and G. Karsai, Demo Abstract: RIAPS - A Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Edge Computing, in IEEE/ACM Symposium on Edge Computing, SEC 2016, Washington, DC, USA, October 27-28, 2016, 2016, pp. 119–120.
@inproceedings{Emfinger2016,
author = {Emfinger, William and Dubey, Abhishek and V{\"{o}}lgyesi, P{\'{e}}ter and Sallai, J{\'{a}}nos and Karsai, Gabor},
title = {Demo Abstract: {RIAPS} - {A} Resilient Information Architecture Platform for Edge Computing},
booktitle = {{IEEE/ACM} Symposium on Edge Computing, {SEC} 2016, Washington, DC, USA, October 27-28, 2016},
year = {2016},
pages = {119--120},
bibsource = {dblp computer science bibliography, https://dblp.org},
biburl = {https://dblp.org/rec/bib/conf/edge/EmfingerDVSK16},
category = {poster},
doi = {10.1109/SEC.2016.23},
file = {:Emfinger2016-Demo_Abstract_RIAPS-A_Resilient_Information_Architecture_Platform_for_Edge_Computing.pdf:PDF},
keywords = {middleware},
project = {cps-middleware},
tag = {platform,decentralization,power},
timestamp = {Wed, 16 Oct 2019 14:14:56 +0200},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/SEC.2016.23}
}
The emerging CPS/IoT ecosystem platforms such as Beaglebone Black, Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison and other edge devices such as SCALE, Paradrop are providing new capabilities for data collection, analysis and processing at the edge (also referred to as Fog Computing). This allows the dynamic composition of computing and communication networks that can be used to monitor and control the physical phenomena closer to the physical system. However, there are still a number of challenges that exist and must be resolved before we see wider applicability of these platforms for applications in safety-critical application domains such as Smart Grid and Traffic Control.