A Novel Approach for Deploying Minimum Sensors in Smart Buildings

Buildings, viewed as cyber-physical systems, become smart by deploying Building Management Systems (BMS). They should be aware about the state and environment of the building. This is achieved by developing a sensing system that senses different interesting factors of the building, called as “facets of sensing.” Depending on the application, different facets need to be sensed at various locations. Existing approaches for sensing these facets consist of deploying sensors at all the places so they can be sensed directly. But installing numerous sensors often aggravate the issues of user inconvenience, cost of installation and maintenance, and generation of e-waste. This article proposes how intelligently using the existing information can help to estimate the facets in cyber-physical systems like buildings, thereby reducing the sensors to be deployed. In this article, an optimization framework has been developed, which optimally deploys sensors in a building such that it satisfies BMS requirements with minimum number of sensors. The proposed solution is applied to real-world scenarios with cyber-physical systems. The results indicate that the proposed optimization framework is able to reduce the number of sensors by 59% and 49% when compared to the baseline and heuristic approach, respectively.

Attack Taxonomy for Cyber-Physical System

Cyber-physical systems are the systems that combine the physical world with the world of information processing. CPS involves interaction between heterogeneous components that include electronic chips, software systems, sensors and actuators. It makes the CPS vulnerable to attacks. How to deal with the attacks in CPSs has become a research hotspot. In this paper we have study the Architecture of CPS and various security threats at each layer of the archicture of CPS. We have also developed attack taxonomy for CPS. Keywords: Cyber Physical System, Threat, Attack

Examining the awareness and usage of cyber physical systems for construction projects in Nigeria

Purpose In recent times, the construction industry is being influenced by technological innovations when delivering a better, more effective and efficient desired project, cyber-physical systems (CPSs) offer a coupling of the physical and engineered systems by monitoring, coordinating, controlling and integrating their operations. This study aims to examine the level of awareness of professionals and usage of CPSs for construction projects in Nigerian construction industry. Design/methodology/approach The target population for this study was the professionals in the construction industry consisting Architects, Quantity Surveyors, Engineers and Builders. Data collection was through the use of a structured questionnaire administered to the target population. The data was analyzed by using statistical tools. Findings This study concluded that the construction professionals in the Nigerian construction industry are mostly aware about the heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, global positioning system, microphone, speakers and camera as the most widely used CPSs in construction industry. HVAC systems was also found to be the mostly adopted technologies in the construction industry. Originality/value This study recommended that platforms that increase the awareness and encourage the usage of CPSs in construction industry should be encouraged by stakeholders concerned with management of construction projects. Such include electronic construction and adoption of blockchain technology.

A Logic for Monitoring Dynamic Networks of Spatially-distributed Cyber-Physical Systems

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) consist of inter-wined computational (cyber) and physical components interacting through sensors and/or actuators. Computational elements are networked at every scale and can communicate with each other and with humans. Nodes can join and leave the network at any time or they can move to different spatial locations. In this scenario, monitoring spatial and temporal properties plays a key role in the understanding of how complex behaviors can emerge from local and dynamic interactions. We revisit here the Spatio-Temporal Reach and Escape Logic (STREL), a logic-based formal language designed to express and monitor spatio-temporal requirements over the execution of mobile and spatially distributed CPS. STREL considers the physical space in which CPS entities (nodes of the graph) are arranged as a weighted graph representing their dynamic topological configuration. Both nodes and edges include attributes modeling physical and logical quantities that can evolve over time. STREL combines the Signal Temporal Logic with two spatial modalities reach and escape that operate over the weighted graph. From these basic operators, we can derive other important spatial modalities such as everywhere, somewhere and surround. We propose both qualitative and quantitative semantics based on constraint semiring algebraic structure. We provide an offline monitoring algorithm for STREL and we show the feasibility of our approach with the application to two case studies: monitoring spatio-temporal requirements over a simulated mobile ad-hoc sensor network and a simulated epidemic spreading model for COVID19.